HAWAII!

Mitch and I spent a week on the big island of Hawaii for our 10 year anniversary. To say that it was incredible would be an understatement. It was hands down one of the best trips of my life! We've been lucky enough to travel a lot, and Hawaii was one of my favorite places I've been to!

The best part was not having a schedule! No plans, no kids to feed, no bed times, no early-morning alarms. We could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. All married couple needs time together like that every once in a while! It was rejuvenating to spend time with Mitch in such a beautiful place!

We stayed in an incredible Hilton resort (for free with Mitch's reward points! We spent $200 on parking and booking fees, and that was it for the hotel! Amazing!) and the view from our room was dreamy! The hotel was so huge. It was literally one mile from the lobby to our room. You could ride a tram or a boat around the hotel! They had several swimming pools with waterfalls, a waterslide, fake rock caves, etc. Beautiful! Several restaurants, and you could even swim with dolphins at the resort. They had their own private bay with a waterfall where we saw several sea turtles!

The view from our hotel room.

Sea turtles while kayaking in the bay

at our hotel.

The best activity we did was swimming with wild Kona spinner dolphins in the ocean. Ahhh, this has been on my bucket list for years, and it was even better than I had imagined it to be. We snorkeled with a pod of 11 dolphins and got to swim with them and watch them jump out of the water just 5 to 20 feet in front of us. It was amazing! We thought we had the entire thing on our go pro, only to find out later that all of the videos were deleted. But it wouldn't have done it justice anyways, so whatever. It truly was an experience of a lifetime. We also snorkeled in Cook Bay and enjoyed 8 hours total on the ocean. Growing up, I always wanted to be a stay at home mom, and I am so happy that my dreams have all come true, but my second choice would have been studying sharks and dolphins because they fascinate me and I would love to be on the ocean every day.

We also did a zipline course! It took us 4 hours to complete the whole thing. We zipped over waterfalls and huge ravines. We had a great view of the volcanoes and the ocean. It was beautiful and so fun!

We spent time in the volcano national park hiking through an active caldera and checking out the views. We biked 4 miles to see the spot where the lava meets the ocean. They wouldn't let you get closer than about a mile away which bummed us out. We got there at sunset and it was beautiful! The pictures don't do it justice. At all. It was incredible to hear the sound of the lava and waves, and the bright orange color it produced! Something I'll never forget!

Walked through a lava tube!

We checked out green and black sand beaches. The black sand beaches were my favorite. So beautiful! The green sand beach was an adventure. You can either walk 3 miles on a dusty road, or pay someone to drive you out there. You can't drive yourself unless you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle because it is a rocky, hilly terrain. We chose to have someone drive us, and ended up with a 16 year old kid driving us in a pick up truck. Actually, he wouldn't tell us how old he was, but he didn't look a day over 16. He was an excellent driver however, and would open the truck door, put the truck in 4 low, lean out, and spot his truck while maneuvering up and down the hills and rocks. I was nervous, but he also reminded me so much of my youngest brother and you could tell he knew what he was doing, that I was oddly at ease. Also, we were going super slow, so I figured even if we tipped over we'd be okay. We then hiked down to the green sand beach. It was one of the coolest/most picturesque beaches I've ever seen! And it wasn't crowded because it's so hard to get to. The waves comin in were big, but there were 2 people swimming, so we figured we'd swim too. After all, we'd probably never be at that beach again, so we should take the opportunity even if the waves seemed a little big, right? We jumped in and were having a blast until the waves got bigger, and bigger and pretty soon I realized we were the only ones in the water. As I turned to head in, a huge wave knocked me over and I ended up covered in sand and worried that I had damaged my left eardrum. :/ It hurt so bad and I was mad at myself that I got in when it was so dangerous! We hiked back up and got a ride back with the same kid and laughed that we survived and at least had a good story to tell.

The rest of the trip was spent swimming, eating, sleeping, walking, driving, eating, and swimming some more. It was wonderful and I loved every minute of it! We were lucky that both of our parents took our kids and they had so much fun with their grandparents while we were gone!