Aloha!!

 We were fortunate enough to be able to go to Hawaii this summer with my parents and five of my brothers and sisters and their families.  My sister Else lives there, so of course, that was another reason we had to go and visit! It was such a fun trip.  Our kids are at the right ages to all be able to swim, snorkel, go on hikes and relax! We all are missing it so much and would go back in a heart beat! OUr kids even helped us save their allowance money so we could go.

 My sweet sister greeted us all at the Honolulu airport with leis! Flower ones for the grown ups and candy ones for the kids! *Sigh*

 Our first sunset there.  Else planned a picnic for us at a beach close by the airport so we wouldn't have to sit in traffic.

 Diamond Head in the background.

 Most of our group trekking it up Diamond Head.  It was sunny at the bottom, but on the walk up, it was pretty soggy.

 Hence the reason we look like drowned rats in this picture!

 Cute boys who forged the way ahead for us!

 This was at the Pearl Harbor Memorial.  I love that my sweet son still likes to hold hands and give us hugs and kisses.

 I took a ukelele lesson at the resort we stayed at in Kolina.

 The Hawaii temple looked like it was glowing! Jeremy and I were able to go inside with Cozette so she could do some baptisms for some of our deceased family members.  It was very small, but beautiful!

 Cute kiddos on Laie point.  We have a couple of different friends who live in Hawaii.  One of them let us stay with them the first night we got there.  Else's house was busting at the seams with 18 people inside!!

 Our family trying to do a jumping picture! I know we got one good one, but clearly it wasn't this one! We tried to take lots of family pictures.  Last year when I went to do our Christmas card, we hardly had any nice family pictures!

 These awesome turtles we found on Turtle Beach on the North Shore.  The beach definitely did not disappoint! We saw so many turtles and swam with them.  I love these guys!!

 We were pretty much always in the the water! Except of course for Amelia until about the day before we left.  Then we couldn't get that girl out of the water!

This is still at Turtle Beach.  It was so fun to snorkel with these kids.  Cozette at first was almost on top of me each time we would go out and snorkel, but after doing it every day, she got comfortable enough to go out with Hans.  It was fun to see the progress.  Wyatt was a snorkel/water fiend.  That boy LOVES the water.  He was in it all day every day, snorkeling, paddling, at Waimea he was letting the shore break push him back and forth up and down the beach.  Scotty can swim and had his own little snorkel mask and snorkel, but he wanted to be in a little water ring.  I would just hold on to the ring and we snorkeled all over the place.  It was really great.

 Here's Wyatt paddling on our friends Paddle Board.  OUr friends Joey and Sujin were so good to us.  They drove all over that Island to meet up with us and snorkel or paddle or whatever.  It was so great to have them their.

 Erik and his boys paddled over to Goat Island (in the background).  Not an easy paddle.  Wyatt and I got most of the way there and decided to turn around and come back on the paddle board.  Then Wyatt just hung on to the back of Erik on a boogie board and got towed to Goat Island.  They went over as a group and walked around this little island.

 The famous north shore shaved ice!! I even tried the aduki beans mixed with ice cream in mine.  It was pretty good!

 And of course the legendary shrimp trucks! Pretty good as well!

 This was the morning we left.  We had to leave Laie about 5:30 AM.  We loaded up the kids and poor Scotty some how got car sick and threw up.  Fortunately I listened to this prompting that he wasn't being dramatic about feeling sick and handed him a bag just in time.  So we had hardly any clean up! And we got to see this amazing sun rise!

 This was at Laie point where the beach house was that we rented.  It was huge and slept at least 18 people in beds.  Each of us couple even got our own rooms! At the end of the point, there was this probably 30 foot cliff we could jump off.  Jeremy and I did it, my dad, Erik and Steffen, Jonathan and Kirsten had Isaac do it, too.  It was fun.  Wyatt was going to jump, but then decided it was too high, so Jeremy walked him down the ravine you climb back up and we snorkeled back to Bikini beach.  That was a bit scary since the tide was low and we were right on top of the coral (although most of it was dead) and the swell was dumping water into our snorkels, we couldn't see well, etc... We made it, though, and Wyatt still likes the water! In the above picture, Wyatt is flying the kite we made as a family.  My mom gave a lesson on kites and we all made them out of string, trash bags and bamboo skewers.  They worked! Ours flew right away, but we put a bigger tail on it to stabilize it.

 My Dad jumping off the point.  He met some Danish girls that were there jumping, too!

Erik with the Go Pro, doing a silly jump off the cliff.  We got lots of underwater footage of all of us snorkeling.  We videoed more of us then fish! So much fun! It was hard to leave Else, but fortunately we all left on different days and not all at once.  Haans only has one and half more semesters before he is done with his Masters and we hope they will move back here. I miss her so much! Luckily she is having a baby in November and I get to go help her in December! I really can't help looking back at these pictures with pure joy! No stress, no worries, just time together with our ohana!