Happy Birthday from Hawaii!

We left rainy Portland for 8 days in Hawaii! We planned this last year and booked the house on the Big Island with my parents and brother and his wife. It was the first time we’ve all gone on vacation together. I was really looking forward to this.

A bit of a whirlwind! Logan did pretty good for his first time traveling on an airplane. A friend drove us to the airport and we got through TSA ok (with a toddler!) and had a quick breakfast and then boarded the plane. Logan’s favorite part was the people mover in the airport. 🙂

The flight was pretty good. Logan played with toys, colored, watched a movie, took a nap. He only got fussy at the very end when we were about 40 minutes from landing in Kona.

Getting our car was kind of a nightmare. There was only one person working and the line took FOREVER. And Logan was ready to get some energy out! But we got our car, got a quick snack and then arrived at the rental house and met up with my parents.

My mom and I got some groceries. The fruit in Kona is AMAZING! The avocados were spectacular and HUGE too.

Then we made burgers at the house, got settled in the house and went to bed. It was a gorgeous day in Hawaii but we were all SUPER tired. We tried to keep Logan up later so he could adjust a little to the time but he kind of burned out. We all slept super good but were up at 4am. OUCH. I was going to be a LONG day.

The house we rented was amazing! Big enough for 7 people to be comfortable. There was a master bedroom (for us) with a master bath and walk in closet. There was another bedroom with a queen (my brother and his wife got that one) and a bedroom with two twin beds. Then another bedroom with a queen downstairs where my parents slept. There was a huge lanai with a view of the trees and ocean and the backyard had a hot tub, fire pit and an outdoor shower.

Day Two My birthday! Hello 40!

It got kind of a rough start. We were all up early, Logan was out of sorts. The time change was hard. Being out of his routine was hard. He had a ton of extra energy and things were just HARD.

We went to the Kona Farmer’s Market first. We got a bunch of fresh fruit! SO GOOD! And some souvenirs. Logan got a turtle luggage tag as a souvenir and his very first wallet. 🙂 I got a dress, Michael got a Hawaiian shirt and we got a few souvenirs. Then we walked to the small beach across from the Farmer’s Market.

After that we got lunch at Da Poke Shack! Michael and I have thought about that poke for like 7 YEARS!!!!!! And we finally got to have it again and it was just as amazing as we remembered it!

Then we went to the beach– Spencer Beach. It was SUPER nice! Perfect for kids. There was a park, nice beach, not too big waves… I got to swim some laps in the ocean and it was HEAVENLY!

For my birthday we made taco salads at the house and then the family surprised me with a huge chocolate ganache birthday cake from Costco and it was so so good. It took us three days to eat that huge cake. 😉