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| Swimming with the manta rays |
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| They are the oddest animals! |
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| Caden recreating the scene from little mermaid! |
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| Blake and his favorite guy! |
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| Had dinner at this fun restaurant where we had a hula dancer entertaining and we could look out on the water. |
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| Levi loves to hike so he and Morgan got a few in and dragged James and Caden along. |
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| Looking for fish and turtles |
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| This beach had the coolest black sand |
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| The entrance to the cave to climb through |
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| We split off from the hiking group and had some awesome food. |
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| Ivy was such a little trooper and barely cried. She just went along with whatever was going on. |
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| This was our first beach and it had incredible waves. The shore was a bit rocky with lava rock. Ivy did not like this type of water and would say "it get me" |
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| We did Hawaiian shirts instead of Christmas Pj's. Barret took pro pics so I will have to replace this one with that when I get it. |
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| Ivy was scared of the ocean water with big waves but she loved the little tidal pools |
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| These two loved the snorkeling. This water was cold but Lexi stayed in for a couple hours and could have stayed more. |
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| Hiking the lava fields of the volcano that recently erupted |
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| Ivy loved to just play in the sand. |
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| All of the kids! These kids have grown up together with the addition of Levi, James, and Ashley |
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| Gigi was often said and I loved it. She wanted me to hold her quite often! |
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| Trying to not get bells palsy on this windy boat ride! |
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| They took a belly growth progression picture. Ashley is 8 months pregnant and she did not let that slow her down at all! |
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| I was never so happy to be on a plane. We made it with ten minutes to spare before the flight was cancelled! Apparently if they do not close the doors by 11:30 pm they have to cancel. They loaded us from the front of the plane and the back to make sure we made it. |
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| This beach had intense waves and Caden had a scary experience. He had a huge wave crash over him and he could not get up. It held him down for quite a while. It scared him pretty good. |
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Lava tubes
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Well this was one for the books and we learned to never again travel on Christmas. We all got to the Honolulu airport ok but then we were stuck there for 9 hours until we could get a flight over to the main island. I ended up getting a severe pain behind my right eye as we descended. It was the worst pain I have ever had and felt like a knife stabbing my eye over and over. Rick had brought some strong pain medicine in case my arms hurt. It took several pain pills for it to abate. Thankfully my arms had no problems the whole trip! So the kids all got into bed at 2am finally from the long delays. We had a speed boat/snorkel trip booked for 8 am the next morning. They all got up at 7 and got ready. Went there and the guy never showed up or called. Morgan called him several times and they waited for an hour. So that was a bummer. So we thought this is not starting off to well. We then headed to a beach and apparently the water was really intense with super large waves. The kids all loved the boogie boards and then had a great time. Ivy did not like the crashing waves so she just played in the sand. The next day we went to another beach and I guess they had a storm and runoff so they said that it was unsafe conditions with a lot of drift wood and debris and a big rip tide. People did not let that stop them and our group didn't either. Our group went to the manta ray experience that night and Rick and Blake got super sick. Rick ended up throwing up a few times. Out in the water you were just getting rocked back and forth. Lexi had a hard time enjoying it because she just pictured a shark coming up and eating them. Blake wanted to grab her leg with his hand and scare her but he said he was too sick to do it! Levi had been on anitbiotics before the trip and he broke out in a severe itching rash all over his body. Thank goodness Rick could call him a steroid and that calmed it down pretty quickly. When we were on the boat with the manta ray experience, I stayed on the boat with Ivy. I would get her up and look over at the group and we could see the manta rays. She would look at me and wave her little finger back and forth and say "Gigi no swimming, Ivy no swimming." She wanted to make sure I knew we were not getting in that water. The Schoenrocks did that experience a couple days later and didn't see any rays. Our group saw a lot. We took our group pictures on this black sand beach which was beautiful. Ivy loved it because it had these little tide pools that she could play in. We went to the lava caves and some of the group broke off and did hikes and had a really long day. Some of us headed back to the house and skipped the long hikes. We went to another beach which had snorkeling and Lexi loved that so much. I found a little inlet that was perfect for Ivy so I stayed in there with her and she was so happy and content for a couple hours and was still not ready to go when we left. Poor Blake was supposed to leave the 23rd but as they were heading to the airport we got word that his flight was canceled. We tried to get him out the next day but then his connecting flight in LAX was canceled so they canceled the whole flight. I sure hope he still has a job. He was supposed to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Rick and I ended up leaving first. We were supposed to leave at 8:30 but they were missing some flight attendants and so we kept getting pushed back. Finally at 10:50 they made an announcement that an attendant was coming in on another flight and should be there in ten minutes and that we needed to get ready to hustle since if we did not get all loaded by 11:30 they would cancel the flight due to regulations. They said we are going to load from both ends of the plane so if you are in these seats get in this line and we will take you to the back of the plane. They had over 300 people to load in about 20 minutes and they did it. We had ten minutes to spare. This, however, made us late for our connecting flight and we got off and ran and got there just as they were loading up. So Rick and I made it and our house was not flooded. We think we might have one frozen pipe because my washer is not getting water to it but we hope as it unthaws it doesn't burst. All the other pipes are fine and we have water every where else. Tender mercy! Blake finally got out and made it back to Salt Lake the 26th morning. The others all made it back safely too! All in all we had a good time! I know that so many flights were canceled so we count ourselves blessed that we all have made it home! I sure love my little family and cherish these time when we are all together.
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