I LOVED HAWAII!!!

I WANT TO MOVE THERE!!!

I spent the whole month after we got home trying to convince my husband we should move to Hawaii. He has a branch in Honolulu, and weddings are pretty popular in Hawaii…just a little. People get married ALL week in Hawaii, it’s not just a Saturday (or the rare Friday/Sunday wedding), but alas my begging and house hunting did not convince him. BUT that means I still need to shoot a wedding out here. So if you’re getting married in Hawaii….let’s chat!

Okay, it took me a long time to go through all of our pictures from Hawaii.

There were a lot of them. In fact, I still haven’t touched anything from the go pro yet. These were all shot with my Nikon D750 with a 50mm lens (because I forgot my 24-120 at home, big whoops on my part!) and my 35mm film camera.

Our Hawaii trip was a gift from my mom for Christmas. A year after my Dad, Chris, died she went on the trip with her aunt who was widowed at the same time as my mom. They went to Hawaii and went on the Norwegian Pride of America, which took them to several islands. My mom loved it so much that she had to take us back.

We had to wait until Amelia was 6 months old to go, and she decided that right before Christmas would be a great time to go! and it was!

We left Raleigh at 6:00 am on Friday morning, and after a 3-hour flight to Dallas and then 8-hour flight to Honolulu we arrived. Let me tell you though, taking a 10-month-old on an 8 HOUR flight was not fun at all. Especially one that likes to sleep in complete silence and darkness. We made it to Hawaii tired and starving though. We got in at 1:00 pm and by the time we checked in to our hotel and found a place to eat it was 4:00 pm aka 9:00 pm at home. Amelia passed out in her stroller on the way to the restaurant (a first for her!) We went straight back to the hotel and immediately went to sleep. We were up at 3:30 am the next day and ended up going to Walmart and Starbucks at around 5. At sunrise, we met up with Bailey Makaimoku for some family photos on the beach! I’ll be sharing our photos later 🙂

A couple hours later we got on the Pride of America and headed off to our first destination, MAUI! We spent two days in Maui, exploring beaches, lavender farms and hang gliding!

After two days in Maui, we headed to the Big Island!!! Hawaii!!! Here we explored waterfalls, volcanoes, black sand beaches! The next day were supposed to head over the other side of the island to Kona, but due to water conditions, it was not safe to dock. So we had a nice relaxing day at sea instead.

Our last stop was Kaui! The garden island and my favorite stop! I would move there tomorrow. There were chickens everywhere though, but so many amazing stops! I loved Honopu Valley and we went as far as we could out there!

After Kauai, we headed back to Honolulu. We got back off the ship at 9:00am, but our first flight didn’t’ leave until 8:00 pm that night. So we rented a car and went to check out the North Shore. We explored several of the little towns, the Dole Plantation, and then had once last sunset walk on the beach before heading for the airport.

The travel home was ROUGH. Our first flight was just a quick hop over to Kauai with a 3 HOUR layover, from 8:30pm – 11:00pm. Everything was closed, there was no seating and poor Amelia was so exhausted. At 11 we got on our red eye to LA, and got in at 7:00 am. Thankfully Amelia slept the whole way…on the floor at our feet. We had a 2 hour layover in LA so we hunted down some Starbucks (not hard in LA or in the Airport) and went over to the international terminal, because that is where the super awesome kids playground was! Amelia got to run around and play while we ate, before getting on another 5 hour flight back to Raleigh.

If you made it through all that Congrats to you, but seriously if you haven’t gone to Hawaii GOOOOOO!!!!