HAWAII!

Well, we went to Hawaii! It was awesome and beautiful and warm and fun and felt so good. Here are some pictures!

Right outside the airport--we were definitely excited to be there!

First beach on our way to our house, we couldn't resist getting out of the car

DELICIOUS taco truck

One of the pets at our house. One of the mornings we watched him eat his breakfast as we ate ours. yum. 

This is one of those crazy lava rock places where the waves crash up really big... after the fact we regretted getting a little too close to the edge, but luckily nothing crazy happened. 

Billy is somewhere in that splash

Billy did a little bouldering...you think that's a white back, you shoudla seen the bum naked bum of some guy on the beach who decided it was a nude beach...yikes!

I found noni in hawaii!

There was a cool mini golfing place that was like a tour through Hawaii's botany history and it was so fun! Mini golfing in tropical paradise, what could be better? And we each got hole in ones so they gave us free gelato afterwards.

Bonsai tree! Grounds gave us a little bonsai tree a while ago and Billy discovered a love for these little plants, so we were pretty excited to see this one on the course

We went on this walk to this stone dam

It was pretty cool

We hiked near the Waimea Canyon, but instead of hiking towards the canyon, we hiked towards the ocean

Tons of sweet plants and pretty intense hills... it was so fun

And the view from the coast we finally reached was INCREDIBLE! That little pink dot out there is me! It was crazy! 

And just looking at those cliffs of the Napali Coast was amazing. There were helicopters and birds flying beneath us. Pretty crazy! pretty cool!

Intense hill

Canyon overlook

Tree Tunnel

We took a tour of some botanical gardens and it was SO COOL. We were planning on going cus Billy is a plant lover, and it turned out to be totally worth it. These tree roots we're standing in are the exact ones they used for Jurassic Park when Dr. Grant and the kids find the dinosaur eggs. Cool!

This is the exact spot where they had the eggs

Bamboo

Crazy horizontal palm tree! 

This dog, Sissy, would come visit us every morning right on time to get some breakfast scraps. We also had another dog follow us home on one of our runs, but it was ok. He was nice. 

We hiked the Napali Coast. It was so fun and so cool!

So pretty!

I was so happy. I haven't been so active and free and able to run around like crazy and not just sit in my cubicle and do nothing but think in such a long time and it felt so good. We were just out there on the Napali Coast when just hiking and breathing and sweating and i was just with Billy and so it was a happy time. 

The beach at the halfway point

Cool jungle hiking!

SWEET waterfall, I think like 300 feet or something

It was so paradisaical swimming in that little pool under the waterfall--really cold, but so cool. We just would float on our backs and it was like the clearest blue sky above us with just these sheer, green cliffs. 

This is Tunnels Beach, I'm sad we didn't have an underwater camera because we saw way sweet fish--big, small, every color under the sun (or the water, as the case may be), skinny like a needle, fatter than you would imagine and overall freaky. But cool! And we were just swimming along when we all of a sudden came to this huge drop off, just like in Finding Nemo! Whoa, it was so freaky, and it made us realize how powerless we are in the water because swimming away from it in a panic was a futile effort. 

We went kayaking down the main river, Wailua and it was fun, kinda more touristy than we thought, but it was still a good adventure. We kayaked down the river maybe like a mile and a half (I don't know, my kayaking clock isn't as good as my running one) with our guide Kawika and some other peeps

Then we got out and hiked

To another sweet waterfall. Gotta admit, though, the other one we went to was better. But it was still an awesome Hawaii waterfall

Our last day we boogie boarded and then rented bikes and rode the coast, which was also fun

This was our little house. So joyous!

Hammock, bbq grill, picnic table

So there you go! Hawaii was so fun, i was looking forward to that trip so much and it exceeded my expectations, mostly because I just got to be with Billy all day every day and that guy is a champ.

And then we went to San Fransisco for Thanksgiving with the Lindes, Dale & Leisa and Mom and Dad. 

Thanks, Lindes! 

That is all. This weekend we are excited to go meet Emery Danielle hopefully, and in the meantime we are just enduring school and work and adjusting back to the things we did so long ago. 

Congrats, Carters!