Hawaii Day 3

 Friday July 31 was our 3rd day in paradise.  We wanted to stay close to Waikiki and our hotel that day since it was the night of the big firework show at the Hilton.  We had planned that day to be our hike up diamond head but decided it would be a good morning to do the time share presentation and get it over with.  That morning I slept in to about 5:15 am lol! I really didn't get use to the time change until the end of the trip but that was fine because waking up so early in the morning made it feel like we had really nice long days.  Our hotel offered work out classes every morning at 6am on a beautiful green grass area.  I had thought it was a yoga class that day but it ended up being Thai chi which was actually really fun and I'm glad I tried it out.  After the class I meet up with Spencer at the gym for a run and then swimming.  We then got ready for the time share thing.  It was nice because we arranged it for 9am and they feed us a continental breakfast and then we just got to tour the resort.  We listened to the deal and then we were done by 10:30.  It was not bad at all considering we got free luau tickets and a breakfast out of it.  We would love to do a time share some day especially if that meant many more trips to Hawaii!!    

 We decided it would be fun to walk over to the Ala Moana shopping center.  It's a huge outdoor mall that has just about every store you can imagine.  It was a nice walk along the marina.

 After some shopping we were getting hungry and sushi sounded good so we went on yelp on our phones and found a place called Shirokiya which had 4 stars, over 1,000 reviews and only one $ so we were excited to try it.  It took forever to find it in the huge shopping center and when we finally found it we were a bit surprised! It was not the "restaurant" we thought it was, it was a huge Japanese food court that had only Japanese people in it.  Everyone there looked like true locals and we felt out of place and didn't really know how it all worked.  We decided we were up for the adventure and gave it a try.  Basically there where 30 or so different vendors you pick your food and take it to the cashier and pay for it all together.

 It was an interesting experience for sure.  The food was not that great so we were kind of disappoint in that but we did like trying it and the adventure of it all.  We finished our mall day walking around more shops and having a yummy blizzard from Dairy Queen.  When we walked out of the mall we saw the pink line trolley and found out that for $2 you can go around the whole Waikiki area.  We jumped on and took a nice tour of all of Waikki and then it dropped us at our hotel.  

 When we got back to the hotel we were ready to go jump in the pool, lay out and relax.

 The firework show was a big deal at the Hilton and we had heard that we would have the best view so we decided a pizza date on our balcony was the perfect dinner that night.

The crowds below were insane! We felt so lucky that we didn't have to be part of that and still have front row seats.

 We both jumped when the first firework went off! It was crazy how close we were.  You could feel them in your chest, they were that close.

 It was a great show and it was fun sitting on the balcony watching the crazy crowd break up after it was all done.

We ended the night with chocolate macadamia nut candies, Honolulu Cookies and a movie.  It was a fun relaxing night which was much needed for the early busy next day we had planned. 

Hawaii Day 2

Day 2 July 30th was our official 10 Year wedding anniversary! I had such a hard time staying a sleep that morning! I woke up at 3am and was to excited to sleep but knew I would be exhausted if I didn't try so I tried and was off and on until I could finally wake Spencer up at 5am (I thought 5am was enough sleeping in lol) I remember waking up and running to the sliding glass door and checking outside to make sure it was still real that we were actually in Hawaii!  Once we got up and got ready we headed over to the gym for a work out and some swimming after.  This pretty much began our morning routine for the week.  The pools got pretty crowded at the Hilton in the afternoon so it was a treat to have the pool to ourselves every morning at 7am.

The grounds of the resort were beautiful! There are all kinds of animals through out.

After our swim we got ready for the day and ventured out of the Hilton complex to find a restaurant we had heard about on Pinterest, Eggs n' Things for breakfast.

It was a pretty walk through a really nice park.

OMG this breakfast was awesome! I love eating really sweet things for breakfast so the macadamia nut strawberry waffles with a mile high of whipped cream was just perfect!  Spencer had eggs Benedict with a side of macadamia pancakes with coconut syrup, oh so so so good!!!

We sure enjoyed ourselves!

Our snorkel cruise on Spirit of Aloha was at 1pm that day.  We were very excited for our first adventure.  I had read good reviews about this snorkel trip in my tour book and the fact that it left from the Hilton pier was a plus.  We loaded the boat with about 40 others and set sail.  It was fun to see our hotel from the ocean.

We jumped in and went straight to snorkeling.  There claim to fame was that it was a turtle snorkel trip and there where turtles they were just so low on the bottom of the ocean it made it really hard to see them.  I was also disappointed that we really only saw 2 different fish species.  I remember going snorkeling in Hawaii with my family and all the tropical fish so that was what I was hoping for and was sad to just see black fish and then some white and black striped fish.

We took lots of videos.  

This was our tour guide with a cool sea urchin that we all got to hold.

After snorkeling we climbed back on the boat and poor Spencer felt very sea sick.  So it was kind of hard to enjoy the boat trip back to the resort.  When we got back we took a nap and then got ready for our Luau Anniversary dinner on the roof top of the Hilton. 

We had such a great time! The food was so good!! We both had 2 plates full and loved every bite.  We also loved that we got to sit across from 2 other fun couples.  1 couple was from Australia.  This was there first visit to the United States to it was a lot of fun learning about their country and teaching them about ours.  They were on their honeymoon and were shocked that we were celebrating 10 years! Actually we got that a lot this trip.  Everyone thought we were on our honeymoon and when we said no 10 years and we got lots of "wows" I guess we look young in love!! (not a bad thing).  The other couple was from the LA area but the women grew up in Fresno so that was also fun since we had somethings in common.  After our yummy dinner and visiting we then got to enjoy an amazing show.

I was so into watching the show I didn't get many pictures.  The fire part at the end was amazing.

I love this man with all my heart!!

He melts my heart every time I think about him.  We have had such an amazing 10 years of marriage and 17 years of being together.  I'm so happy we got to have this trip to be together just the 2 of us. 

It was an amazing anniversary night!

Hawaii Day 1

The day to leave for our 10 year wedding anniversary trip to Hawaii finally arrived on Wednesday July 29th.  We had been planning this trip for about 6 months and we were so ready for it to be here.  This was a big trip for us! This was the first time that we have ever left the kids for more then 2 nights and this was Spencer's first time to Hawaii.  We figured since we would be gone for 7 nights it would be better to split up the grandparents time of having the kids so Spencer's parents had them Wednesday-Saturday morning and my family had them Saturday-Wednesday.  Wednesday morning Spencer's dad took us to the airport and you can see we looked very excited!    

Our flight was great! I love being in the air and flying my old route was really fun! I sure liked being the passenger and just relaxing this time.  We flew Hawaiian Airlines and it was fabulous.  It was comfortable the movies were fun and the fact that they still have a meal service was great.  When we touched down on Oahu we were beyond excited.  Being greeted with a lei was fun and then to the baggage claim we went.

I just love the smell of Hawaii right when you walk off the plane you can smell the flowers and the fresh air, it is beautiful.  After we got our bags we loaded onto the bus to go to our resort.  We booked our vacation through Costco and it was the best! They really took care of us and everything ran so smoothly! When we got to Hilton Hawaiian Village we were blown away by the beauty.  This resort was amazing! It is huge and is like it's own town within Waikiki.  There are over 30 restaurants and shops on the property, 5 or 6 pools, water slides, their own lagoon, pier and I think 5 different hotel towers.  We had reserved to stay in The Rainbow tower with an ocean front view.  The rainbow tower is the closest tower to the beach.  When the lady checked us in she had a huge smile and gave us our key cards and said "you will have an amazing view of the firework show Friday night." Nothing could prepare us for this amazing view.....   

 We were on the 6th floor and it was perfect! You could hear the waves crashing from our bed.  Most days we would lay on our bed and say that it was like laying on the sand it felt that close.

 We just couldn't believe we were in Hawaii just the two of us and this was our home for a week.  Every time we would leave and then come back to our room we would be blown away it was very special.

 After lots of picture taking we changed into our work out clothes and explored our hotel.  I love the flight into Hawaii you leave California at 9am and arrive in Oahu and its only 11:30am it feels like you still have the whole day!  We stooped by the concierge to pick up our free gift and to get some more information.  They talked us into doing their time share spiel later in the week and in return we got tickets to the Hilton roof top Luau ($210) value for free.  The guy also told us the hot spots to try for food.  We really like to eat especially on vacation so with all that eating it was important to us to stay up on our exercising.  So after talking to the guy we went and tried out our gym.  We did a quick work out and then explored more.  We decided to try the fish tacos for an after work out snack.

 We went back to room and got our swimming suites on and headed for a walk down Waikiki and the beach.  This was so fun to do able to walk around holding my hubbies hand.  I use to go shopping and walk that road on my own so many times so it made it really special to be with Spencer now! We stumbled upon this statue and were being goofy.

 Then it was time to walk the beach and watch the sun set.

 What an amazing sunset for our first night.  That night we decided to try a really good New York delicatessen in our hotel for a late dinner.

After lots of walking and being very tired with the time change we were excited to get back to our room and relax.  We walked in our room and were greeted by beautiful Hawaiian flowers and a box of candy from my parents for our anniversary.  It melted our hearts how sweet that was!

After enjoying some yummy chocolate we called it a night.  The Hilton had a program like red box were you could rent as many movies as you wanted so that night we rented a funny Will Ferrell movie but both fell a sleep before it was over.