Sunday, October 9, 2011

Saturday: Wrapping it Up

Saturday morning Adam was up early to watch one last sunrise over the ocean with his mom.  I joined him not too much longer after the sun rose for a beautiful stroll on the beach together.  
Then I headed inside to do this little lady's hair for the day:

I had been wanting to do her hair all week long, but we were so busy, it didn't happen until the last day.  It was so fun, and she looked so beautiful!
We got our last Hawaii breakfast at McDonald's.  :)


And then we headed back to the house to get everything packed up and cleaned up by 11:00 AM.  The kids got their last games of ping-pong in, too.  ( I so wish I had taken more pictures like this, by the way. Just hanging out at the house together.  That was a great part of the vacation!)


After leaving the house, we went to the Dole Pineapple Plantation.


And we got Dole Whips.  Yumm-o.


We ultimately decided not to take the tour of the gardens, because it was really expensive and we didn't think either we or our children would enjoy it that much.  So instead, we bought more souvenirs at the gift shop and watched a pineapple demonstration:

This lady taught us how to select a ripe pineapple based on color, smell, softness, etc.  Pretty interesting.

Doug and Heather were so kind as to let us hang out at their house and watch the U of U football game during the afternoon.  Then we headed down to the vicinity of the airport and had dinner with the whole family at Ruby Tuesday.

Next, it was off to the airport.

This is probably about half of all our luggage.  Heather requested a photo of the luggage, and this is about as much as we could get together at once during the bustle of trying to get 29 people through the airport.


Last came the painful goodbye as we bid farewell to Hawaii and our wonderful Marchant family who were all catching a different flight home to Utah.  We took a red-eye to Denver and arrived home Sunday morning.
This was truly the trip of a lifetime.  At the beginning of the vacation, Rosemary said, "I hope you don't all hate each other by the time this is over."  But I can honestly say, at least for me, that the absolute opposite happened.  I have a deeper love and appreciation for Adam's parents and the rest of the Marchant family.  We made memories that we will treasure forever.  We feel blessed beyond measure to belong to such a wonderful family and to have had these amazing experiences together!

4 comments:

Angie said...

Um, I think I'll just copy all your posts and just change the names and a few pictures! Thanks for posting such a great recap of our awesome trip. It was amazing!

Heather said...

Love the photos of the luggage! Awesome. We miss you guys and so does the island apparently--it has been so rainy every day since. The island was sad to see the Marchants leave.

Rosemary said...

Thanks, Meggin, for doing such a fabulous job of keeping our memories alive through your blog. We have officially been home longer than we were in Hawaii. How sad is that. Hope the good outweighed the bad and that all our wonderful children and grandchildren will have something to look back on when the cold days of winter hit. Give Ty and Big Mac a hug for us. We miss you all and wish you were a little closer to hug. Thanks again. Love, Rosemary

Michelle said...

So true, it was so fun! I loved every minute of it and I agree I think we all became closer too! We are blessed to be in such an awesome family! So fun! I loved looking at all your cute pictures.