Maui!

So over the week of the 4th, we were able to make a trip to Maui. Shawn's parents were gracious enough to watch the kids for the week. We really appreciated it. It was the first time since Ezra was born that we've been without at least one kid around for more than 24 hours.

It was nice to get out of the heat for a bit (and not to mention the dust storm), and also nice to just relax for a week. We did end up doing quite a bit, exploring Lahaina (the town that we stayed near), watching the fireworks on the 4th, and seeing some of the other sights.

We got some really good fresh mangoes and apple bananas from a nearby farmers' market.

We also found a really awesome pizza place up north of Lahaina. It's called Pizza Paradiso, and we both highly recommend it. The food was generally good, though the better food was to be found more at the little places than the places that try to show themselves to be "upscale" places for tourists who focus more on their advertising than their food.


The weather was pretty cooperative for us. It would rain a little bit every day, but then there would always be rainbows. There was only one day where it rained most of the day.
We did get to do some snorkeling, but there was a big swell which didn't allow us to go as much as we had originally planned. It makes for great surfing, but not so much snorkeling.


We ended up going on two of the mornings to two different bays: Kapalua, and Honolua. Kapalua was smaller, but we were the only people there pretty much (probably because it was raining on us on our way up there).

We saw a few Moorish Idols and quite a few Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (reef triggerfish)

We also saw some unicornfish, and a zebra moray eel.


The second bay was about the only one that was protected enough from the swells for us to go to later in the week.

Honolua bay was really cool, though you had to swim quite a way out to the reef.

The trail from the parking area to the bay was awesome too. That area of the island is quite lush.

There were quite a bit more fish in this area, since it is a larger bay and part of a reserve. We saw quite a few fish as we swam along out to the main reef area. As we swam along, we both thought we saw someone else snorkeling toward us, but as we got closer we realized that it was a sea turtle. We were both pretty excited to be able to see one.

A while later, Susan saw something moving in the rocks at the bottom, and realized that it was a second turtle. We both were happy too see a second turtle as well.


The sunsets were great to watch on the days where it wasn't too cloudy in the evening.



We really enjoyed the beauty of Maui. There are a lot of flowering plants growing everywhere. Some of our favorites were the big hibiscus growing all over as hedges, and the plumerias.


The scent from the plumerias is amazing. We're trying to see if we have a place in the yard for one of these, as you can apparently grow them in Phoenix.

We went to the Old Lahaina Luau one evening. It was great.


The food was great and the dancing was amazing.

Our last day we went inland a bit to the Iao Valley state park and walked around a bit. The canyon that it is situated in is amazing.

We also drove up to the Kula Botanical gardens. It was interesting to see how drastically the climate changed as we started to drive up the side of the volcano. The gardens were kind of separated from everything else, and nice and peaceful.

The views were amazing.


The gardens themselves were great too. There were a lot of beautiful flowers and various other plants.



Though it was nice to get away, and the kids had a great time with their grandparents, it was also really nice to come home again.


When we got home, we found a very large, ripe watermelon waiting for us in the garden. We had left it, since the last one hadn't been quite ready a week before we left. The watermelon was almost as big as Emma and definitely weighed more (which would put it somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pounds).


It tastes good, though I'm sure we'll be tired of watermelon by the time we're done with it. Cutting the melon was interesting, since the largest knife we have didn't look like it would even be close to adequate. It worked out okay though, because as soon as the knife pierced the rind, the whole melon split in half from its own weight with a loud popping sound.