more maui pics

Logan (my bro in law) was the designated animal catcher. These lizards were a little tricky because 1. they were super fast and 2. if you catch them by the end of the tail you could break it off.

you didn't think I was going to skip all the beautiful flowers, did you?

chillin at the beach (where everyone else went in swimming with a bunch of sea turtles. dan and i planned to go back, because we got there at the end, and because i'm still afraid of sharks, but then we got sicker and never went.)

This snail seemed huge to me, 2 or 3 times biger than the ones in my garden. (Eric - Dan's dad, and Emily - Dan's sister.)

more flowers. I liked these because they were this great color of orange, plus pink and yellow on the same bush.

I'm not sure if you can see this black crab, but he was pretty big. Bigger than my hand. He blends in pretty well with his black rock home there.


This is just a normal old canna, but I liked the orange and yellow, so I took a picture.

hawaii

To answer a few questions:

Yes - I've been in Hawaii (just got back)
Yes - I wore the dress I made
No - I will not post a picture of me in it
Yes - It was fun
Yes - Dan and I were both sick the whole time (and so were all the kids and my mom, and we're all still kind of sick.)

We went to Maui for Dan's sister Sara's wedding. Here are Sara and Travis listening to Todd (another brother in law) while he gives them a little advice. (He was the unofficial officiator - there was also a Justice of the Peace there to do the actual paperwork, which is apparently the only official business.)

The happy couple cutting the cake. What do you think - isn't it a gorgeous spot? (ps - the cake was yellow with white polka dots, so cute.)

another shot of the beach we were on for the wedding. (see the chairs set up behind Dan and to the left.)

Laura, Sara, and Dan



some of the wedding flowers. all orchids.


Congratulations Sara and Travis! Thanks for having your wedding in Maui!

jellyfishing

Here are two videos from the aquarium in Maui. These little things were so cool to watch.

a few more pictures

Here are a few more pics I thought were cool.

Saturday

On Saturday we drove up to the volcano on the East side of the island. There's also one on the west side. The road was long and windy and we drove up through the clouds. When we got to the top we were so far above the clouds, it seemed a little unrealistic.

These cool plants were all over on top of the mountain.

After coming down from the mountain we still had a few hours before we had to catch our plane. We drove around west of Kahului near the volcano on the west. It was really beautiful. Next time we go, we'll spend more time there.

Friday

Since we rarely get to go to movies around here, we decided to go see one. Iron Man was pretty good. I wasn't sure I'd like Robert Downey Jr. but he was actually really great. I kind of like those comic books turned movies (even though I really know nothing about comics).

After that we thought we'd go check out the Maui Aquarium. I've been to some pretty crappy aquariums, but this one was really good. There was tons of information about all the tropical fish, the coral, how mollusks make shells, a really cool jellyfish tank (I'll add the video for it later), a huge shark tank, tortoise tanks, and lots of other cool stuff.

After that we checked out the only quilt shop in Maui (of course), where I found lots of really cool fabric.

And then for dinner we went to Ruth's Chris Steak House. Perfect as always. (And we were stuffed!)

Thursday

Finally - we went to the beach Thursday. There was one across the street from our hotel, which I guess was okay - we really had nothing to compare it to. There were signs there that said to be careful because there was a dangerous current and also dangerous shorebreaks. (I wish I would have taken a picture of the shorebreak one, oops.)

Dan brought a boogie board that was in our closet and headed out into the water. I'm a bit paranoid of sharks, so I didn't go in very far. I was also a little paranoid that our stuff would get stolen, so I didn't want to stay in the water too long. (There were signs all over saying, "Don't leave valuables - thefts occur often.) So I was a little bored on the beach. I just don't really love sitting there, doing nothing, wearing practically nothing and feeling self-conscious about it (and worrying about skin cancer). I did bring a book, and that kept me entertained for a while.

Dan got a killer sunburn (even though I reminded him - as a good and annoying wife would - to put sunscreen on more than once.) We would have gone back to the beach a few more times if he didn't look like a lobster, but I didn't really care, so it was all good.

We found this sign on another beach.

Wednesday

First stop: Barnes and Noble for some music. We couldn't stand all those island stations anymore! So we picked up The Police: Zenyatta Mondatta, The Who: The Best of The Who, and Carpenters: By Request. (We didn't have an ipod connection thing in the car.) They all got a little old, and we can sing all the words to all the songs (except the Carpenters. But I could already sing all those songs before - so I guess I've already listened to them WAY TOO MUCH).

Anyway - then we headed out for a drive around the west side of Maui. We saw lots of surfers along the way. Checked out the resort towns a little (Kapalua and Kaanapali), headed down to Lahaina and shopped (got the boys some great shark tooth necklaces - which they love). We had a cheeseburger at Cheeseburger in Paradise (pretty good) where we met a couple from Salt Lake City. Weird.

Lahaina has all these cool historical buildings (but we didn't really look at them too much) and this really cool Banyan Tree Park. The banyan tree is huge and has all these aerial roots growing from it (meaning they start up high in the branches and grow down to the ground and then into the ground and almost look like another trunk, except they're a bundle of above-ground roots.)

Those are roots behind me. Crazy.

Tuesday

After waking up at 4 am (8 am our time), we hung out for a bit since nothing was open. It was nice to just sit around for once. Then we got going on the road to Hana, a windy road with more than 100 hairpin turns and over 50 one lane bridges (I don't remember the exact numbers). It was gorgeous! It's in the rainforest part (I was surprised the whole island was not a rainforest). So it was a little rainy, super lush and green, and made me kind of sick (the winding drive.) There were about 8 stops you could take along the way and it was an all day thing.

We stopped at a black sand beach which also had some cool caves nearby.

Then we stopped at a waterfall which we were not too impressed with. You were supposed to be able to swim there, but the water looked kind of gross, so we didn't. Also on the way this kid (teenage) asked us if we wanted to buy some weed (the first time I've ever been propositioned. Dan says it's because I look too righteous to be propositioned.)

We also stopped at a fruit stand where the girl running it (who was from Sweden) let us try all the things we'd never seen or heard of before. There was a fruit that tasted and felt like brown sugar (don't remember the name.) This one (green) was called a Jack fruit - she said it smells like Juicy Fruit gum.

Monday

We arrived at the Maui airport around 2 pm (8 pm our time). We headed to our place in Kihei and hit an Outback on the way (yum). We checked in, and fell asleep right away.

The Trip

We're back, we got back Sunday, and I'm still trying to get used to the 4 hour time change. Basically we had a great time, but it was hard for us to relax for 6 days. After the 2nd day of sleeping, reading, and driving around we both decided we needed something to do. I'm glad we have the boys to keep us busy, or we might just bore ourselves to death! I'll do a little post about each day so it won't be way too long with pictures and everything.

Basically the plan was not to make any plans and just do whatever we wanted. Sleeping in was wonderful (and sleeping through the night was too.) Reading was nice, I've been wanting a chance to read and I certainly got that. Being only with Dan was a little harder than I expected, just because we're also always juggling the boys. But of course it was still nice.