ALOHA EVERYONE! I'M BACK!!!

My first day back at work was yesterday but other than catching up on some work, it took me nearly all day to catch up on my favorite blogs so I didn't have the time to update my own! Anyway, I can't tell you how depressing it is to return to work after a vacation. I'm still dragging today and we were back late on Saturday night (close to midnight actually). Well, what can I possibly say about Maui that everyone doesn't already know? It's beautiful and peaceful. I loved it all. But what I loved most was just being away from work, away from traffic, away from everything.

Saturday -

I'll start my day-to-day recap with Saturday when we did the Brain Tumor walk in honor of my brother-in-law Henry. It was a great experience, one that I will never forget. It was very bittersweet being there...I felt honored to be a part of such a great cause but I hated that this terrible disease has invaded our family and specifically someone I love very much. At the end of the 5k walk, they had some speakers...some were family members who had lost loved ones due to a brain tumor and others who were survivors. I felt inspired by them and prayed to God that one day, Henry would be up there telling everyone his survival story.

Our crazy team...we all wore t-shirts with a picture of Henry and our team name, "Fishing 4 a Cure" since Henry loves fishing.

My sister's sign worn on her back


A dedication my sister made for her husband

One of the speakers said something very meaningful that stuck with me. She thanked everyone for being there and said she hoped we wouldn't need to be back next year because we will have found a cure. How I hope that's true.

Later that afternoon, we had a birthday party for Henry. My sister surprised him with some of his co-workers and he was so happy to see them. We all had a great time and this was a very special birthday for us since he has been through so much this year.

Henry with a few of his co-workers

With his 2 kids

Here's so many, many more birthdays for Henry. His next MRI is fast approaching on November 14th so please continue to pray for nothing but the best results. :)

Sunday -

We had a 10:35am flight out to Maui so we woke up, went to the airport and flew 5 hours to get to our destination. I was starving when we arrived so I bought the first thing I saw...

...a hot dog! It was SO good.

Once we got our luggage (which by the way, I totally overpacked!), we proceeded to get our rental car. Our ride was a little black Mazda. Nope, no convertible for us. :(

We then followed the map to our hotel/condo. It was a beautiful drive along the coast. It took us about 45 minutes to get there. When we arrived, I was happy with what I saw since I wasn't sure what to expect. We opted out of staying at a lavish resort, since we are trying to save for a house but we were happy with our decision.

Our view from the balcony...

After settling in, we grabbed dinner at the restaurant located in our resort, the "Beach Club." I told myself I would try to be good since I had lost a total of 5 pounds in two weeks but it was SO hard to resist good food...so let's just say I haven't weighed myself since we've been back. I'm in denial! Our dinner was okay...the food was pretty good at the restaurant, nothing spectacular. After dinner, we walked around our resort and ended the night by watching the sun set. It was perfect. I tried to take it all in.

Monday -

We woke up to some very loud birds outside on the resort grounds...sweet, peaceful, yet annoying all at the same time!

We laid out at the beach for a while and then moved over to the pool to take in the sun's rays. The water was cold but beautifully blue in color.

After we were all sunned out, we showered up and drove out the little city of Lahaina and had dinner at a restaurant called "Cheeseburger in Paradise." And YES IT WAS!

I had the "Cheeseburger Island Style"...it was delish!

After a delicious dinner, Gerric fed his sweet tooth with a scoop of ice cream (He's such a sucker for ice cream). I just watched him eat it. I was so full!

Tuesday -

It became our morning routine to go out and soak up the sun. The weather was perfect. We'd catch some tropical rain once ina while but they lasted a short time and the sun was still out so it was fine. After our morning ritual, we showered up and this time, headed out to "Whalers Village" where we had lunch at Leilani's.

That evening, we had dinner reservations at David Paul's. That was one of our most expensive meals but everything was delicious! They even gave us a complimentary dessert to share in honor of our two year wedding anniversary!

We spent the rest of the evening strolling the streets of Lahaina and called it a night since we had an early morning ahead of us.

Wednesday -

Let me preface this by saying that I don't know how to swim so I am pretty much deathly afraid of the ocean. I imagine myself either drowning or getting eaten by a shark (yet I love vacationing in tropical places!). Well, my dear husband wanted to experience snorkeling in the ocean waters of Maui so I agreed, as long as I could stay in the boat. We woke up super early to get our adventure started. It was a pretty large group and thankfully, I wasn't the only one that stayed in the boat! The tour took us to two different locations...Molokini Crater and to an area off the shores of Wailea to snorkel with green sea turtles. The entire trip was about 5 hours long. I usually don't tend to get seasick but the waters going to Molokini were very choppy which made for a rocky trip. My husband didn't do so well either. We were so miserable at one point that we couldn't wait to get on dry land. In fact, he promised me that he would never make me go out on a boat again! Yes, we both got really seasick (poor fishies in the ocean don't know what hit them!) but at least we can say we went snorkeling in Maui...okay, okay, my husband went snorkeling.

This is Molokini Crater...

This was our 2nd destination of the day...

I guess sea turtles do live here!

My own little sea turtle...heehee, I was cracking up at how he looked!

After our trip was over and we kissed the ground we were walking on (well, not literally but we wanted to!), we had lunch at Maui Tacos. It was really good. Nothing like mom's cooking but it did the job. :) Later that night, we headed back to Whaler's Village and had dinner at Hula Grill. Since my tummy was still very unsettled from the seasickness, all I had a frui plate but it was delicious! The fruit there was unbelievable...sweet and perfect!

We strolled Whalers Village some more and then headed back to call it a night.

Thursday -

Thursday morning we woke up to a beautiful sight...a rainbow!

We got ready to hit the beach again. It was extremely windy that day at the beach so we were being pelted with sand grains and a sunny tropical rain! We decided to let the winds and rain subside and grabbed some breakfast. After that, we hit the beach again and the weather was much better.

After a few hours in the sun, we grabbed some ice cream at the nearby shop and got ready for our evening. That night, we had dinner at Kimo's. Everything was delicious! I had the ribs and chicken, accompanied with a Blue Hawaii drink...YUM!

I was a "little" sunburned" that night. :)

Our nights always ended pretty early - we definitely did a lot of relaxing. :)

Friday -

Friday was our last full day in Maui. It was so sad that the week was over. We started with breakfast at Compadres restaurant and strolled around the island of Maui for one last time. We got home early enough to take a nap since we had tickets for a Luau that evening. We had originally planned on going to the Old Lahaina Luau which had come highly recommended to us. However, when we arrived on Sunday and wanted to buy our tickets, we were told it was sold a month out. Wow! So another Luau was recommended to us which was smaller in that instead of about 600 people, there was only 150 and at this one, we would have our own table and our own waiter. We were sold! So that night, we experienced a Luau at the "Feast at Lele."

The show was awesome. I enjoyed every minute of it. We were so happy yet so sad to be leaving the next day.

We had a 5-course dinner, which consisted of food from different islands: Hawaii, New Zealand, Tahiti and Samoa. I even had some of the Mahi Mahi with mango salsa! It was a perfect way to end our Hawaii vacation.

Saturday -

The next morning, we got ready, checked out and left for the airport. We got one last bite at the airport and we were on our way. So depressing. Jolene was very sad...

Overall, we had a wonderful time and would definitely go back. When there's so many other beautiful places to visit in this world, I don't think we'll return anytime soon but I'm so happy to be able to say we've actually been to Maui. We loved it.

We landed in Los Angeles close to midnight and since I was wide awake, I unpacked that night and went to bed at 2am. On Sunday we just did laundry all day long and grabbed some dinner. It was SO hard coming back to work yesterday. Now I'm getting ready for another trip to New York for work this coming Sunday. Lord help me. It's going to be a LONG week next week.

I better get some work done today. I didn't realize how long it took me to do this update. Thanks for reading everyone!