Island in the sun

Can we say SPOILED? I got to go to Hawaii with James and only James. My mom was willing to come all the way to my home and watch my kids for a week while I went on a vacation with my husband. It has always been a dream of mine and James' to go to Hawaii. I thought maybe some day far far in the future but I never would have guessed we would have this chance so soon. James was the reason we got to go. He went through A LOT to get us there where the ADA convention was held this year. We arrived a few days before it started so we could be tourists. Of course it was oh so fun. We got to sleep until we awoke naturally for the first time in a looong time, and go for walks on the beach. We went on a tour of the Dole plantation and ate the most flavorful ice cream made with pineapple juice. We went to the Polynesian Cultural Center to learn about the ploynesian islands. We did learn a lot and we also got to see lots of dancing and hear music, eat at a Luau and see a very impressive evening show complete with fire dancing. I can't even begin to describe to you the awsomeness of the PCC and all of the cool things we saw there so I'll just move on. We visited the Hawaii temple grounds, went on an evening dinner cruise with a bunch of mostly asian tourists, found an extremely beautiful and mostly deserted beach to swim in. The day we had plans to go swimming and on a dinner cruise, we got into the car that morning and turned on the radio and heard that there was a tsunami warning in effect for the Hawaiian islands because of the earthquake near Samoa. Luckily later that day we learned that the tsunami warning had been canceled. Whew!! I kept imagining being on the cruise boat and seeing a giant massive wave heading right towards us.
We also got to shopping at this huge international marketplace for gifts to bring home, and visited a fruit stand where James had them cut open a fresh coconut for us to eat (not as good as I always imagined but I'm glad I had the experience). After the first day of the conference we drove to a place called Hanuma Bay which is a great place to snorkel. We got there too late to snorkel so we just swam but we came back very early the next morning with all our snorkel gear. We were so glad we had made the effort to come back because we saw lots of fish and some big ol sea turtles under the water. Actually one of them was swimming literally right next to me which kind of freaked me out. As I'm writing about this trip I am looking at my skin flaking off from the sunburn I got on the trip. That's okay it was soo worth it. Thank you Mom!