Hawaii Day 2

Considering that I do not sleep well away from home, I slept like a rock! Must be the nice warm air and the fact that we are heading to the warm sandy beach!

Today we started the day with breakfast on the beach. Starbucks and bagels on the sand-PERFECT!

After touring the local beach/hotel area we decided to take a drive up to the North Shore. What a beautiful drive. How would it be to live beachside? Someday.

As we were driving along, we came across the Dole Plantation and had to stop for a tour and a fresh pineapple of course! What a fun adventure. We decided not to take the train tour, but to walk instead. So fun! I will never forget the sweet smell of pineapple as we walked through the front door. YUM.





After the tour we headed to our original destination, the North Shore. WOW! What awesome beaches. You may laugh, but that was the coolest sand we have ever seen. It was like sesame seeds. Soft and light and oh-so-comfortable to lay out on.

The waves were HUGE! Winter is the best time for surfing, however, I do not surf but do so enjoy watching others. We were in luck, as it was some kind of competition going on. It was fun to watch, but we had more important things to do, like get a tan and swim, so we moved on to the next beach where we could play.





After all this play, we were quite hungry. As we were driving along looking for a place to eat, we came across this rather interesting beat-up old motor home advertising fresh seafood and voted #1 on the island. I was scared, but Mike insisted it is places like this that really do have the best food. He was right! WOW. Check out the size of those shrimp! Delicious.





On the way back to the hotel, we decided to once again stop at the Dole Plantation. They had a farmers market outside and the fresh fruit is just too good to pass up. Next door is another plantation, the Halemano Plantation, and we had to check it out as well.






We end this fun-filled day with a great show at the hotel complete with Hula Dancers, Fire Dancers and the best firework display I have EVER seen. It was AWESOME! And of course, a nice long walk on the beach.

Hawaii Day 1

We have been egerly awaiting this Hawaiian vacation for some time now. Mike and I had been planning this trip for about a year, but got a great surprise around Christmas with news that we could get 2 more buddy passes and bring the kids along! Mike did some cabinetry work for a lady that works at Delta and she so graciously hooked us up with four passes. AWESOME!

We got up early and headed for Salt Lake where we would meet my dad to take us to the airport. All was going smooth until we reached the airport! Once we arrived we found out that there were about 77 standby passengers, including ourselves, but only 56 available seats. Things were not looking good. We had a back-up plan of catching a flight early the next morning, but that woul take a day away from our fun! As luck would have it, the plane actually had mechanical problems and would be delayed about 3 hours. Well, it actually did turn out to be lucky because many of those stand-by passengers left or re-routed and we ended up getting the last 4 of 6 seats! Hawaii here we come!

Due to the mechanical issues, we had to fly at a much slower speed, so rather than a six hour flight, it took nearly 7 1/2 hours! And to top it off, it was the most turbulent ride I have ever been on. It was awful, but knowing paradise was in the near distance, I held on and closed my eyes!

We finally arrived! What a great feeling. Fist of all, it was still about 75+ degrees, even though the sun had set and it was getting pretty dark. The air smelled so fresh and our vacation had offically begun. Hooray!

We hurried to get our rental car, found the hotel and we were off to find dinner and to stroll the beach. Ahh, paradise!
Stay tuned......


Salt Lake International
Awating our flight to Oahu, Hawaii



The Honolulu Airport. ALOHA!!!

Lucky #13

Christmas Party

This year we had our annual Christmas Eve celebration a few days early. Each year we get together with both my mom's family and part of my dad's to celebrate Christmas. My mom makes a delicious dinner and Santa makes an appearance. This is great fun for not only the kids, but adults as well! This is the highlight of my dad's year, and I am so glad we have such a wonderful tradition. Thanks mom and dad for all of your love and hardwork that goes into making this such a special day each year!!!

O-Christmas Tree (part 2)

My favorite part of Christmas is decorating the tree. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this year we put up a real tree. It smells so good and looks so nice. Once Mike put up the lights it was time for the kids to put their decorating skills to work! I must say, they did a great job! It's looks like Christmas at the Kener home.

Christmas Parade

One of our new family traditions is to attend the annual Christmas Parade.
We found out about it by accident last year and had such a great time that we went again this year. The parade starts out with a Santa 5K race, which is quite a sight to see. Hundreds of "Santa's" running down the Boulevard!
Once it begins to get dark the parade begins. There are floats-a-plenty, all lit up in the spirit of the season.
Candy is thrown Mr. and Mrs. Claus wave a hello.
The night is complete after walking through the Christmas Village which is lit up after the parade. It was very crowded at this point and cold, so we will check this out at a later date.

O-Christmas Tree, O-Christmas Tree....

This year we decided to get a real tree. It's been a few years and since I threw out the artificial tree last year, we decided this was the year to bring back the tradition of the real tree. We had planned to take a day trip up the mountain to cut down our own, but couldn't get a permit close enough to home so it was off to a tree lot we went.
It was a tough decision; do we get a tall skinny tree, or a 8-9 foot full tree? Well, the shorter tree won because it smelled so good and fresh!