Mike and I made a quick trip to Hawaii in February! I love these last minute get-a-ways! Mike ended up with a week off of work and my mom was planning on coming down to AZ for a visit, so we asked if she would be willing to stay with the kids for a few days while we tried to get away. So, then we had to decide where to go.....This is when I really enjoy the benefits of having a pilot for a husband! Since it was February our choices were a little more limited if we wanted nice weather. We thought about going over seas, but decided we would want more time. We looked into the flights to all the different islands of Hawaii and the weather on all the islands and the best was THE BIG ISLAND! So, Monday morning, Feb. 9th after we got the kids off to school we headed to the airport. We had a wonderful 6 hour flight to Hawaii...I almost finished a whole book!! We got to Hawaii around 3 pm (got to love the time change when traveling to Hawaii! We gained three hours!) We checked into our hotel, got something to eat and walked around the area. Tuesday we stayed within walking distance of our hotel, got our shopping done, mailed off a coconut to Mike's mom in Utah and then went to a Luau that evening. We had a great time at the Luau and ate until we were sick, but boy was the food good! Wednesday we rented a car so that we could drive around the island and find a sandy beach, which are hard to find on this island because of the active volcano. We also wanted to go and see the lava flow from this active volcano! The different types of landscape and vegetation on the island was amazing. There was no vegetation because of the lava, then tropical vegetation and then rolling green hills. Very beautiful! The lava flow was amazing, although I was disappointed that we didn't actually get to see the lava flow falling into the ocean like we thought we would. We were close and you could see the reflection of the lava off of the steam it caused as it fell into the ocean and that was pretty cool! At this point it was time to start heading to the airport, although I really could have used a few more days! We were able to catch the red-eye flight home to PHX and landed around 8 am Thursday morning. We had a great time and are excited to check out more of the Hawaiian Islands!
