Family Pictures in Hawaii

Kallie had been telling me for months that she wanted to go back to Hawaii and take family pictures there. Once we booked the trip, I looked into a photographer there but the one that was recommended to me was $725. In the end we decided to just try taking our own! And we love them!

Kallie had a little pink tripod that we brought for the family shots. It was so fun and we love how they turned out! My prints didn't turn out as great as the digitals, but still, we love them!

Hanauma Bay

A couple of my friends had very highly recommended Hanauma Bay so I was determined to make a trip there happen on this vacation. We tried for Wednesday morning but the spots sold out within minutes so we tried again the next day and got some tickets for Thursday morning. We were trying to get there when the tide was a little higher, and so we ended up needing to drive during morning rush hour traffic.

We were rerouted which allowed us to go through the awesome tunnel and see the beautiful green mountains on the other side of the island, so that was a major plus.

We also stopped by a scenic lookout on the way.

We got to Hanauma Bay right on time. Watched the video, got down to the beach and snorkeled. The coral was disappointingly all brown. But we did see some very cool fish!

The beach was beautiful and we had a good time. We also saw another seal there.

All in all, the experience wasn't worth it for us and we probably won't repeat it, but now we know what it's all about!

Drove to another lookout point after Hanauma, went to lunch at Taco Bell, and then headed home. The whole trip was about 7 hours in total, not quite worth the effort, but like I said, we're glad we know what it's all about now.

Loved seeing these bright green geckos!

We celebrated Charlie's 4th birthday with him. We had a great time becoming friends with this cute family and catching up with them at the end of every day or in the mornings before we headed out.

Love this beautiful resort!

Manoa Falls Hike

It was fun for us to watch Mckinley doing her outdoor runs, she would go back and forth on the path out by the lagoons.

Back to Paradise Cove public beach. We saw a seal arriving to the beach as we got there, and then we played and snorkeled (had some great snorkeling there that day!) and then saw the seal swim away again. I think this was the one time we went there where we didn't see turtles.

Love driving by this beautiful golf course every time we left Ko'Olina.

We headed out to hike to Manoa Falls on Wednesday. It had rained that morning but we were hopeful we wouldn't have rain. It started out great, but the rain came about half way through us getting to the falls and it didn't stop. We were pretty wet at the end of that hike! Still so beautiful though.

After the hike we headed to the Swap Meet. We dried off quickly and the weather was perfect! We had a great time shopping.

Back to the resort to feed the fish and hang out for dinner and the evening.