Aloha, part one...

Patrick and I were lucky enough to spend a week in Hawaii! My parents scored a sweet deal through a travel agent that their friends from the ward knew and they decided to take all their kids along for the trip. It was fun to be in a place that was new to everyone and to have the Portela family all together.

 Here we are on one of our flights. We had a brief layover in LAX.

Enjoying breakfast by the pool.

The hotel we stayed at provided complementary breakfast including bagels, donuts, muffins, danishes, fruit, cereal, miso soup, rice patties, and lots more. They even gave each room a lunchbox so you could fill it up and eat on the beach or have extra snacks for later.

The view from our room. We were on the 15th floor.

We went to a swap meet that was huge. It wrapped around a stadium. After we were done we went wandering over a crosswalk to get a better view.

 

Then we hit up a Japanese noodle place for lunch. Everyone loved it and it was served cafeteria style.

I was really excited about trying my dish. You ate it by taking the noodles from the wooden bowl and dipping them into the sauce in the little bowl.

Along with our noodle dishes we each had some tempura.

Here we are ready to go on our second day. Since it was Mother's Day my mom picked the agenda and we were off to the North Shore area.

At the Dole Plantation.

I had no idea how pineapples grew so I was excited to find out.

On the Pineapple Express where we learned all about pineapples and got to tour the pineapple fields.

The plantation had a large koi pond. We loved watching the fish go crazy as they were eating.

My mom wanted to eat at a shrimp truck so that is what we did. Here we are waiting.

Danielle and Chad eating the delicious shrimp. It was quite messy but good.

Because it was going to take so long to eat my dad bought some barbeque corn for us all to try. After eating lunch Patrick decided that he wanted a little more.

Here we are at the temple. It was beautiful and more amazing than any pictures I've ever seen of it.

We stopped for a little break on the drive back to the hotel.