Friends in High Places

We are lucky enough to have very nice friends in Chicago who work for United and like us enough to invite us to go with them to Hawaii! We've been talking about this trip for MONTHS and it was so hard for me to fall asleep Friday night.

Saturday morning, we were up at the crack of dawn to head to the airport to fly standby on United to Oahu. We were SO lucky that all 7 in our party were able to get on the direct flight from Chicago to Honolulu!

The mother of our friend, Keenan, who is from Hawaii, met us at the airport with beautiful leis!

I love leis!

Quinton was so awed by his lei, all he could say was, "What the heck?"

Once we arrived, our friends Keenan, Rebekeh and their daughters Miss M and Miss A went with Keenan's mom to see their niece and nephew in a play. Matt, Quinton and I went straight to the house we'd rented in the "country" on the north west side of the island. The drive to the house was breathtaking. If you have ever been to Oahu, we are about 10 minutes north of Chinaman's Hat. Our first glimpses of the ocean along Kamehameha highway were so tempting. We practically hat to sit on Quinton to keep him from jumping out of the car to go to the beach! The whole drive he was begging to go to the beach and I couldn't blame him!

Here is Matt loungin on the back porch of our Hawaii house, whiich Quinton has declared he likes better than our Chicago house!

It took Quinton about 1 minute to figure out that the private outdoor shower had a hose to wash stuff off with and that he could play in it to his heart's content. He totally forgot about going to the beach while he was playing with the hose!

Sunday morning, Matt and Quinton went out on a nearby hike. The town we are staying in is Hauula and Matt found a nice hike on the internet. He and Quinton were gone for about 3 hours but Matt says Quinton was a champ and walked almost the entire hike! I was able to go for a nice run, too. I was SO excited to be jogging very close to the beach!
The view from the hike.

We can hardly wait to see what adventures the rest of our trip hold for our traveling party!