hawaii -- hanauma bay & diamond head

Monday morning we fired out of the condo bright and early to get our place at Hanauma Bay to do some snorkeling.  The bay was beautiful and it was lots of fun to swim with the fishes. 

 Matthew was a little worried about snorkeling because he isn't real comfortable in the water and doesn't know how to swim that well, but he LOVED it!

 He had no problem floating and swimming around in the shallow waters.  Even if the water was shallow, there were still lots of fish to see.

 We had lots of fun playing in the sand on the beach too. 

I love this picture of my boys!

After we managed to shower off most of the sand and change into dry clothes, we headed over to the Halona Blowhole.  The ocean water just comes up inside a hole in the lava rocks and spews out like a geyser!  I could never catch a picture of it at just the right time -- it sprays randomly -- but the beach and waves were still beautiful to watch.

 A selfie to prove I was there!

I love this picture of the rocky beach and blue green ocean.

Our next adventure of the day was to hike up Diamond Head -- the volcano.  The hike is about a mile I think and mostly paved.  It has some variety with a staircase near the top and a tunnel.  Luckily, it was a bit cloudy that afternoon, so it wasn't too hot. 

 The view at the top was cool -- you can see the whole city of Honolulu.  The air was full of little bugs though, so we didn't stop to enjoy it for very long!

Back at the bottom of the trail we spent a few minutes relaxing and getting a good drink of water.  Jacob & Matthew decided to sit in the tree.

After this, we decided to make a quick stop at Waikiki Beach, just so we could say we'd been there!  The beach was full of people and the ocean was wavy.  We watched a few kids jump off the pier and a few kids use McDonald's food trays for boogie boards.  That looked pretty fun!  We even saw a few surfers.  Then it was time to call it a day and make the drive back to the North Shore.