ALOOOH-HA!

Aloha from beautiful Hawaii! As I am typing this, I am gazing out at the crystal blue waters of the Pacific Ocean, just 40' away out the back door. It is incredible! The last four days have been among the most amazing of our entire lives. It will take me a very long time to get it all recorded, so I decided to start now, while McKay is napping and Adam and Ty are hiking. Yep, life is good!

These next several posts are going to be extremely photo-heavy, and for that I make no apologies. As this may likely become the only scrapbook we ever have for this vactation, I am going to load it down with the pictures!
Our vacation began with a 7-hour direct flight from Denver to Honolulu. The rest of the Marchants flew from SLC to Denver, and then all 29 (yes, you read that correctly) of us flew on the same flight to Hawaii. I have to say, the flight was far better than I anticipated it would be. There were a few rough patches, to be sure, but the kids did remarkably well for how lengthy the ride was.
In true Rosemary fashion, my awesome mother-in-law didn't go halfway on anything, and gave each family their own bright color of T-shirts to wear while we were traveling. Kind of fun.

Lei Greeting at Honolulu Airport

The Whole Group

As it turns out, the colored T-shirts were a life saver. We lost one of the Marchant brothers and his family after leaving the airport. He didn't have a cell phone on him and he didn't have the address of the place we were staying. The only information that he had was that we were planning on stopping at a Costco on the way to the beach house to pick up groceries. So he used his GPS to locate Costcos in the area, and he found us at the third one he stopped at, thanks to our bright shirts. Good thinking, Rosemary!

Arriving at our home in Paradise!

After a long day of traveling, the boys fell asleep in the car on the way to the rental house.  We brought them in and changed them into pajamas, and through the entire process, they did not crack open an eye.

Adam's cousin, Doug and his family, are on Oah'u this semester doing an internship at BYU-H.  We were happily SHOCKED to find out that they live literally two doors down from the house we are renting.  According to Google maps, it takes 24 seconds to travel to his house from ours.  Um, awesome!  What are the chances of that?!  We met up with them briefly on Friday night after all our kids were asleep.  Doug's cute wife, Heather, hand-made us all plumeria leis.  They were gorgeous and smelled like heaven!