Carpe Diem w/Leiselk;

Just look at the beauty in some of these pictures…. Hawaii is a bucket list item for many people. In my mind I imagined walking down the stairs to get off the plane (outside of course like in the movies), a few ladies dressed in traditional Hawaiian hula skirts, passing out fresh leis to each person, with Elvis songs in the background. Sadly this did not happen 🙂

The kids and Joe did get to do surf lessons while I watched 🙂 We went to the Dole Plantation and got to see fields of baby pineapples and eat Dole Whip. They had my favorite trees out front! Painted Eucalyptus trees are so so cool! We went to Pearl Harbor and toured as much as we could without going to the actual memorial. (Reminder to look up really busy tourist areas far in advance to get tickets… ) 🙂 We did a whale watching tour and although we didn’t see any whales close up, we did see sea turtles and dolphins.

On Kauai we did a super cool ATV tour in an area where lots of movies were filmed including Jurassic Park. That was so fun! The Allerton Gardens were so beautiful. They had these massive Moreton Bay Fig trees that were also in Jurassic Park. Check out Jasper standing almost inside of one of them. And I finally got a gorgeous lei at our really fun luau!

Just a quick impression of my time in Hawaii…. such impressive beauty, green and gorgeous scenery everywhere, chickens all-over-the-place, flowers and lush gardens, reminder of God’s promises in a beautiful rainbow, and all over just a reminder that God loves beauty and color. He has poured it out in these insanely gorgeous islands. I would love to go back someday!