Aloha! Hawaii Part 1

Aloha!

As you may have seen on instagram we spent the past week+ in Hawaii visiting Kait, Dane and, of course, JUDY!  This trip has been a long time in the works and we were in much need of a vacation so to say we enjoyed ourselves would be putting it very lightly.  

This was one of those trips where we felt like it flew by and we were there by 3 months, all at once. 

(I know trip recaps are not everyone's favorite but selfishly I love looking back through them for our own memories...I promise regularly scheduled posts will resume eventually). 

Sans the nonstop screeching child on our 10 hour flight, our trip started off with a bang because of a fabulous airport surprise. (If you know me, you know I 1. LOVE surprises and 2. LOVE picking people up at the airport.)

The plan that was laid in place (or so I thought) was that Kait and Dane were going to be out of town when we got to Hawaii and that their friends were picking us up, no big deal.  Kait said they would have a sign for us and take us to their house and we would in turn pick Kait and Dane up when they got back in town. 

I texted Kait when we landed so she could update her friends and she was telling me what a great time they were having but excited to get back to Hawaii. 

As we were walking to baggage claim I said to Mister, 'isn't it so weird that we don't even know what their friends look like?' And he said, 'yeah yeah but it's fine, I have their number if we need to call them.'  He then proceeds to shove me toward a baggage corral and I see a girl with a sign with our names on it coming full speed towards us.

In a matter of .3 seconds a million thoughts go through my head, mostly, 'man Kait did not tell me that her friend looked EXACTLY like her, that is so weird!'  Then as I got closer 'OMG that is Kait and Dane! What in the world are they doing here?'  lots of screaming and jumping

Turns out they had worked out this whole plan with Mister, sent him fake phone numbers (in case I snooped), made fake rental car plans, the whole works.  And surprised me at the airport, you can say I was a bit excited ;)

After the excitement wore down, we grabbed food and headed home to meet Judy.  She's just as fabulous and adorable in person.  We then toured the beautiful area where they live.  Everywhere you look was fabulous.

Thankfully, because of the time change, Mister and I woke up super early on Saturday and were able to cram a lot into one day.  That is one benefit of Hawaii, everyone seems to get up pretty early so not many hours of the day are wasted, I loved it.

We headed up to the North Shore for the day - we had heard a lot of great things about the North Shore and were really happy to experience it.
The day started with an amazing breakfast at Konos (breakfast burrito with pineapple jalapeño sauce, yes please).

 Then it was stand up paddle board time! I had really been looking forward to trying SUP and it was just as fun as I expected! And we saw about 6 sea turtles sun bathing on the shore so I was one happy camper.

We continued up the coast to Turtle Bay- where Forgetting Sarah Marshall was filmed.  It was absolutely beautiful, you can totally see why they would film a movie there.

And with only one road in and out, it was time to head back down the coast and stop for the the classic Haleiwa sign picture.

Once we headed back it was just about luau time.

But that was so much fun it deserves it's own post ;)