Did somebody say "Vacation!!!"

So, for starters, this girl is tired!  Also, this girl needed a BREAK!  So, last Wednesday Gigi showed up at our house and Thursday morning Matt and I took off for Maui!  It started off so promising- we missed our first flight out of Houston (who knew your baggage had to be checked in 45 minutes before boarding???), then our flight to Maui was delayed by an hour so they could reset the computers, yay! :)  Even with all our delays we still landed in Maui around 7 pm Wednesday night (which was actually midnight for us, so we were sleepy!).

We picked up our rental car and headed straight for some food.  Our hotel was on Makena Beach at the Makena Beach and Golf Resort so we drove past some excellent shopping in Wailea and had dinner at a little sushi/ tappas restaurant called Kai sushi.  It was incredible!  Fresh sushi, warm veggie tempura it was exactly what two tired travelers needed to drive the last 3 miles to our hotel.

Here's our first picture in Maui!  After a long day of traveling we were so happy to be on land and eating food again.

After dinner we headed on to our hotel and it was AMAZING!  We both decided we highly recommend it and it was a good location to be on Maui.  Pretty secluded from all the towns, but close enough to easily get to everything.  I love Hawaii- the atmosphere, the beach, the mountains and the best part for me- everywhere is open air!  Our entire hotel lobby had no windows or doors and it was completely open in the middle and it was filled with a huge koi pond, waterfall, and plants everywhere!

This second picture was my view for breakfast pretty much every morning.  I was almost in tears!  It is so rare that I get to sit down and enjoy my food, so this was such a treat (and the company and scenery weren't bad either).  The beach is just on the other side of the grassy hill to the right and the pool is where the colored umbrellas are.  We listened to the waves at almost every meal!

Thursday morning (after breakfast for ourselves and the fish) we decided to explore the beach and the grounds of our hotel.  It's connected to a golf course (that's currently under construction) so we could roam around the fluffy green grass all we wanted (at least, I think we could and so we did!).

 We walked and walked and walked and had so much fun exploring.  There are lava rock fields everywhere that make incredible blowholes when the waves crash against them.  People had also made rock towers that I was obsessed with- they were so still and balanced with the waves crashing behind them.  Matt didn't share my excitement over them, but I took their pictures anyways.

(The beach at our hotel- can't you just smell the ocean?!?).  The lava rocks are to the right...)

After our strenuous walk we headed to the pool to recover and ended up staying for about 4 hours.  It was heavenly- we got an umbrella by the pool so we sat in the shade and read and slept and ate... aaaahhhhhh....

After my second nap back in my room I decided I wanted to go see the city of Lahaina and the Whaler's Village.  We drove up there (maybe 20 miles away, but also an hour- the speed limit is 30 everywhere and the roads are windy!) and looked in the Cannery Mall for a little while and then heard the Old Lahaina Luau was happening right across the street.  We read in several places that this was THE luau to go to so we thought we might as well inquire about tickets while we are here since they sell out every night.  They ended up having 2 open "traditional style" seats available and we jumped on it!  I'm so glad we did too because this was incredible.  The food was delicious, we had excellent tablemates, and the show was spectacular.  We bought a couple wooden sea turtles that they carved our name in (aaawwww), and had an amazing time!

It was so FUN and we couldn't believe this was only our first day on the island.  We promised ourselves we would relax the next day.  Stay tuned to see if we really did...

Aloha!