I went over Hawaii expenses - we spent about what I thought, including souvies. Matt says his company wants receipts, which wow. There are a lot. I’ve tried to be organized, so wish me luck. 

I planned next week and meals and Jeanne’s baby shower and went for a walk and watched Jurassic Park and geeked out about all the places we’ve been in the movie. We also finished the Gabbie Petito documentary and there is so much hurt in this world. I am so grateful to know the Savior, to really know Him and know the plan of salvation and know who I am. 

Christian flies in tonight and I can’t wait to give our boy a big hug. He did something hard for work this morning and had the world’s longest day but he’s being a good husband and I’m so proud of him. I also made him a birthday cake and we’ll hopefully be able to do dinner tomorrow. 

And Henry ❤️. 

Settling in

We slept well last night and got up for seminary. Lu and crew left around 6:30 since Damian is back to work tomorrow. Delaney didn’t feel well so she stayed home. We took naps and unpacked and went shopping in preparation for a national day of no spending tomorrow. 

Jeanne came over and we cried together and gave hugs and talked about life and death and motherhood. I’m so sad for her, and praying so hard for the whole family. Matt and I talked to Christian too and counseled with him about how to be the best support person for her. Thankfully we’ve got a pretty clear weekend to help them if needed. It feels like we’ve had a lot of loss the past few years. Lots of angels looking out for us.

Tonight I had a General Relief Society training that was supposed to be with Kristen Yee, but she wasn’t able to make it so we got two members of the advisory board. It was actually a really good training and got my mind going with some ideas. I love the Relief Society and the gospel and the Savior.

We brought some Hawai’i back home and had Hawaiian haystacks for dinner. Just kidding, I know there’s nothing Hawaiian about them, it’s just that Lexi had defrosted the sauce but didn’t use it. It’s good to be home, but driving in southern Maryland on a bleak midwinter day is a whole lot different than driving through Hawaii on a bleak midwinter day. 

Happy birthday to bubba!

Matt and I had a row to ourselves and i laid down and slept the whole 3 hour flight to BWI. I even stretch completely over Matt’s lap, it was great. Damian picked us up and we made it home by 5. A quick pizza order and then the girls went to the Hendersons for a rock wall climbing session. The girls love to do that! I got to cuddle with this babe and he’s delicious and makes it easier to come home. 

Today is bubbas 27th birthday and he’s alone in Alabama for it. He’s had a couple real lame birthdays lately, sometimes adulting is tough. 

We love this guy! So grateful to have this one son in our lives!

We cuddled and shared pictures and told stories and gave gifts. We played a quick game of Skull King and off to bed. Matt managed to stay awake till 9 and it’s almost 11 for me now. Here’s to no jet lag!

Hawaii - Day 15

The last day. 

I can’t believe it’s finally here, and it also feels like Oahu was a whole different trip. What an amazingly beautiful and happy time this has been. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. The aloha here and the blessings we’ve received as we’ve traveled. This has been good for our marriage and each of us individually and I just can’t express how wonderful this has been. ❤️

We had some trouble with our car this morning. We took a load down and the clicker wouldn’t work. We had noticed the battery on it dying, but this morning it just wouldn’t work at all. Matt called Avis and we tried some of their ideas. Just when they were gonna call a tow truck, we tried one more thing and were able to get a little compartment off the door handle so we could use the key to unlock the car. Problem solved. And thankfully we weren’t in a hurry and could deal with it this morning. 

We had bought a salad for dinner one night and hadn’t gotten to it, so we enjoyed that for breakfast at the bar in our room. 

The treehouse was really cool, but there were a few issues. First, the trap door isn’t able to be locked when you’re inside. That felt weird, so the second night we put furniture on it, just to feel a little more safe - even though we were in the middle of nowhere and very safe. The other issue was that the night that it rained we were snug as a bug, but the second night the ceiling was dripping. Matt thought maybe the condensation dripped down but we didn’t want to open the window because it was cold. Anyway, just a few small things like that. Otherwise, very cool experience and I love that it was completely green from the rainwater shower to the solar everything. 

Matt pulled down the trap door and put the lock on and we said goodbye to the treehouse. Then we said hello again after we’d organized in the car and both had to go potty again. And then we said goodbye for real. 

I drove and Matt got pictures and videos. We passed my little minor lighthouse of Hawaii. 

We found a radio station called Sounds of Hawaii and listened to that the last few days and it was great. Sometimes weird when they’d do kind of a Hawaiian yodel or go really in depth into a story, but overall really fun. 

We were driving along and saw a sign for a scenic route for 4 miles so we took it and it was amazing. We passed a botanical garden we would have walked around but tickets were $30 each and we were a little priced out. 

We had a very loose plan for the day since we didn’t leave till 8:55pm. One thing I wanted to do was Akaka Falls. 

It cost $20 for both of us and honestly was a little anticlimactic. We saw so many amazing waterfalls on Maui and this was only a half mile walk. But we enjoyed it. 

Friends in Hawaii are a dime a dozen. How can you not be friendly and happy in Hawaii?

The trees!

We traveled the north eastern route. We really made our way around all 4 islands we visited. There were very few sections we did not drive through. We were getting hungry so we stopped off at a little cafe in Honoka’a. It was a little grocery store attached to the post office and they had a little restaurant counter in the back. We shared a kalua pork tacos with pineapple salsa and sat at their outside seating area. 

Everything was delicious.

Our drive around the island continues. We saw much more impressive elevation, but this was the sign we could get. 

Our plan was very fluid. I wanted to check out a beach, but it turns out it’s also a pay beach and we weren’t going to swim, so we skipped that. Matt wanted to get a picture at a Quicksilver with his vintage quicksilver sweater he has, and the store happened to be close to the Original Big Island Shave Ice Co., so we hit both of those spots. 

That shave ice was good, but they didn’t have a lot of flavors. One thing I did like was they had fruit flavors and then also creamy fruit flavors. My assessment of the 4 islands best shave ice is that Kauai still wins, hands down. After that I’m not sure, but Oahu was on the bottom. Probably Maui #2, and Gecko Girls, OBISC, then Scandi’s from the big island in that order. Matt is not as big a shave ice fan as I am, but he supports. After our shave ice we found more petroglyphs, so we checked those out. 

We had like 4 hours to kill before our flight and it was almost 90°. So I talked Matt into going back to the Royal Kona to swim. Once we got there the temperature had dropped to 82°, so that’s annoying, but we swam for an hour and it was really lovely. Every 20 minutes or so we’d get out of the pool and watch the ocean for awhile. The waves there are so crazy, it’s just beautiful to watch. They have an outdoor shower we used and then changed back into our clothes and grabbed dinner and filled up the car with gas. We still had about an hour, so we went to Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail and did their walk to their rocky beach. We got to enjoy our last Hawaiian sunset and then headed to the airport. 

I thought a lot about my mom who had wanted to go to Hawaii for years but never made it, and Jeanne’s mom who passed so young. It makes me want to really make sure I make the most out of this one wild and precious life I have. If there’s one thing my mom taught me, it’s to serve, and I am looking forward to getting back to my family and community to do that. 

❤️

Our flight left at 8:55pm. We paid extra to sit together and our seats were the 2 middles of the 4 person middle row. I felt very squished in the middle, but there was actually more legroom and we were able to rest on our tray tables. We slept off and on and landed safely in Denver at 3am Hawaii time, so we’re tired but grateful. Now we’re hanging out at the USO waiting for our flight to BWI. Tired but grateful is probably gonna be our motto for the next little while. We’ll take it. 

Hawaii - Day 14

Monday brought another before sunrise early morning. Sleeping in the treehouse was loud, like camping loud. We weren’t too cold, but we did hear just about everything and we’re in a tropical rainforest basically, so there’s lots to hear. Matt fell in love with a bird song that now we think might actually have been a frog. Anyways, it wasn’t hard to wake up before the sun. 

We drove 30 minutes to Volcanoes National Park in the hopes of seeing some lava glow, but no luck. We actually weren’t at the right lookout, but also there was no lava. The website said it had stopped on the 20th, but we met someone that saw it on Sunday, so the night before we were there. Whomp whomp. We did enjoy the steam vents everywhere! Matt even found one that he was enjoying warming up at, and by the time we got done with our hike they had roped it off because they’re actually pretty dangerous. 

Pretty sunrise. 

Pretty sunrise and steam vents. 

We walked the crater rim, around 3 miles. 

It rained off and on, so Matt had to use his cool poncho obviously. 

This place is wild. Look at that huge crater!

Nene. They had one whole lookout closed to protect the nene. 

Rain and sun. 

I had looked up someone’s Volcanoes Park itinerary and we kind of followed that, so next up they had brekkie at the lodge, so then we mildly enjoyed a very overpriced breakfast at the Volcano Lodge. 

But you can’t beat the view. 

We also discovered that this is a hotel and also right across the street there is a military hotel. I swear I looked and didn’t find a military hotel on the big island, but there it was. That would have been so convenient. 

Next we walked across the street and checked out the Sulpher Banks. They didn’t really stink, they kind of smelled like a mildly stinky bath, like the heat made it not smell bad? The sulpher makes the rock yellow, and there were signs all over warning us to stay on the path and avoid being scalded. So we did. 

After that we parked at the Kīlauea Iki Overlook and made our way down to the trail to the crater floor. 

It’s always nice to make a friend and exchange photography favors. 



The Kīlauea Iki hike is a 4 mile loop that takes you down steps and hills into the crater where they have a path for you to walk right in the middle of the vast volcanic wasteland. 

He got some good air! He kept saying the floor is lava, so I made him jump. 

We had to stay within the trail of these rock piles. And then halfway through they started having numbers on them and we could go to their website and read about each of the features. 

I’ve never seen anything like it, it looked like a sci-fi movie set. A lot of this island does. 

At first we didn’t realize it was a loop, so that was a happy surprise. 

After our long hike we made a few more friends - the retired LA detective and his long lost high school sweetheart that had been in Hawaii for 40 years were some of our  favorites. We also ran into a family from Seattle that we’d seen earlier in the week at a chocolate farm, so we chatted with them once we got onto the Chain of Craters Road. 

We drove all the way down and hiked out to the Sea Arch. Matt was fully ready to cliff jump again, but no one else was so he didn’t feel comfortable. he said he was a little relieved. 🤣

He made me pretend to be texting. 🤷‍♀️

It was a pretty warm day with the sun reflecting off the black lava rock and then the beautiful blue ocean right there taunting us - we were pretty hot. 



This was a funny little oasis of palm trees, but there wasn’t really a path, and I really didn’t want to wander off any paths in the park, so we enjoyed from a distance. 

After the Sea Arch we hiked another mile and a half round trip to the petroglyphs. By this point my Apple Watch was all like peace out because she’s old and when I’m super active her battery goes faster. Suffice it to say we walked a *ton.* When we finally headed to make our way out of the park I took my socks and shoes off and my poor feet had indentations from my socks. Can you tell the brand?

We decided on a Hilo side must eat dinner at Ken’s House of Pancakes. 

We shared a beef teriyaki plate and their famous pineapple upside down cake with ice cream. Both were fabulous. 

The big island doesn’t have a lot of great swimming beaches because of all their lava rock, so many are rocky and rough. I searched and searched and found a little swimming area that said it was great for snorkeling and that the locals love it called Carlsmith Beach Park, so I talked Matt into an evening swim before heading home. The water was cold, which isn’t that big of a deal, even though the sun was starting to go down and it wasn’t super warm anymore. The problem was that there were warm pockets in the water, so we’d be swimming in the cold water and start to get used to it and then we’d swim through a warm patch and then be super cold again when we hit the cold patch. It was weird. Also, tons and tons of reef. I got snorkeling over a reef and before I knew it, I didn’t really have enough room to swim over it anymore. I tried to get away without touching it, but I scraped up my hand a little. We swam around for about a half hour before we threw in the towel. Except we didn’t because we’d left our towels at the treehouse. Matt had a little shammy kind of travel towel that we both shared and actually worked pretty well. 

We headed home and thankfully made it there before it got dark. Interesting treehouse showers and we got to bed around 9:00. 

And because life goes on even when we’re in paradise, we got some sad news while we were at the volcanoes park. Christian texted that Jeanne’s mom passed away that morning. She had had some health challenges last year and had actually been in Alabama with them for several months in the hospital and then rehab. She had had pneumonia and was in a coma for several weeks, but had been able to go home and we thought she was doing better. 

On Sunday she wasn’t feeling well and went to the hospital, and by the next morning she had passed away. I’m so sad for Jeanne and her twin sister. Katie just had her baby last month and Jeanne is due in June. They are so young to lose their mom. 

I checked on them all throughout the day and told Christian I would help clean out her house and bring dinner when the family gets together and help plan a funeral or memorial. I just want to be there to help however I can. Thankfully we have an extra car she can use when she comes up and she’ll stay with us as long as she needs to. 

This also helped us be ready to head home. We’re needed and we want to be there for our little crew. It’s hard to be so far away when tough things are happening.