I shared a few weeks ago about our trip to the States over Christmas, but I didn’t go into a ton of detail so today I want to share a little more about our time spent in Hawaii!

One thing I loved about our entire trip (besides, like, everything) was that we got to do it with my sister Adalia and her family, Ben and Percy. Even though we both live in New Zealand, Ben and Jared are both so busy with their jobs that it’s hard to get away, so we hadn’t seen each other in ages. Ben and Jared had barely spent any time together at all. So we all really enjoyed spending time together and Jared and I loved getting to know Ben, Adalia, and Percy even better. Percy is the cutest little monkey! Honestly man if our kids are half as cute as he is, I will be thrilled!

Here, Percy was a little disgruntled because he loved eating the sand but obviously didn’t really enjoy the taste or feel of it in his mouth. Unfortunately you can’t always have it both ways.

After an awesome two weeks in Bellingham, we stayed in Hawaii for several days on our way back to New Zealand. My grandma Cindy and grandpa Earl came to Hawaii as well, as did my sister Kalina. We arrived in Honolulu on Sunday afternoon and enjoyed the scenic drive to Hau’ula, about an hour away. I’d never been to Hawaii before, besides the airport, and the few glimpses I caught out airplane windows of the gorgeous mountains and blue water had given me a desire to actually visit someday. It did not disappoint!

Grandma and Grandpa stayed at a hotel about five minutes from where the rest of us stayed. Our place was right across the road from the beach, and there were several good beaches for swimming, snorkelling, and surfing within a half hour’s drive.

We stayed until Thursday and our flights left around midday (Kalina’s back to Bellingham, the rest of us to NZ – and grandma and grandpa stayed in Hawaii for several more days).

Even though we had just three full days in Hawaii, we managed to pack plenty of fun into that time! We visited Pearl Harbor, tried out snorkelling, surfing, boogie-boarding, and swimming, and went to I-Hop, Red Lobster, and Wal-Mart. Good stuff.

I love history and I’m so thankful for the military, so visiting Pearl Harbor was really special.

Of course, when we found this, we had to recreate it:

I couldn’t bring my camera into Pearl Harbor, so these iphone photos will have to suffice!

Also, yeah. It’s okay. We weren’t actually lost we were just trying to figure out how to get to a certain part of the ship. We figured it out eventually.

Then of course the beaches… the place we stayed had boogie boards and snorkelling gear that we could use. I had never been snorkelling before, but of course I’ve always wanted to because it sounds so amazing! Well, it was incredible!

I loved snorkelling at this beautiful little beach! It was so incredible, and since this was a popular snorkelling spot, the fish were used to people so you could get very close and get a great look at them. If you’ve never been snorkelling before, you should definitely try it! We only had a few snorkels, but we had enough goggles to go around, so I just kept resurfacing to get breaths of air, and it was still great fun.

Percy enjoyed it too…

He even tried out surfing. 😉

After this we visited a beach where Ben, Jared, and Kalina all tried boogie boarding, but the waves were so huge they got told by the lifeguards to stop because they weren’t experienced enough. I’m not a very strong swimmer, so I wasn’t about to go try not to drown, because it would not have been very fun for me. So Adalia, Percy, and I just enjoyed the sun and sand!

I did warn you that most of the photos I took were of Percy, right?

But ummm that face?! Too cute!

When we weren’t exploring the beaches, we spent the evenings watching movies and eating popcorn.

I love these photos I got of Ben, Adalia, and Percy at the beach across from where we stayed, one morning.

All in all it was a really fun time, and I would love to return someday, but maybe for a bit longer!

Until next time!