Hawaii in a Nutshell...finally

I would like to dedicate this post to those who made my 2 weeks in Hawaii possible.  First and foremost to my WONDERFUL hubby who works so hard and makes fun trips like this possible AND who took time off work to take care of the kids while I stayed in paradise. To LouAnne and Lindsay who took care of Reece for us while we were gone and to Torrey who courageously flew out to Utah to pick Reece up and then flew ALONE back to Denver with her.  To Mary and Roy who let Reecey hitch a ride home to Utah with them.  To Marilee and Adam who invited us to go in the first place and to Mom for giving all of us girls a week off!  It was AWESOME!!!!!!

So I know that its right after Christmas and I should be blogging about that but for posterity sake I need to blog Hawaii first.  Christmas/New Years will come next week!  So, here we go.  I'll try to keep the commentary to a minimum so you can all get through this fairly quickly!

For Thanksgiving we had the chance to go to Hawaii with my sister Marilee and her family, my parents and Marilee's in-laws, Greg and Marjane.  We took all the kids but Reecey, who went to Denver with Papa and LouLou!  A HUGE HUGE HUGE shout out and thanks you to Lou, Papa and Lindsay who took care of Reecey whilst we were away!  Love you guys and thank you thank you thank you!  So we were able to spend a week with the fam and then Greg and MJ, the dad's and kids all left and Mar, Mom and I were joined by Heather and Nicole for a lovely, relaxing GIRLS week!  So, without further delay here is the photo journal of Hawaii 2008!

WEEK 1

THE HOTEL

COUSINS

FAMILY

EXHAUSTION (notice how Jackson and Natalie are not in any of the following photos.  That is because those two can stay up FOREVER!!!!  They seriously are the last ones awake when everyone else is asleep.  Silly kids!)

BEAUTY

PEARL HARBOR

HANAMUA BAY

THANKSGIVING DINNER

A VISIT FROM A U.S. MARINE, MY COUSIN JORDAN (he's stationed in Hawaii and came for dinner)

AN ADULT NIGHT OUT TO JAMESON'S (we brought along a babysitter named Brigitte from Cardston so that's who the kids were with.  You may remember Bridge from the summer cabin pictures.  She's the best!)

OCEAN SWIMMING

POOL FUN

BEACH FUN

PEARL DIVING

BEST BUDDIES

DOLE PINAPPLE WHIP

We had such a fantastic week with the Christofferson's, Millers and Christofferson's.  It seriously was a dream come true for me to take my kids to Hawaii and I couldn't have done it without my hard working hubby and my sister who invited us to stay with them at their time share!  THANKS A TON GUYS!!!!!!!  It was a blast!!!!!!!

WEEK 2

MOM (isn't she cute?)

SISTERS and LEI'S

SILLINESS

POOL TIME  

okay, so I'm keeping the commentary to a minimum but this story must be told.  We were sitting by the pool on our second day and Nicole sat up and was just kind of looking around.  So I asked her what she was doing and she said she was trying to decide if she wanted to get in the pool, or flip over on her tummy, or sit for a while, or lay back the way she was.  After thinking about it for a moment I responded that I didn't know what she should do but wasn't it nice that that was the hardest decision she would have to make all day!  

BEACH TIME (if you look close you can see a surfer)

FOOD and LAVA FLOWS (I foolishly didn't take any pictures of Lava Flows but we did have them every day!  Also, please excuse that fly on the hamburger.  I didn't know it was there but I do think its HILARIOUS!)

SPA TREATMENTS (those are my freshly pedicured toes!)

SHOPPING

AND FINALLY...

SUNSETS!

So that about sums it up.

ALOHA