March Madness

This month has been very full and very fun. March 6th my little bro Michael came home from his mission in Japan. We all were so excited to see him and have him back home. Now all he has to do is adjust back into real life. :) He is doing better than I expected; he isn't too weird.

Exactly a week after he got home being the horrible sister I am, I packed up and headed to Hawaii for a week. This was my first time going and I LOVED IT!!!! Brady and I went with a group of 11 friends (surprise, surprise, I don't think we have ever been on a real vacation,outside weekend get-aways, without extended family or all our single friends) to Kona, HI, which is on the big island. Our trip started out poorly with an almost 8 hour delay of our flight out of Las Vegas, which caused us to miss our connecting flight and brought a whole ton of problems. This is a picture of us waiting; this was at the beginning because we are still awake and somewhat happy. However it was all worth it. The water and weather was perfect and we had tons of fun, and were able to see the many sides of this very diverse island.

Special thanks to one of my favorite people, Gary! He is our wonderful photographer. :)

~We love you Gary~

This is the cutes airport ever! We walked right off the plane to see a hut airport!


This is one of our snorkeling spots and it was BEAUTIFUL! We ran into lots of sea turtles too; so awesome! We jumped into that hole and swam under and into the open blue.

Just look at that water! There was lots of pretty coral and colorful fish. Snorkeling was one of our favorite activities.

We had the opportunity to go to the Kona Temple and do sealings while we were there. It was a very special experience. I love temples. :)


We also went to South Point, which is the farthest south place of the US. Once there we took a long hike to a green sand beach. The hike was so cool. It was along the coast so we saw the waves crashing onto the rocks, which became my favorite thing to see in Hawaii. To get down to the beach we had to climb down a mountain. From the top the whole scene looked like Ireland. After the green sand beach we went to a black sand beach, which was really cool too. Here are some pics of that.

This is another one of my favorite activities. We went on a hike in the Volcano National Park. We walked through rain forest and then through a lava crater. It was so neat! There was steam coming up through the rocky ground from the water reaching the lava that is still moving very far beneath the ground.

We also saw some beautiful waterfalls near Hilo on the eastern side of the island.We then ended our long, last day with a visit to where lava was spilling into the ocean making the island bigger little by little.


Here we are leaving on our 6 seater propeller plane from Kona to Maui. I was a little nervous about this one, but it turned out to be the best plane ride of my life!



We got home and immediately started babysitting our nieces while their parents were in Hawaii so needless to say we did not get much time to recuperate. We are now trying to get back to reality. Brady's new motto is "Real life sucks" :)

I guess I should send a shout-out about real March Madness. This is an exciting time in our house. We love all the upsets that are going on this year.

Hooray Rebels! They did awesome this season; I can't wait for next year. We will be amazing!

GO REBELS!!!