Hawaii Vacation Recap

I am back from our 3 week vacation in Hawaii. We had a fabulous time and ended up with very spotty wifi so blogging wasn’t doable. Sorry to leave you hanging for that long, but I know you understand!

Since it will take me a little bit longer to get into the groove of blogging, I thought I could share some of vacation with you.

Every other year the majority of our family gathers in Hawaii for a family reunion/vacation. This time we spent 10 days in Kauai and 11 days in Oahu, with our family (my husband’s siblings and their families, my mother-in-law and my parents for the second half). There were 16-17 of us (different for different parts of the trip). Not pictured is my brother-in-law and his family who were there in Kauai but not Oahu.

My family had been to Kauai before, once for a long weekend when we lived in Hawaii, so we had already seen a lot of the island but the rest of the gang had not been there. We decided to take things a little slower since this time we had 4 children as opposed to the first time when we had 2.

I usually take a TON of pictures but this time around I just felt like it was too much to be lugging the big camera around with all the kids in tow. Baby E, being just 6 months, was enough to worry about and my 2 year old needed constant eyes on him so I just accepted the fact that I wouldn’t have as many photos this year. I got out my real camera a handful of times and the rest was dependent on the iPhone.

So instead of rambling on about everything we did for 3 weeks I figured I would highlight the most memorable moments of the trip

MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS FROM VACATION:

–Traveling with a family of 6 in general was simply memorable. I am still in shock that it all went smoothly and we fit all this crap into a minivan (not pictured 3 car seats)!!

–Poipu beach in Kauai was one of my favorites for it’s amazing snorkeling and Hawaiian beauty.

–Waimea canyon is a must-see while in Kauai. We did the full hike last time we were there so this time decided to hike a short way to a look-out point. We had our 3 youngest with us and while carrying two of the little ones, the 45 minute round-trip hike was pretty tiring!

– Beach time in Kauai was great- lots of boogie boarding and fabulous weather.

-One of the coolest things for our family was that our two oldest kiddos learned how to swim! In the last year they’ve had some swim lessons but nothing consistent and in Washington you just don’t swim much. Then when daddy returned from his deployment he took them to a pool twice to practice. They improved a lot, but we knew we’d still have to watch them quite a bit. Literally I think it took two times in the pool before they were both swimming real laps, diving to the bottom, holding their breathe for the length of the pool…actually swimming! Terrible picture I just wanted to remember the moment.

-Visiting the coffee plantain in Kauai was somethings we did years ago when we lived in Hawaii. We have pictures of our two oldest kids there when they were little. In fact my oldest daughter was almost the same age as baby E when she was there last. It was really cool to bring our kids back there, with two more in tow.

-Our arrival to Oahu was super exciting. We use to live on Oahu and have such fond memories. We couldn’t wait to get back to our favorite Kailua beach.

–Three Tables beach in the North Shore of Oahu was gorgeous.

-Something else that we won’t forget was when Roman (2 1/2 years old) escaped our beach house and walked down to the beach by himself looking for his Uncle. Oops. It didn’t take long for us to enforce the “close all gates at all times” rule.

-We had a lot of daddy time which was awesome. Since we left short after Toby’s return from Afghanistan it was really nice to have 3 weeks of quality time with him.

-Baby Evangeline slept like crap. Literally it was like having a newborn who wakes every couple hours only worse because it was unexpected.

-Seeing my 7 year old jump off a man-made diving board into the ocean (like his big cousins did) made me a bit nervous but I was very proud of his bravery as he is usually scared of everything, haha.

-Baby Evangeline had a busy 3 weeks- she started solids (cereal, veggies and fruits), she cut her 3 tooth (top left tooth) which was most likely some of the reason behind her terrible sleeping pattern.

She surprisingly chowed down on the green veggies- peas and green beans!

-Evangaline was also baptized at our old church in Hawaii, the same church her older brother was baptized two years ago when we were vacationing there. It was such a pleasure to have a lot of our family present.

-Two days before we left there was a huge storm resulting in flooding. We were up throughout the night listening to the waves which sounded like they were going to crash into our room at any moment. My mother in law, sister and law and her hubby had woke up at 3 am found the house flooded and found a wet vac to save the place. Crazy!

(no picture of this)

-Catching up with old friends is always wonderful.

 

We had a lot of delicious food on our vacation. As I started adding some of those pictures in, I realized this post was already getting pretty long and I was running out of time. So I will be back soon with a separate post about food in Hawaii!

Hope you enjoyed some of my vacation photos!