For Eric, to give you a little of our Aloha spirit, brah...

I knew we had made it to paradise when I saw this sign! :)

Day one, all we wanted to do was to lay on a sandy beach and get a little sun! :)

Day two, Akaka falls, pretty awesome!

We then took the scenic route down to Hilo for lunch, definitely the way to go! We found a little trail to hike down to the beach and we tried to catch some crabs for Tucker, they were everywhere, but they are fast little devils! :) We had no luck!

After lunch, on our way back around the island to get back to Kona, we found a little park with a pretty sweet rope swing.

Here are some pictures of the amazing house we're staying in. (note to Eric, I haven't edited these yet, they are right out of my camera. I want to go home and brighten some colors and take out some shadows, etc.. and I have many more!)

pool-our own private pool, mind you! :)

The front door...

The back yard and lanai...

The pathway leading to the pool...

The view from the house is stunning...

We have awesome views of the sun setting. I need to get a good picture though, we always seem to be on the road, at the beach or eating out when the sun is setting.

A few quick pics of the inside.

Gorgeous-we are so lucky!

The next day we went snorkeling, and found this awesome turtle on some rocks next to us. We had to get a picture for Tucker.

Paradise!

We even had a little photoshoot with the model, Ben Pyper, I'm not sure if you've heard of him?

One of our favorite things so far has been to go to farmers markets.

I just love the colors and the vibe of farmers markets!

Beautiful flowers...

And even better fruit! And I learned that my husband has a love of buying fresh fruit from the markets! He was like a kid in a candy store!

Downtown Kailua-Kona! So cute, we love to just walk around and look at all the shops and of course, eat!

In fact, this was our view of the sunset at dinner that night!

You can't go to Hawaii without getting some shaved ice! Mine had ice-cream at the bottom! Delicious! :) I can now go home happy!

Another amazing sunset. This was on the way back to our car that night! Amazing!!!

The next day was for body surfing!

If you don't remember what Ben looks like, he's the dark one! He was out there with all the Kama'aina's! :)

It doesn't get more beautiful than this! :) I think we will stay here, please! :)

After a morning of body surfing, we headed to the north shore to do some hiking and see the black sand beaches. It was amazing!

We hiked down to this:

These are for Tucker & Taylor:

This was the hike, it wasn't as much fun going up as it was going down! (But totally worth it!)

The sunset from the car on the way home that night!

Today we headed to the volcano. We so desperately wanted to see some red hot molten lava, but what we did see was a whole lotta black, dried and hardened lava! We were bummed because about half way through the viewing area, we had to stop. Just 9 days prior, lava had totally engulfed the road and viewing area! If we had been here 9 days ago, we would have seen a ton of red hot lava! But now it was just drying and settling and hardening!

It was quite the walk, and Ben had to go pee so bad, but as you can see there aren't a lot of places to hide in the vast field of blackness. And there were people coming and going all around us. I had to act as a shield while he knelt down as far as he could! Luckily, we made it out undetected!

After the lava fields, we headed to Southpoint, by far the coolest place so far, or one of the coolest! There were some crazy people cliff jumping down into this little rocky hole!

Most other people were jumping off the 45 foot cliffs out into the ocean. Including Ben! It was amazing! It was beautiful, right at sunset!

From the jump on the outside of the cliff, you can swim over into the rocky hole. Here is Ben, way down there!

Beautiful southpoint! This is the southern most tip of the USA! :)

Some random surfer brah there gave us a coconut! I'm not a big coconut fan, but Ben will enjoy it this week! :)

There ya go! Our Hawai'ian vacation so far! :) We still have three and a half more days left, and I am so excited! We have been having the BEST time! We have spent these past few days exploring and driving all around the island, our goal for the next 3 days is to relax on the beach, get some sun and snorkel A LOT! :) Can't wait!

Eric, if this doesn't get you and Sharlene excited to come in April (and again next year when we come back together with our families!) ;) then I don't know what will! :)