10-year anniversary; Maui, Hawaii

Andy and I went to Maui for our 10-year anniversary.  It was about 6 weeks after, but we planned it around his IronMan and his last marathon of the year.  It was a 10-day trip and was wonderful....except we missed our boys.  We set-up an e-mail for them just for this trip and we sent them pictures every day.  We also got them a cell phone to call us anytime AND we sent them a postcard everyday telling them what we did that day...which of course all arrived after we were home.  They were home with Amanda (and sometimes her husband Ryan), so over-all it was a success.  Dane cried before we left, Drake quit crying by the 6th night and I started crying on the 2nd.  We've decided we probably won't go this far away or for this long until our 20th.

We decided we would do some of the same things we'd done 12 years ago when we visited this island before we were dating.  So here we went to the top of the volcano and watched the sunrise.

 And here is one of the few times someone took a picture of us.  After the sunrise and before our long journey on the road to Hana.

 On the way to Hana we stopped at the Black Sands Beach.  We took a walk along a path on a cliff so we could get cell reception and call the boys before they headed to school and spotted sea turtles while we were talking to them.  One of the gifts we brought back for them was a sea turtle necklace.

 The Black Sands Beach is in a little cove so the waves are really small...more like a lake.

 Here are a couple shots of the road to Hana.  It is single lane for about 1/2 of it and very beautiful...unless you're Andy and you've been in the car for 8 hours and up since 3am...then it's just a bumpy road that you have to drive very slow on to get back to the condo.

 We stopped at a road-side "bbq" tent and got some chow...I don't really know what it was, but it was really good.  They even let us cook our own opossum (they told us it was chicken, that could be a lose definition). 

 We also stopped at some really pretty waterfalls and pools of water on the way.  This may be why the trip took 16+ hours.  :)

 Oh, and yes, how could I forget....we did a 10k (6.2miles) Exterra run....I agreed to do it and then someone in the condo elevator asked if we were doing it and said "Good luck, I hear it's a killer."  I looked at Andy and he avoided eye contact.  Remember, he had just finished a marathon the previous weekend, I run 6 miles at an average pace with some hills.  I am by no means a competitor. But we did it:  up a mountain for 1/2 of it, around a lake at the top, down the mountain and the last 1/2 mile on the beach (what they call the calf burner).  I called the whole thing hell, and I'm an optimistic person.  So here we are the morning of with the beach behind us and smiling (grimacing, whatever).

 

and here we are at the end...smiling this time for real, but very tired and very happy it's over.  I was anxious about this for days before we did it after that guy in the elevator enlightened me to what I was up against.

We also did an all-day snorkeling cruise.  We snorkeled in 3 different locations in addition to the lunch stop in which we anchored out and jumped around and slid down the slide.  One with a beautiful coral reef, one with a cave and coral reef and one with sea turtles.  All had spectacular colorful fish.  We actually snorkeled the same island we had scuba-dived the 1st time we were here, but since it's been a while (before kids) that we've dove we kept it simple and snorkeled to be safe.

 I got a tattoo souvenir from the cruise....free advertising for them...a moving bill-board.

 Here we are in our car...yes, even in this convertible mustang, Andy was ready to be home the day we did the trip to Hana.  Every evening we would either sit on our deck or find a secluded beach.  It was very relaxing.

 Here's one of the beaches we decided to stop at during the day when doing nothing...which was really nice, we rarely do nothing.

 we had it all to ourselves...

 this is the view from our condo balcony.

 One of the pictures we took for the boys.  See? we really did nothing, the bed isn't even made.  We didn't make it the whole time we were there...that's was room service was paid for:)

 Here's a crazy tree at a park that we found.  I guess it's pretty popular because we found post cards of it to send to our boys.

 one of the days we got out of our suits and went somewhere.  I think it's one of the few pictures we have with "clothes" on.

And we flew home on Halloween morning and arrived at the school in time to surprise the boys at their school parties.  The next blog will be of their pumpkin run (Dane came in 2nd and Drake came in 3rd for their whole grade level!) and trick or treating.

Till then....