Aloha!

Morgan and I have been married for 11 1/2 years and we finally were able to go to Hawaii! 

Oh, and did I mention we went without our kids?! 

Yes we did! Thanks to my mom we were able to leave them for nine days. It was a much needed getaway!

Thanks mom! 

Our plane left at 8:30 in the morning on March 13. I was so worried about getting motion sickness on the plane, that I bought motion sickness pills and wore some bands that were supposed to help with becoming sick. I have to say the pills worked and I think my mind made me think that the bands worked too :) Can't be too prepared right?

I swear the gal that you can see in the background of my picture must have taken a sleeping pill. She slept the ENTIRE plane ride. She even kept the shade closed. After a few hours I finally reached over and opened the shade. I wanted to see the ocean! She didn't even budge :) 

We had a short layover in Lanai. When I stepped off the plane I immediately knew I wasn't in Utah anymore! The air was so refreshing. The small airport in Lanai was not how I pictured it to be. Even though I was in the airport, it was like I was still outside. I saw birds and flowers and felt the nice cool Hawaiian breeze. This airport was nothing like the Salt Lake airport. It was very small.

Once we landed in Honolulu, (which was only a 30 min plane ride from Lanai) we were greeted by a nice lady holding a sign that said, Griggs. We then received a lei and a cheek cheek kiss. While I was standing in the airport a bird flew right by me head. It was crazy being that I was inside of an airport.

After we gathered all of our things, we were then shuttled to our hotel.

 

 We stayed at the Aston Waikiki Beach Side hotel.

 Here are some pics of our view from the hotel.

 After we unpacked our stuff at the hotel, we decided to walk around to get familiar with our surroundings. Our first stop, (besides going in an ABC store) was the International Market. 

I learned how to bargain pretty good there. This is where we bought a lot of our souvenirs. 

This pond had ginormous gold fish. 

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On our walk we ran into this guy. He called him self newspaper man. He was covered head to toe in newspaper. 

Nice picture opportunity. Sadly I don't remember what this gals name is?  But she did make for a nice background :)

The next morning we got up bright and early, due to the time difference, and decided to go and have breakfast at Duke's. It was an all you can eat breakfast bar. And boy was it worth every penny! It was fabulous!! Fresh fruit, pancakes with coconut syrup, bacon, eggs, potatoes, and omelets to name a few. It was heavenly.

 This was the view from our beach side table.

After sitting by the ocean during breakfast, we so needed to spend some time on the beach.

The water was so clear and beautiful. It was so weird that there wasn't very many waves that came and crashed at the shore. A lot of surf boarders would just sit and wait for hours just to catch a few decent waves.

For the rest of our first official day in Hawaii, we walked and walked every where we could. It was nice to hold hands and not have to worry about any kids running away, or even needing to be some where. We were so carefree.