Matt and I feel like we've started a new chapter of our life. We've been through a lot in our almost 15 years of marriage! 7 pregnancies, 7 babies, Matt's bachelor degree and masters degree, and we are officially closing that chapter of our lives. No more pregnancies, babies, or schooling left for us. We decided to do something spectacular to mark the closing of this wonderful chapter and celebrate the opening of a new one. So we went to Kauai!! It was so amazing!! While we were there we had the perfect mixture of getting out and exploring and staying in a vegging. We hiked, swam, biked, kayaked, sailed, and boogie boarded as well as lazed around on the beach and watched movies. It was so incredible to be in such a beautiful place and have Matt all to myself for a few days. My only complaint is that time went by way to quickly!! We went for 10 days and by the time we were done I was really ready to see my kids but not quite ready to say good bye to this beautiful place and to start sharing Matt with the world again!
The first hike we did was just a small one. I was worried about hiking around because there was a hurricane warning for the first few days we were there and all of the hikes said they were hard to do if they were wet and slippery. But this one was simple and easy. We had fun talking and joking around while we hiked. We sent our kids weird videos of us doing yoga on rocks, killing pretend giant snakes, and searching for man eating beavers...
Matt had to use this already fallen tree to spear the pretend giant snake... Our kids really enjoyed watching him do this and were disappointed to find out there really was no snake that got brutally murdered on our trip.
This rock inspired some very interesting yoga!!
We stayed in a super nice condo. We loved it! The first Sunday we were there we made taco's for dinner and had enough left overs to feed us for most of the week. We didn't go out for food until our friends came and joined us towards the end of the week. It was really nice! I don't enjoy going on vacations and eating out 3 times a day. I feel disgusting pretty quick!
The second hike we did was crazy! Matt told me about it before we got there and the reviews on it sounded kinda crazy. People talked about how their friends had died because of flash floods. Matt of course wasn't worried about it, but I told him I wanted to talk to some locals when we got there and get a better idea. Well the morning we got to the hike the trail was closed and there was a local guy at the beginning of it begging people not to go on it. That was enough for me, but Matt was not convinced. He was just ready to waltz on up there. I convinced him to talk to a few more locals, one of which who was a hippy and was all for it. His advice was if the river was high, to just wait it out on the trail a few days., and if at any time we looked up and could no longer see the mountain we should probably turn around and haul our butt's back to the start.. Although he used more colorful language than that and was really entertaining to listen to! Well that was all Matt needed to hear, and there was no changing his mind after that, so off we went. You can tell I'm excited in this picture huh!?
This hike was beautiful though! And we didn't die so that was a plus too!
There were warning signs all along the way that we completely ignored. If you know my personality, you of course know how not in my nature that is!! I can be active and outgoing and have a good time, but I am not extreme at all and if I feel like my life is in danger or could be in any way I'm not at all interested! I don't thrive on the thrill of anything. I like playing it safe. Matt found these warning signs quite hilarious!! I assured him if we died this would make quite a good object lesson someday about the importance of heading counsel and warnings... Luckily we didn't die, because as good as an object lesson as that would have been, that would have been a huge bummer! :)
This one said " Do not go near the water. Currents have killed... " and then there were like 83 tally marks... Then in super creepy writing it says "Visitors Die Here". Creepy Huh!!
We hiked 2 miles to get to a beach. This beach is beautiful and quite deadly apparently. The only way to get to this beach is by hiking or sailing to it.
From there we hiked a couple more miles up to a waterfall. This was a really gnarly hike! We had to cross the river a bunch, scale the side of a slippery mountain a few times, and more. But the water fall was beautiful and the company was fantastic! At the end of the day I was really glad Matt bullied me into doing this hike :)
We went sailing one day! This came highly recommended to us by some of our friends. It was really cool. Not my favorite thing we did, simply because I kinda felt on the verge of puking for most of it, but really, really cool!! We sailed all along the Napali Coast. We got out and snorkeled and saw huge sea turtles. There were also huge schools of dolphins all along the way that would follow us along the boat and do tricks for us.
Absolutely beautiful scenery! I'm pretty sure Jurassic Park was filmed on this Island.
The ships crew was really fun! This girl was Jewish, Matt shared a little gospel message with her. He does that with everyone every where we go. I'm pretty sure he made it through the first discussion with a couple people on this trip! ;)
We hit the beach this day and tried to do some boogie boarding. There was high surf warnings for the first few days of our trip, but this day there wasn't much at all. So we eventually bagged it and made a sand sea turtle instead.
Our friends the Dobrons met up with us for the last few days of our trip! It was so fun to be with them! We only see each other once a year usually, and we usually have 11 kids between the both of us to try and entertain when we're together. So it was really fun to have a few days to relax with them and catch up without having to stay up until 2am to do so! We went kayaking together and then hiked to the Sacred Falls. This was one of my favorite things we did! It was just fun! We were out and active, enjoying beautiful scenery and good friends. Really great part of the trip!
Our tour guide was so much fun! She loved Matt and Dan's funny personalities. Matt spent the last portion of our hike giving her the full first discussion. She loved everything he said and agreed with all of it. When he told her about an afterlife she excitedly explained she knew all about that too, in fact she had already been told that she was going to come back as a baby whale... That was kinda where he lost her.
Here we are taking a dip in the Kings Bath together...
Apparently a week before we got here this water fall was nothing more than a trickle. It was in full force this day though, and surprisingly so warm. We swam all the way underneath it.
Matt got really fried while making our sand sea turtle so we took a little break from the beach one day and rented bikes and rode them all over the island. Another one of my favorite things! Just breathtakingly beautiful the whole time. They have a trail that is like 7 miles along the coastline and it was amazing. I'm not usually one to get super geeky about nature. Matt usually takes that roll, but I seriously couldn't get over how pretty everything was!! It turned out to be a good day to ditch the beach. It ended up raining on us most of our ride, which felt pretty good actually!
We could not have done this trip without my amazing parents!! They took care of our kids the entire time! They are seriously such a blessing to us! My kids love spending this kind of time with them, in fact they pretty much had a countdown going until we left because they were so excited for Grandma and Grandpa to take care of them. And my parents do it so happily, and so well, so it is completely worry free for me. In fact, I feel a little insecure when I come home and see that my house is cleaner than I left it, my kids are happy, dinner has been made every night, stories have been read, and homework has been done... It reminds me how much better at this mothering thing my Mom is then me. I guess I still have time to perfect it, good thing!! I want to be like her when I grow up!! Thank you Mom and Dad! We love you so much!!
