Sunday, January 22, 2017

Hawaii We Love You!

I just got a reminder on Facebook that a year ago we were in Hawaii...so I thought I'd better update the blog.
I can't tell you how excited we were to return to Hawaii (and how much I miss it still). Josh found out there was an Anesthesia conference on Maui in January. His residency program offers to pay $500/year for them to attend conferences so we went all in and used up the whole $1500 in one go. It was totally worth it.
We convinced my parents and Katelyn to meet us there. (It really didn't take much convincing.) It was so much fun to have them with us, especially my parents who have never been anywhere as exotic as Hawaii. Splitting Airbnb costs and having extra babysitters was a plus too. We had a whole week on the island and it was amazing.

Saddest part of the whole trip was when we heard from my parents that they had missed their connecting flight in CA and wouldn't get to Maui until the next day. It still makes me sad to think about it. So, it was just Josh, myself, the nator and Kate for a day. After catching up and settling in we got straight to beaching.



Our second day there we were finally joined by my parents and did the whole beach thing again. Amazing snorkeling and we tried paddle boarding for the first time, compliments of Josh's work buddy Stephen Swank.


We did The Road to Hana again, and gotta say, it was a bit disappointing in comparison to the first time. We hurried up to the sacred pools hoping to see them first (and in daylight) but when we got there we found out they were completely dry! :( We tried to make the best of it.








 

After our super hot and disappointing hike we headed back to what had been one of our favorite beaches from our first trip. Wainapanapa's black sand beach was as beautiful as ever, but the pebbles were much larger and much more hurty. We sucked it up and had as much fun as we could rolling in the huge waves and getting beaten up by the big rocks. I couldn't believe how hard core my dad was. 65 yrs old peeps!












We had some delicious meals in Lahaina.

And made sure to get lots of rest.
 
To recover from all our injuries...


 We spent the rest of our time traveling to different beaches doing some snorkeling and boogie boarding. We landed on Maui just as an earthquake hit somewhere far away, but it brought in some HUGE surf. The first few days were great, but towards the end of our stay things were getting a little hairy. The professionals were all over it, but us amateurs had to spend a little more time sunbathing, playing with the Waboba, or taking jumping pictures. Calvin was the perfect travel baby. Excellent on the flights, slept most of the time on the beaches or was happy and sucking sunscreen off his hands. Except there was the one time he had the world's largest stinkiest poop blowout just as we got to the black sand beach and we had zero wipes. Luckily we had paper towels. Seriously so nasty, but he was still THE CUTEST chubby beach bum of all time.


























And since my parents had almost a whole extra day to themselves they made a trip up to the volcano for some amazing site seeing/bird watching.