Lind Family Vacation 2011, Maui, Hawaii

Every two years we go on a Lind family vacation and this year we spent one glorious week in Lahina, Maui at the beautiful Marriott Beach Club Resort. This was the view from our window.

Our first picture, our first day on the beach...hence everyone looking so white! :)

Jeff has been SCUBA certified since he was 14 when his dad got him, his brother Scott, and two of his sisters, Emily & Marianne, all certified. Since that initial certification though Jeff has not done any diving. Okay, that's a lie...he did a small dive with his cousin's gear one year at Lake Powell and for hours, days, weeks...well even years afterwards claims that he got the bends from that dive. (He did not have the bends. :)) For as long as I can remember Jeff has been asking me to get certified so we can go on dives together when we travel. I always wanted to, but due to lack of funds, time, being pregnant or nursing it just never happened...until now that is. On a last minute whim I decided to get certified the weekend before our trip. It was an intense all day 3 day course and by the end of it I was ready to dive in Hawaii, however I had to have an instructor with me in order to pass off my required four open water dives. That brings me to this guy...

Meet Charlie aka Crazy Charlie (I'm not being mean here it's a self-proclaimed title.)  Charlie was the instructor I was assigned to via Maui Dives to complete my four certification dives.  For the first two dives Jeff dropped me off at the dive shop at 7am and I did two shore dives (meaning you gear up on land and have to haul all of your gear down to the ocean, swim out to where it's deep, and then get it all back to shore when you're done. It's very tiring. We did this twice. We were supposed to be done by around noon, but didn't finish up until 2:30pm. Why you ask? I was lucky enough to have these two Hungarian guys in my group trying to pass off their certification dives too.;)

The one on the left spoke English and Hungarian, but the one on the right only spoke Hungarian. That meant every instruction/skill check off given by Charlie had to then be translated. Also, the guy on the right may have had a small panic attack trying to clear his mask in 20 feet of water, which resulted in a 30 minute discussion at the surface about whether or not he could continue. Thankfully he got his nerve up, passed off the skill and we all got to go home. Those two shore dives were not my favorite since the entire time was spent passing off skills and the visibility was low being that close to the shore with all the sand everywhere. But I did get to see Wade Robson and his wife on that beach. :) Unfortunately my Hungarian friends had no clue who he was so I had no one to share my sighting with.

While I was diving Jeff was enjoying the view (10,000 feet up) from the top of Haleakala with his siblings.

After another relaxing day at the resort it was time for my next two dives. This time though Jeff, Scott, Meridith & Brent all joined me. That made it infinitely more fun! Plus, Scott and Meridith both served LDS missions in Hungary so they could speak with my Hungarian friends in their language. Also, these dives were boat dives, meaning they take you out to a location (in this case it was Molokini crater) on a boat and then send you down from there. It's much easier to gear up and just jump off a boat, plus you don't have to swim far to find the pretty stuff since it's right below you. All you do is descend. 

6:30am and ready to board the boat.

Checking my air tank & gearing up. Isn't scuba gear attractive?! ;)

While I did get to ride on the boat with my family I still had to dive with Crazy Charlie and the boys because we still had more skills to pass off. At least this time we were staring at beautiful coral and fish the whole time. We jumped in and immediately descended down to 60 feet below the surface. That's a trip! The visibility was unreal. You could see about 120 feet in any direction. The water was perfectly clear and calm and I was in heaven! After my first two shore dives I wasn't 100% sold on the whole diving thing, but as soon as I got below the surface on this dive I was hooked. The feeling of weightlessness in the water and the freedom to swim around with the fish and be so up close and personal with the coral is like no other experience.

Jeff and his dad all set to dive.

Jeff and Scott gearing up.

Meridith and me after our dives heading back to shore.

Our boat captain. He was hilarious and made the trip very fun!

Feeling good after our two dives. Hooray I passed! I'm officially SCUBA certified now! So Jeff, where are you taking me next to dive? I'm ready!

Meanwhile, back at the resort we enjoyed all sorts of fun things like...

...seeing how many times we could hit this small ball in the air. I believe our best was somewhere around 100.

Relaxing by the pool & reading books.

And of course snoozing whenever we felt like it. Ahhh, vacationing without kids...that's the life. :)

One morning I had to go back to Kihei to the dive shop to fill out some paper work and get my picture taken for my SCUBA certification card, so Jeff came with me and we stopped off at the Grand Wailea to check it out. It's pretty much the most beautiful hotel I've ever seen.

Then we met back up with some of the family and headed to Honolua Bay to snorkel. I heard about it from reading my aunt's blog. She took an underwater camera with her so she has lots of fun pics of all the sea life you see at this bay. One of my favorite parts of getting to this bay is the gorgeous walk through the jungle.

We couldn't pass by vines without doing a little George of the Jungle routine.

This is the view once you get down to the bay. Gorgeous.

Heading down into the water. 

The cool thing about this bay is the water is really calm and the coral reef is only about 5 feet blow the surface so you get so see a ton of sea life really close up. Right when we got into the water there was a giant school of fish in front of us. There were hundreds of fish forming a wall and all swimming together. Then a large blue fish came swimming up and the school started swimming around in circles. It was beautiful to see.

Next stop was downtown Lahina for some Local Boys Shave Ice. 

Best.Shave Ice.Ever.

Then we made a stop at the old Banyan tree.

And strolled through the town doing a little shopping along the way.

That night Jeff & I were in charge of dinner. Each couple took a night cooking and cleaning up, so the rest of the time you didn't have to worry and could just enjoy. It worked out great.

For our meal we made baked fish tacos with homemade fresh salsa and black beans. Gary was nice and made fresh limeades for us to drink. It was delicious!

It wouldn't be a trip to Hawaii for these two without their Lifeguard tanks. Lookin' good boys! :)

On the final evening of the trip we took a bunch of group pics. 

Now that's two good lookin' men!

The entire adult Lind clan along with the three nursing babies.

The men and baby boys.

The woman and baby girl.

This is what I have to put up with to try and get a decent couple pic...

Ahhh, that's better.

After pictures Dave, Emily, Jeff & I all went out to dinner at this restaurant on the beach. You couldn't ask for more beautiful scenery to enjoy a meal by. I enjoyed a delicious fresh fish that is indigenous to Hawaii. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of it right now.

Enjoying our delicious fruity drinks.

Sunset.

Okay, I'm pausing this post for a short commercial break. I just have to give props (once again) to Jamberry nails. Again, I'm not a sponsor for them, I don't get anything for telling you this, I'm just a very satisfied customer. When I tried them last fall and they lasted forever I thought that was great, but lets be honest, that time of year my feet were mostly in socks and shoes. So wearing them for a week in Hawaii, putting them in and out of pools, the ocean, in sand, etc. I knew this would be the real test of their strength. They totally stayed on and looked great the entire time! I actually had complete strangers come up to me and tell me how cute my toes were. I would've been pleased just to have them last through my trip, but they are still on! It's been over a month since I put them on and as you'll see in an upcoming post I went swimming everyday for a week in Phoenix too. These bad boys are so worth the hassle of applying them for how long they last while still looking perfect. Love, love, love Jambery Nails. 

Okay, I'm stepping down off my soapbox now.

For our final day in Hawaii we had to check out by 10:30am but our flight didn't leave until 9pm, so we stored our luggage in the resorts locker room and after spending a little time by the pool reading we got cleaned up in this lounge/locker room area. The final NBA game was being played this day too, so this is where the boys spent most of their time...watching the game.

Leaving our resort.

I had to snap a pic of Jeff with his drink mug. The resort offers these mugs for 35 dollars with unlimited refills all week. So, of course Jeff bought one and spent the entire week getting our per drink cost down to less than a dollar per drink. While we accomplished our goal we decided we will probably skip the mug next time and opt for a brick of soda cans from Costco instead. We spent a lot of time walking back and forth from the drink station. Also, we drank WAY more soda than we normally would have just so we could "get our money's worth." :)

On our way to the airport we stopped off for one last Hawaiian shaved ice.

At the Maui airport waiting for our LONG red-eye flight home.

Our favorite treat of the trip. My mom tipped me off to these on this trip. How did I not discover them sooner? It's probably best I didn't. They are trouble!

Other fun things that we don't have pics of include: running along the beach each morning, playing games all together late into the evening, having a family book club (book = Lone Survivor. I'll do a review in a different post), getting to know some of my nieces and nephews better and laughing , laughing, laughing!

Thank you to these two for providing such an amazingly wonderful family vacation! 

We LOVE You!!!

Also, thank you to my parents for being so willing to watch my kids for a week so that we could enjoy this vacation! I know they were in amazing hands and did not lack for love and kisses that week. 

We LOVE You!!!

Farewell Hawaii. Until next time I will pine for you...