Update in Pictures

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My, how time flies! We’ve really been enjoying these last few months living in southern California, and we’ve crossed many more things off our bucket list! Enjoy the pictures!

Base Jumping Anyone?

This still blows me away every time I see it …

Oahu (belated)

Yes, it’s taken me several weeks to get back into the swing of things here at home, which explains why our blog hasn’t been updated in a while. Since I posted about our Big Island trip, I can’t leave out our trip to Oahu. We flew from Kona to Honolulu on a Sunday and found a beautiful old church to attend in Waikiki. It was the most unique LDS church I’ve ever been to. We spent the afternoon at Pearl Harbor and learned a lot about that sacred place where so many American lives were lost. Then we headed up to the north shore to find our resort, Turtle Bay. We loved the beautiful drive, and got a little excited about finding the “Lost” filming sights which were marked in our guide book. Sidenote: Lost is the ONE TV show we watch, or should I say watched every episode, every season, and we thought it ended just right.

Anyway, we spent the next couple of days finding great places to eat (what else do you do on a relaxing trip to Hawaii?), snorkeling (probably the best ever at beautiful Shark’s Cove), driving and exploring the island (so much diversity and beauty in such a small place), and even fit in a hike to Manoa Falls (which was the perfect distance and difficulty for a 7 month pregnant girl and a recovering half-ironman). We recovered from our “hike” by getting a massage (definitely worth saving a couple hundred bucks by going outside of the resort), a tradition on our past visits to Hawaii. Right before we caught our flight home, Dave even got to surf for an hour in Waikiki, and I got some souvenir shopping in at the International Market. We actually really enjoyed the short time we spent in Waikiki. Oahu definitely ranks up there with Kauai and Maui as far as the Hawaiian Islands go!

LDS church in Waikiki

The USS Arizona was sunk by the Japanese

The names of the sailors who died in Pearl Harbor

The memorial is built over the sunken ship

Shark’s Cove snorkeling

Shave Ice—mmmm!

Recognize this scene?

Laie Temple

We enjoyed our breakfasts!

Think ya could go to school here? BYU Hawaii

Gorgeous Pali Look-out

Our one hike

Manoa Falls

Many first-timers trying to surf in Waikiki

This sign awaited our arrival home

Race Day in Kona

The whole reason we planned this trip to Hawaii–The Kona 70.3 Half Ironmnan. Dave is my hero–half iron, half man. He finished in 5:55 on blistered feet that he burned while running on the asphalt the day before the race. That day was not a good day–after talking to people and listening to the event directors scare the heck out of him, he decided to eliminate his goal of 6 hours and just hope that he finishes the race. This was his first event of this distance and the hardest course of this distance. He trained all winter and spring for this, and it paid off. I’m so proud of him!

the 56 mile ride

The finish line before anyone finished

cooling off

Exhausted, but stoked

The reward? Relaxing by the pool

I was happy to watch and not train alongside Dave

The 1.2 mile swim course

More Big Island Beauty

There’s so much to see on the Big Island….just about every landscape possible! We saw it all except for the snow on top of the volcanoes. Our favorite landscape is the lush green jungle with waterfalls.

This beach was filled with locals

Black Sand

The end of the road

A Hawaii sunset from our dinner table

The Mauna Lani hotel atrium

Big Island Volcano

Today is our last day in Hawaii, and since I know I won’t have much time to post after I get home, I’m going to post as much as I can before we leave. I’ll start with our first day on the Big Island–we drove around the ENTIRE island, which took us the ENTIRE day (with a few hours spent at the Volcano). Here’s some pictures from our visit to Hawaii’s Volcano National Park.

Kilauea Crater

Unfortunately, we didn’t see the real thing…this is just a picture

Steam vents from the earth

A lava tube underground

an arch made by hardened lava

1984 lava flow blocked the now-useless road

The sign didn’t stand a chance

Two weddings and lots of fun…

We loved going to Arizona and Utah for my sister, Julie’s, and brother, Jeremiah’s, weddings. It was a really fun and busy week! Here’s some photos from the trip…

We drove to Gilbert, AZ, for Julie’s pre-wedding reception. It was lovely and we had so much fun staying with our friends, the Muirs. As we drove up to Park City, we took a detour to the Grand Canyon–we had a family goal this year to visit this national park. Check. We loved the beauty, but could hardly stand the wind and freezing cold! We were very ill-prepared in our shorts and flip flops. We finally made it to Park City at about 1:00 am after driving for about 15 hours. The kids were great in the car and made the trip possible and even enjoyable!

We spent the following week at a fabulous resort in Park City, complete with lots of kids activities and 6 hot tubs. We even woke up to a fresh blanket of snow the first day there, so we swam in the snow! Since Jessica’s family was all in town (but scattered around at different places to sleep) they all came up to Park City for a couple of afternoons in the hot tubs. We loved spending time with family and feel so lucky to be a part of such a big one!

We loved witnessing the weddings of Jeremiah (Jess’ brother) and Amy in the Salt Lake City temple, as well as Julie (Jess’ sister) and Seth in the Manti temple. We are lucky to have Amy and Seth join our family! They were beautiful ceremonies, followed by fabulous parties! It seemed it was one party after another all week long, and I don’t think the kids ever got in bed before 10 or 11 pm. Needless to say, the drive home was a little bit longer (it seemed, even though it took about 5 hours less).

After being home for 2 days, we packed up and left again sans kids…more on that wonderful trip to come…