Hawaiian Christmas!!!

Ok, so once again, I know I'm about a month late on this...but late is better than never!!! For Christmas, Tom's AWESOME parents took the whole family to Hawaii! We had an AMAZING time!!! We arrived on the Saturday before Christmas and when we got to the airport we were greeted with fresh flower lei's! (Tom's sister Stacey & her family flew in from CA, so they were already at the hotel when we flew in!) We then went to get our rental cars and head to the hotel, well the rental car place took FOREVER, so by the time we got to the hotel and got checked in, it was pretty much time for dinner! The 1st island we went to was Oahu and we stayed in Honolulu on Waikiki Beach at the Hilton Hawaiian Village! It was a very large hotel and very nice...right on the ocean! Here is some pics of the view from our room!

The next day was Sunday, we went to church then we went on a submarine ride and we couldn't get very good pics of anything we saw under water on the submarine, but we saw a shark, lots or turtles and lots of fish!Sunday was also our brother in laws bday and we went to dinner at a really cool restaurant called the Oceanarium and we sat right up next to a giant aquarium and they had a diver come right up to the window and brought a sign wishing Joe a Happy Birthday and she hung out and fed the fish and the sting rays right there out of her hand!!! The next day, Monday, we went to the Laie, Hawaii temple grounds and to the Polynesian Culture Center, that was really fun! We learned about all the different Polynesian Cultures and watched a couple of really cool shows and got to attend a luau! Then on Tuesday, the 3 guys that had taken scuba diving lessons prior to the trip went on their 1st dive! While they were doing that, most of the rest of us went to the swap meet for some great deals and then we went to the Sea Life Park where me, Tom, our nieces Mikayla, Brooke, and our nephew Connor got to swim with a dolphin! That was THE coolest thing I have EVER done! Our dolphins name was Laka and she is over 40 years old! We got to give her a kiss and she kissed us on the cheek and we got to swim on her belly and pet her lots! We got the video of it, and I will try to get that posted another time! Later that day we also hung out on the beach! We also walked the streets of Honolulu and saw alot of fun street performers including people that hold still as statues and dances and this one guy that had quite the little set up and crowd around him and when we finally got close enough to see what was going on, he was painting 2 pictures at the same time using airbrush!!! It was insane how fast he was going and even crazier when we saw the finished product! On Christmas Eve we flew to the next island, Kauai. Here we stayed at the Sheraton Kauai Resort and this one was even more on the beach than the last! Around the corner from our room was an elevator that literally took you straight down to the beach!On Christmas Day we all went down to Tom's parents room where Santa had come and left the kids their "loot"! While there we noticed that they were roping off part of the beach and we were a little concerned because today was going to be spent on the beach all day and we couldn't figure out why they would close it, so we all put on our matching shirts that said, "Fletcher Family Hawaiian Christmas 2008" and went down to breakfast! Once we were done with breakfast, we decided to investigate the beach closure situation and found out that a Hawaiian Monk Seal had swam up on shore over night and they sectioned off the area surrounding him so that he wouldn't be scared back into the water too soon. Laying in the sun all day is how these seals digest their food, so if he had gone back into the water too soon he would have died! So all day while we were playing and having fun at the beach we had the company of this funny seal! We got some boogie boards and had a blast in the water! The day after Christmas some of us went tubing and some of us went Kayaking...we chose tubing and according to the ones that went kayaking, we made a good choice! They said it was more work than fun! Tubing was a blast, we went down an old ditch that has been around for hundreds of years and had 5 tunnels, so we got to wear hard hats with miners lights on them and thank goodness for those hart hats...I hit my head quite a few times! I also flipped my tube on a waterfall and to say that the water was cold would be a HUGE understatement!!! And it was really rocky and so my knees got all cut up and bruised and some of the bruises are still there! But it was a TON of fun!!! The next day most of us got on a boat where the 3 scuba divers were going on another dive and the rest of us went snorkeling! It had rained alot so the waters were kinda murky, but we had fun nonetheless! It was a long boat ride cause they kinda took the scenic route to show us the very beautiful Napoli Coast! It was also very bumpy, so I got a little sea sick and so did a few others in our party...let's just say that the fish didn't go hungry that day! ;) We didn't get the best pics, cause we were too busy looking and we kept forgetting that we had cameras! (it is easy to forget that when you are in the water!) We also had a TON of dolphins swimming along our boat and we saw a whale...but it was too far away to get a pic!Then on Sunday and Monday we just hung out at the beach and shopped! Then on Monday night we flew back to Honolulu were we had a 3 1/2 hour layover then we flew back home overnight! All in all, it was an AWESOME Christmas!!!!! Thanks again mom and Dad!!!