Hawaii: Day One and Two

I never knew what we were missing out on, but I highly recommend Hawaii for a getaway!  It was so amazing.  We loved it so much.  Thank you mom and Karl for a great time!  I’ll just post each day during the next week hopefully, but since the first day was mostly travel, that’s combined with day two.  Leaving Salt Lake.  We flew first to Los Angeles for about an hour and a half, then to Kona for another five and a half hours. Coming into Kona.  The Kona airport is awesome because it’s all open.  We really wanted to upgrade to a Jeep, but we only paid for the lowest priced economy car that we could and didn’t want to pay the difference (bidding on priceline saved us loads of money).  We told the lady at the car rental place that it was our anniversary and she upgraded us for FREE!  Yahoo!  Dillon was extremely happy about that.  After getting our rentals, we all headed to Costco to stock up on breakfast and lunch foods to save some money, since we were in a condo with a kitchen.  We stayed at a beautiful condo in Waikoloa.  Since we were still used to Utah time, we were out the door at about 6:00 am Hawaii time (9:00 am Utah time), and were able to catch the first sunrise there while we waited for some stores to open for a couple items we forgot to pack.  I wish I had taken a picture of the guys hanging out in Walmart.  There was one man playing a ukulele, right as we walked in.  Very cool.  We were blown away by the size of this cruise ship!  We were quite a ways away from it and it still seemed huge compared to the big buildings surrounding it. Dillon and I drove to downtown Kona and walked around a bit.  I loved the outdoor market!  Especially all the great produce!  I mean seriously, I have quite big hands and that avocado is gigantic!  (my nails actually looked halfway decent for doing them myself!) It completely threw me off seeing Christmas decorations and hearing the music played everywhere.  Which, by the way, is way less annoying Christmas music than what you’ll hear on the radio here.  And a ton of variety, instead of the same songs, same artists over and over.  Pots and hats made from palm frond leaves.  Very cool.  I should have taken a picture of the guy making them! See the blue and yellow fish?  The banyan trees are SO cool!  I loved how colorful everything was, buildings and buses included. Dillon loves the movie Forest Gump and had to get his picture by the Bubba Gump restaurant.  We didn’t know my mom planned on taking us there to eat the last day!  Yum. Karl copied a CD for us with some of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole songs.  You’ve probably heard is pretty version of Over the Rainbow.  It was fun to see a painting downtown Kona of him.  His picture was everywhere!  That afternoon we headed to the beach at about 4:00 to watch our first sunset on the beach.  Thanks Mel, for painting our glitter toes for us! I’m a nerd in these next pictures, but I felt so peaceful, happy, and worry-free (thanks to the many many people who watched my kids so I knew they were safe!!!).  Dillon and I decided that to have the best time, we needed to put life’s trials on hold for the week.  It was a good idea. :) Random cute kid with a surf board.