Hawaii Five-0 - Enjoying The Big Blue

So much to do and see in Oahu, especially in the big wide ocean!  We loved listening to the surf every night and every morning.  We enjoyed walks along our beach every morning before heading out to see something else.  We boogie boarded a lot.  We snorkeled a little, the surf was pretty big on our side of the island!  Wes fished but didn't catch anything.  We surfed, but that will be its own post later!!  Kori loved watching all the surfers.  We spent one morning paddle boarding up the river, under the Anahulu Bridge.  That's where we saw the most turtles. They were just swimming along with us everywhere, and it was so cool!

Oh, and notice "hula hoop lady" in the background.  She was out there every morning jumping around the beach, while rotating double hula hoops.  She had some serious skills, but it was a little bit odd.  Alas, not the oddest person we saw. 

Kori took lots of pics of people who really know what they are doing in this water.  Here are just a few.

This little boy was the cutest ever!  Can you see that huge grin on his face?

Wes wants to try the paddleboard surfing next time.

Hawaii Five-0 - Laie

I admit to a few tears in my eyes as I showed my kids around my beloved Laie, my favorite place on the planet!  We took a tour of BYU-H and walked around the temple.

Seasiders!

We drove out to Laie Point.  Holy windy-oly!  Wes loved the geology features.  We added to our rainbow count here too!

Hawaii Five-0 - Getting There

We have waited a long time for this!  It's been one of my huge bucket list items to take my kids to Oahu pretty much ever since I became a mom.  We started planning the trip for real way back after Colton left for his mission.  We wanted to have one big family vacation before all the kids were on their own, plus Wes was having a milestone birthday, so the timing was right for a Hawaii Five-0 trip!  Karlee is joining the family at the right time because she got to come too, and we were excited to have her there with us.  I'd kind of forgotten how long that plane ride is, and then we had to wait for an hour for the rental car, but pretty soon we were on our way.

We stayed on the North Shore, in Haleiwa and we loved our hale away from home!  Right on the most beautiful beach!  It was in a little neighborhood, kind of secluded.  The beach was pretty much ours for the week.  It was never crowded.

Clean, comfy, roomy, and cute!  We loved our beach house!

The beach was our backyard.

This cute little beach access path was next to our house.  We were on a dead end neighborhood road, so it wasn't used very much.

Spectacular.  Seriously.

We really enjoyed Haleiwa!  We did most of our shopping and dining in town.  Lots of cute little surf shops, yummy restaurants, gorgeous beaches, tons of turtles, plus Matsumoto's Shave Ice!

The beach park next to the harbor.

Haleiwa harbor.

Anahulu (rainbow) Bridge!

Can you say YUM!?

The turtles were everywhere!

We could have stayed right there at our hale and been perfectly content.  But we did do a bit more than that.  You betcha!  More Hawaii posts coming soon...