Hawaii

We love Maui. There is something about it that ministers straight to our hearts and souls. Since we've been married, we've traveled to well over a dozen islands/tropical locations. They are all wonderful. But Maui, for us, is the best. We relax. We sleep well. We nap. We eat too much. We lay on the beach under a shade tree...we are revived!

One of my favorite things about traveling with our kids is seeing how they change. When they get to experience environments out of their norm, they grow. They see outside themselves and it stretches their minds.

The highlight of the trip for me was whale watching. When we've traveled to Maui in the past, it has always been during the whale migration. We've watched them from the shore, but have never gone out on a boat...until this trip. The whales were so close to the boat that we could hear them "talking" to each other. We saw heat runs, we saw babies and, the highlight for Coop, dolphins swam around our boat. I don't have any National Geographic worthy pictures, but I'm including one that will show just how close the whales were. At one point, 2 swam under the boat. Amazing!

Layla learned to dive, boogy board and has perfected her back float. Cooper, who loved to be pummelled by waves up to the shore, didn't want to swim or jump into the pool by himslef. Until the second to last day. Then, he decided he wanted to do running cannon balls into the pool with no one catching him (and where he couldn't stand on his own), he wanted to swim from me to Dave and he even started diving from a squat position. It was great!

We are all hoping to go back again...someday!