Wishing We Were Here Again...

As most of you know, Rick and I spent a wonderful week in Hawaii last month to celebrate our BIG 10 year anniversary! Rick surprised me last Christmas with a trip of a lifetime. He had secretly been saving for a nice trip since we were first married. He told me I could pick anywhere I wanted to go and, of course, I picked Hawaii--I have always wanted to visit and I'm sure glad we were able to go, it definitely was paradise. Rick and I are not the best at taking pictures when it is just the two of us, so after we got home we realized we didn't get many pictures. We stayed for 2 days in Oahu at the Hyatt Regency which had a view of the ocean and Waikiki Beach. We did not take any pictures from our room, so the picture above will have to do. Oh well... Here are a few pictures we did manage to take of our stay in Oahu. Rick has posted more pictures in a post below if you really want to see more from our trip to Hawaii.

The first day we spent the morning attending a session at the Laie Hawaii temple on Oahu. The Temple is located very close to the Polynesian Cultural Center, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. We visited Hawaii during a very slow tourist season and it felt like we were the only ones at the PCC. We wandered around wondering why everyone said to visit, we were actually pretty bored for about an hour. After visiting a few of the cultural exhibits, tour groups started coming which made for a more enjoyable experience. The programs were very entertaining and had us laughing all afternoon. We also attended our one and only luau. Now I can say I've been to a luau, even if I didn't love the food or sharing a table with strangers. Rick thought the lady sitting next to us was a little tipsy (and alcohol is not permitted in the PCC)--she was kind of cuckoo!

These statues are replicas of ones seen on Easter Island, which is owned by Chile. Not in Rick's mission, but he did teach some people who were from there.

Our first glimpse of beautiful Hawaii on our drive out of Waikiki on our way to the Temple.

The second day was spent walking along Waikiki Beach and attending the Pearl Harbor visitors center. The picture above is proof that Rick would actually step foot on the beach. I think the only reason he even got that much of him in the water was because most of the beaches had a place for you to rinse the sand off your feet.

I have loved reading and learning about WWII and have always wanted to visit Pearl Harbor for myself. Being there in that peaceful setting I can only imagine the shock it must have been when they were attacked on December 7th, 1941. We actually visited Pearl Harbor on December 3rd, only a few days before the anniversary of the attack. We took a boat ride out to see the USS Arizona Memorial. It was a very reverent place. We learned that many survivors of the attack who have since died have even requested to be buried at sea with their fellow service men and women. The last picture shows the oil that is still leaking from the ship 67 years later. Pretty amazing!

View of the harbor.

Then we experienced the world's fastest and cheapest visit to The Cheesecake Factory (under 20 minutes and $20) We were nervous we would miss our flight, of course we were plenty early and sat at the airport for almost an hour (In case you don't know we both can be worry warts). We then headed off to beautiful Maui. More coming, hopefully before another month passes.