We're Baaaa-ack...

deep sigh.  we are back from almost two weeks of vacation in Hawaii. I thought I might be able to best give you a recap by giving you some of the keywords of our trip:

aloha! It means hello, goodbye and was used as an exclamation point by one of our tour guides. aloha!

family. ohana in Hawaiian. we traveled with hubby's parents, and his sister and her family. 10 of us making memories together. love them all so much.

cousins

relax. on the beach, reading on the balcony of our cruise ship stateroom, snoozing. aaaaahhhh.

blue. The water is the most amazing color of blue in the middle of the pacific ocean. it looks totally different than the murky waters of the atlantic in new york. wish I could bottle that color blue...

suntan. or should I say sunburn? we've had one on the way to the other a few times. par for the course with us.  pickle describes tanning as an eight stage process: stage one: sunburn. stage two: almost tan. stage three: peeling. stage four: irritation. stage five: fishskin (scaly looking). stage six: healing. stage seven: use sunscreen this time. stage eight: bronzed (hopefully)

turtles. green sea turtles. they are big and I love them. we saw them on the shore, from a boat, and in the middle of a crashing wave. swam near them in shallow water, and saw them hiding below while snorkling. awesome.

zipline. We took a zipline adventure in the jungle on kauai. a first for all 10 of us. A great time!!!

lava. never really thought much about or cared about lava before (except the lamp variety).  But it makes beautiful black formations on the shore, it makes wonderful black sand beaches, and is awe-inspiring in its red-hot form flowing into the ocean in the dark of night. We watched an island in the process of growing...how cool is that?

flowers. so many amazing flowers everywhere.  flower leis, flowering plants, flowering bushes, flowering trees. my favorites are probably the plumeria trees. beautiful.

shave ice. a favorite hawaiian treat. not like a snow cone. even better with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the bottom. yum....wish I had one right now. maybe pineapple. or lime. or both.

nuts. macademia nuts. kukui nut leis. more than one of our tour guides.

food. I.  ate.  a.  lot.   we all did i think.   why not?

fish. we saw many as we snorkled. incredible, big, colorful ones. we ate fish--pickle tried sushi for the first time and kind of liked it. and the kids were fish--they swam and snorkled and snuba'd and played in the waves and swam some more. Bubba even learned a flip jump into the pool.

my little bubba-fish snorkling 

mahalo. "thank you" in hawaiian. so much to be thankful for. a once in a lifetime vacation. a family that we love, play, and laugh with. a big mahalo to hubby's parents for making it all happen.

MAHALO!