The Best Family Vacation Ever: Hawaii!!!!

We just got back from our vacation to Hawaii yesterday morning!  It was an amazing time, and there aren't enough words to describe how wonderful it was.  My parents, my brother and his wife, my two adorable nieces, and McGee and I all had a great time.  I'll upload some pictures and some blurbs about what we did each day, but there's no way that I'll be able to sufficiently describe the awesomeness of Hawaii and our vacation!

Day 1 (Wed. 11/6):  Flew to Kona!  The flight total is about 12 hours.

Day 2 (Thurs. 11/7): We were all pretty tired from our day of travels, so we decided to have a chill day at the hotel's lagoon.  Yes, the hotel has a lagoon.  It's a little inlet from the ocean, and there's tons of fish and sea turtles swimming around.  It was so lovely to hang out there all day and swim with the fish and turtles!  And the girls had a blast playing in the sand.  Here's a picture of part of the lagoon (a portion without a sandy beach).

Here's a turtle that decided to take a little nap on the rocks!  

Day 3 (Fri. 11/8): We drove to an area of Kona that my dad knew from a previous trip, and it was super cool.  It reminded me of the boardwalk at Santa Cruz, but with even prettier beaches! We wandered around there all day and had lunch at the Kona Inn (BEAUTIFUL views!  You're outside, right by the ocean), and we all did some souvenir shopping.  In the evening, we went to a luau back at the resort!  It was SO awesome.  I loved all of the fire dancers.  The girls even got up on stage to dance!  Addison was confused by it, but Cassidy LOVED it and was not shy at all.

Day 4 (Sat. 11/9):  We went to Volcanoes National Park!!  This was something I REALLY wanted to do, and I was so excited.  It was just as awesome as I'd hoped! 

A steam vent!  It was SO hot!

A cool volcano tube we hiked through. 

Day 5 (Sun. 11/10):  Beach day!  We went to a dive shop to rent some snorkel gear (and got some info on scuba diving... more on that later!), and then it was only a short 15 minute drive to an awesome beach!  We had a blast swimming around there, and then after a few hours we drove to another beach 5 minutes up the road and did more swimming and snorkeling! Later that night, my parents watched the girls while Brad and Amanda had a romantic anniversary dinner (4 years married! Congrats!), and McGee and I had a romantic dinner too (and it's maybe our 3 year dating anniversary?  We aren't 100% sure of the date... but mid-November sometime).  

Addison ate a lot of Cheetos if you can't tell!

Yep, this is our table for our romantic dinner!  Not too shabby, eh?

Day 6 (Mon. 11/11): Dad, Brad, McGee and I all went scuba diving!  It was awesome.  I've never gone before, so I had a little trouble figuring out how to breathe into the regulator (I was finally doing it right after my 4th or 5th failed attempt... turns out I wasn't exhaling correctly!).  After I was finally breathing correctly and the Dive Master (Tony) could help me swim down to the rest of the group (yeah, they all figured out the breathing very quickly...), it was really fun and AMAZING!  We saw an octopus (my FAVORITE!!!) and a huuuuge puffer fish (my 2nd favorite!  Seriously!), and tons of pretty fish.  After we had been down there for about an hour, we got back in the boat to head to the 2nd dive spot.  Well, this is when things took a turn for me.  The waves were REALLY choppy that day and our boat was going really fast, and I got super sick!  I was leaning over the side of the boat vomiting (we did see a TON of dolphins while I was getting sick though! So that was pretty cool.  And the guys on the boat joked that I was "feeding" them... GROSS). The boat took me back to the shore so I could try to feel better, and my dad stayed with me (he wasn't feeling 100% either), but the rest of the group (including Brad and McGee) went to the 2nd dive spot.  They saw sea turtles and a shark on that dive!  

Day 7 (Tues. 11/12): We had a relaxing day at the hotel, and went to the pool (and we went down the awesome water slide 5 or 6 times... SOOO cool) and we also chilled at the lagoon.  It was the perfect last day, and we all just spent a lot of time hanging out together.

Day 8 (Wed. 11/13): Such a sad day... We all had to leave Kona :(  It was really a perfect trip, though!