hawaii: arriving and hotel

Our trip to Hawaii was amazing!! 

I feel so incredibly blessed to have been able to take a trip like this for our 5 year anniversary. I consider any vacation a complete luxury -- it's a blessing and not something I will ever take for granted. 

I  plan to make a shutterfly book of our Hawaiian vacation {and the others}, but for now I'm going to do a few different posts about the highlights. I'm sure mid-winter I'll want to reminisce about our favorite sunny days!! 

It took a while to get to Hawaii. It's not a short trip for sure, but worth every minute in the car, airport, airplane, shuttle buses, and bicycle. Ok, no bicycle, but lots of other transportation. I refuse to complain about any delay, flight change, etc because it's a HUGE blessing just to go and it's all part of traveling! 

Ryan and I at the Philly airport waiting for our first flight. So excited, refreshed, and with pretty, non-greasy hair. 

 Ryan in the Dallas airport. This airport is HUGE -- we loved all the restaurant choices. :-) Traveling makes me SO hungry and right before I took this picture I scarfed down a burrito the size of my head. And no, you don't get to see me post-burrito....that was just a little extra fun information for you. 

 And here's Ryan again : at this point we've only been up for 27 hours! Mildly crabby, but overall cute and patient as ever.  

And here I am. Woomp woomp.  

I'd just like to say that I did powder my face and put on lip balm before this picture, yet I still look slightly like death don't look as refreshed and colorful as I did even 17 hours earlier.

So we waited for the shuttle bus and got our rental without any problems! Most of getting to the hotel was a blur and I remember distinctly not saying much because we all know that after 9pm I start to turn into a witch and need to go to bed. It was lots of hours past 9pm and I didn't want to ruin our vacation this early on. 

Well...I do remember the hotel desk attendant asking us if we wanted any turkey sandwiches they had prepared for our arrival and being shocked when Ryan said no {he likes a free anything...even at 1am HI time and 7am our east coast time}. 

We fell into bed, woke up, pulled back our curtains, and saw this....

Ryan was still sleeping so it seemed natural to scream "WE HAVE AN OCEAN FRONT ROOM!!" over and over. 

You see the ocean...right??

It takes about a palm tree leaf to get me excited on vacation so this just about put me over the edge. Ryan's reaction was a little calmer and went something like "I picked a garden view room..well well well" happy as a cucumber with himself. HAHA! 

At this point we feel like rock stars.

And so for the next 7 days we relaxed here... 

 

 

 With my personal favorite spot being right here....

I actually cried {yes, tears} when I first walked onto the beach because I just felt SO blessed and overwhelmed with our opportunity to go to such a beautiful place.

More ridiculous beauty and black lava to come...