Some pictures from Hawaii

Here are a few images from our trip to Hawaii. During the second family reunion (week 2) we stayed at Auntie Lucille's empty rental house (literally no furniture). There were banana trees outside mine and Kory's window and I was so enthralled by them. This is the first bunch of bananas I saw and I wanted SOOOOO badly to pick them because 1) the neighbors weren't doing anything about them and 2) aren't they just yelling "PICK ME" to you? I would get up every morning and look out the window at the bananas. Kory wouldn't let me pick them. He couldn't understand my infatuation! :)


During both family reunions, we had one day as a family where we were in charge of a meal. Week 2 we were in charge of lunch. Jase wanted to help make the tuna, so we let him "mix" everything in. So cute!














We only visited this beach one day because it was near the Kona side of the island and our reunions were on the Hilo side. This was the only sandy beach we played at. The beaches at the reunions were rocky. I'm a sucker for that gorgeous turquoise water.















I think this was the coolest part of our trip. One Sunday night we drove out to the lava flow. The Big Island is the only one out of the 7 that is getting larger because the volcano is active. When we drove out, we arrived at about 8:15pm. It was almost dark and by the time we park and reached the path to start hiking out, it was pitch black, just like the pictures. We were required to have water, flashlights, and good, sturdy shoes in order to hike out to the designated lava viewing spot. Our path was old, dried up lava marked with white and yellow paint. There aren't words to describe this experience. All I can say is that God is the creator if this Earth. We got out to the flow and these are the best pictures I could get in the pitch blackness.
The lava is flowing out of a lava tube underground and into the ocean. The more blurry parts of orange in the picture is the steam rising from the ocean. When I got up close, I kept trying to get a good picture and couldn't. This nice man next to me asked if I had ever used a tripod. I said no. He told me it would get a better picture for me because it would be steady. He asked fo rmy camera and hooked it up to his tripod. He said: "take as many pictures as you want so you can get some good ones. Let me know when you're done." So sweet! He also told me that if I turned off the flash I would get a better image. I took his word for it and these are the results--much better than the ones I deleted because they were taken with a flash. Off in the distance on the other side, we could see more orange glows. It looked as if a fire had died down and just the embers were left. On our hike back, that was our scenery and we kept stopping and saying "so cool." I couldn't believe that I had experienced something so absolutely amazing. This experience goes beyond words and I highly recommend it to anyone who visits the big island. It is just incredible. For more pictures (that I tried to download but couldn't) Google "Hawaii volcano" and check out the images. They will take your breath away. More pictures to come.