Hawaii 2011

ryan and i won a "free" trip to las vegas. we just had to go listen to a sales pitch for a time share first. long story short they tell a sob story of a woman tragically dying right after going on a fabulous vacation with her family (don't put off for tomorrow...blah blah) so i was SUCKERED and knew we had to have this $23,000 time share. luckily i married a more sensible man who said we would do the trial package. so we had two years to use our credits. when we went to book it they saidwecouldnot go to hawaii. which they had told us at the presentation we could. i was ticked! ryan called and informed them of our irritation and here we are jan. 1-7 2011 in HAWAII we invited my parents to come with us since we had a two room condo, we knew they would love it, and they would be great babysitters while we snorkeled!

our flight missed our connection to Kona from SF so United Airlines politely paid for a night in the Hilton, dinner and future airline tickets (thank you united!) the hotelwas beautiful, and maybe even morelovely since we weren't paying! bummer to miss our flight but we had a good time in SF, made some fabulous hawaiian friends who told us all the must sees/dos of the island!

wesson loving the king bed

on our flight to kona. how cute is my little man?! (note to self: always splurge for a third seat, he LOVED it!)

ryan & i in front of the kona LDS temple. it is such a beautiful temple. with a gorgeous view clear our over the ocean. lovelove loved it! fun fact: steve young (former QB for the SF 49ers) and his sweetheart were the first couple sealed (married) in this temple! jealous much?

story time: this sweet man came up to us as we got out of the car at the temple. he told us if we had any questions about the temple he would be happy to ask them. as we started asking questions i realized he really knew everything about the temple- turns our this is brother allip. he told us his neat story of how as he was being set apart to be on the high council in hilo he was promised if he remained righteous he would live to see a temple on the big island and he would be influential in bringing it there. his "sweetheart" (he called her that everytime he talked about her) and him made it a goalto go to the temple on oahu once a month it would cost them $250 EVERY month! (we struggle to make it once a month to OGDEN! geez) he worked with different hotels, planes and made arrangementsand got the cost down for more people to be able to go to oahu. heretired from working in hilo and moved to kona. shortly after they announced the temple coming to kona he recieved a call from president hinkley (a prophet of the LDS church) calling him to be the 2nd counselor in the temple presidency of the kona temple! he served faithfully and was recently released and is now the temple grounds keeper! i was so touched by him. what a great example of faith, obedience and just goodness! he definitely inspired us to be better. I am so glad we met him! (sorry that is long, but SO special) for more info:http://lds.org/liahona/2010/04/a-temple-for-kona?lang=eng

our plates at the luau. delicious! we saw the pig dug up from the ground and everything...it was incredible! The dances were amazing, we got to see a breathtaking sunset over the ocean. (funny to get a picture of my mom because she didn't like the food)

wesson with two of the performers. they were awesome. now i really want to learn to hula. anyone with me?

any guesses??

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that is a WHALE. right off the shore. so neat.. my parents had already left for maui so they didn't get to see it. but really i think we screamed and jumped and everything

starfish + octopus

so cool we saw them in the tide pools and then again while snorkeling.

(crocot0pus, anyone? anyone?)

grandpa, wesson & grandma.

thanks so much for coming and for everything! we had a blast! maybe a new years tradition??

i know it looks like something out of a magazine. i am ready to go back now...

i love this boy. he is the sweetest thing in the world! (had to capture a posterity shot!)