Maui without Kids...ahhhhh!

The most exciting thing that is happening around here is that Geoff and I went to Maui all by ourselves for almost 9 days. We hired a babysitter, Lindsay, to come watch the kids for the first 5 days so the kids could be at home in their own environment and still go to school, preschool, gymnastics, etc. and then my parents came and picked them up and took them for the last 3 1/2 days. Kolby and Eliza were totally fine having a babysitter and as a matter of fact, before we left, Eliza kept asking me when the babysitter was coming. I told her in 2 days and she was so disappointed and told me that she wanted the babysitter to come sooner and wanted us to go to Hawaii. I was feeling a little distraught inside, but tried not to let it show. The next day she told me something about not wanting me to leave and I was confused and asked why she had just said the day before that she wanted me to leave. She confessed that she only said that she wanted us to go because she wanted to be able to eat all of the "special snacks" I had bought for when the babysitter came. Ah...that made perfect sense! Silly little kids.
But seriously, the kids missed us, but were fine, except for Carson. Lindsay told me that just about every 5 minutes he would start crying and say either "I want my mommy" or "Where's my mommy?" Kolby and Eliza would have to comfort him and remind him that he was going to Grandma's house soon. That would work for a few minutes and then they'd have to do it again.
Apparently they were thrilled when my parents showed up on Friday afternoon and had a great time being with grandma and grandpa and their cousin, alexis. The good news is everyone survived and though we missed the kids and thought of them often, we had a great time just worry about ourselves and doing whatever we wanted to do. Here are a few pictures to describe our trip:

One of my favorite moments of the trip...I had a splitting headache for the first few days cuz my neck was out and we were up on this cliff watching these awesome surfers surf on 15 foot waves at Honolua bay and ended up talking to this guy who was capturing his son on video and found out that he was a chiropractor. I asked him if he would adjust me, kind of expecting him to laugh it off, but he totally put away his video camera and looked for a flat, non rocky spot on this cliff for me to lay down and get an adjustment. That was some serious Aloha spirit that I appreciated so much. My headache went away and I was able to enjoy the rest of the trip thanks to Dr. Joel Stuart.



Geoff, envious of the surfers in the water. He really wanted to be out there on this amazing surf days, but the small Honolua bay was littered with about 70 surfers who were all really really good and Geoff only had a long board. So we just watched and enjoyed the amazing sunset and awesome surf show!
Mr. Surf Dude after a surf session. He's always said he could surf but I've never really seen him do it much until this trip. And I was very impressed. He really is a surfer!


Posing at one of the beautiful private waterfalls and swimming holes we hiked back into on our "Road to Hana" trip.

Beautiful view from one of the ancient king's temple. Ahhh!!!

The Black Sand Beach on the Road to Hana. Cool arch in the background that you can't see very well and a fun little cave that goes through to the water.

Boogie boarding at Hamoa Beach. It was such a beautiful small beach with great boogie boarding or body surfing waves and no reef to get cut up on.
The not so tropical side of the island. We did the road to Hana and went all the way around the island instead of turning around and going back on the main road. Very interesting and very remote.
We were there for the "tsunami". This is the view from our condo. Normally you can't see any of that reef that is showing in the picture but during the tsunami, the water would pull back and expose a bunch of the reef and then it would fill back in. It happened a couple of times and then the ocean seemed to go back to normal. It was crazy being there for the tsunami. The locals were very nervous. The lines at the gas stations and at grocery stores were insane. We were evacuated to higher ground, so we packed up our things and took our rental car to higher ground but then returned to our condo to watch the news and see what was happening at the big island of Hawaii since it was supposed to hit there first. Since the tsunami was nothing major there, we felt pretty safe sticking around.
Sunset from our condo
Sunrise whale watching cruise. We saw tons of whales this trip. It was so cool. It was fun to be there at this time of year when the humpbacks and there little babies are all over the place and always putting on a show.