Maui

One of our business vendors has an Incentive rewards trip each year.  We had the privilege of going this year... WITHOUT kids!!  Airfare and hotel was paid for as well as most all of our food!  The kids went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the weekend and then Auntie Kyla and Uncle Mark picked them up on Sunday and took them home for the week.  The kids did AMAZING which really made it easy to totally relax on our trip.  We had planned little gift bags for each evening that we were gone which the kids LOVED!  That and they were busy getting spoiled by Grandparents and a wonderful Auntie and Uncle!  We were totally pampered for the week and loved every minute!!

We made it to Maui on Saturday afternoon.  It was fun having someone standing there with our names and to get lei's!

A beautiful evening at Black Rock.  We were staying at the Sheraton Black Rock in Ka'anapali.

Heart shaped lei photo just for our little girl back home!

Mom and Dad on the beach in front of our Resort!

Not a bad view from our room!!

 Saturday we called to find out about Meeting and found out that it was Special Meeting the next day!!  Talk about a privilege, a Special Meeting WITHOUT kids!  On the way back from Meeting Sunday afternoon, we stopped at an overlook to see the whales.  They were everywhere but little did we know, we would see them MUCH better later!

 Sunday evening was an awards presentation and a luau, the only business obligation during the trip.  Well, besides when our rep took us out to eat one evening.  We walked down to the beach for a few minutes before dinner.

My cute hubby!

 We finished taking photos and turned around to see HUGE splashes!!!

The whale to the right just finished breaching and the whale on the left is in the air!  It was an AMAZING site!

Two big splashes.  They breached quite a few times in a row at the same time!

Both of them out of the water!

We saw all that from right here!!!!!!  From shore!!

 We found out later that this was a very active time for the Humpback Whales.  In March they start heading North.  When you saw them you usually saw a group of at least 3.  A mom, a baby, and an escort.  What we witnessed was two escorts competing!  What you can't see in photos was two baby whales off to the side doing the SAME thing!  They also were putting their tales in the air at the same time and waving them and doing barrel roles.  The whales were the most amazing part of our trip.  I have NEVER seen this many whales breaching out of the water!

The luau!

 So the show was good but the best part was at the very end.... they come out to the audience and choose people randomly to go on stage!  All of us had our heads down are were thinking DON'T pick me PLEASE don't pick ME!!!!  Well they picked Benji!!!  Hands down the funniest thing on the trip!  I have video but I guess I won't embarrass him too much!

Benji and the CEO of Chief who sponsored the trip!

 What made it even better is they thought he was the best and kept him up there after everyone else.  They made him do the hula all by himself surrounded by other ladies.  Needless to say, after this point everyone knew who we were!!

Still makes me laugh.  SO glad it was him and not me!!!!

Yummy breakfast!!  We had oatmeal with coconut, macadamia nuts and coconut syrup every morning.  Oh yeah and don't forget the fresh fruit!  YUM!

Love this!

Beautiful!  What was amazing but you can't really see in the photo very well, was the rainbow into the ocean.  You can see it faintly off to the left going into the ocean right off to the left of center.

 We took a drive to the best banana bread stand!

Beautiful!

 Hiking down to the blow hole.

To give you an idea of size... Mom and Dad are off to the left down closer to the blowhole!

Heart shaped hole in the rock!

Love the heart shaped glare below the hole!

 Papa and Daddy had to take some funny photos for the kids!

Pushing over the rock!

Rock climbing!

Papa to the rescue!

Goofy guys!

 On up the road was the most beautiful old church!

The front door!!

 We stopped and were going to hike down to the Olivine pools... we took one look at the waves and changed our mind!  It was so windy it felt like it would blow you over.  The pools are on the left hand side of the photo and were getting swamped by HUGE waves!

 Instead we hiked into a cove for some snorkeling!

The sign says: Warning Falling Coconuts!  Right where they are standing of course... reading the info signs!

This is a few of the snorkeling photos from our entire trip.  I will post a video soon though because while we were snorkeling we could hear the whales singing!

LOVE this photo with Dad in the background looking rather like the turtle!

Benji with a turtle.  Hard to see but it is in the bottom left of the photo.

Goofy hats!

 The next day we headed out towards Kihei to hit the beaches there.  We then came back and snorkeled around Black Rock.

Wednesday Morning we went whale watching!

We were in a small raft.  I was kicking myself for not bringing our Nikon!  Oh well, I got to really enjoy the show!  We were right by a Mommy, baby and Escort.

The baby doing a barrel role and investigating us.

The back of the baby.

And a tail!

We then got REALLY close to a teenage whale that was by itself and playing around.  We saw it rolling around, slapping its tail, and 4 or 5 breaches.  It was close to the boat!

 We got an amazing show!  SO glad we went.

Downtown Lahaina.

 We spent the rest of the day laying around the pool relaxing.  In the evening we went to Paia to the Paia Fish Market to eat!  YUM! We ended our evening at Meeting.

 Thursday was our last day.  Mom and Dad flew out in the morning and we didn't fly out until 10:30 at night!  We had all day to relax and enjoy the beach.  We ventured up in our hotel and got a few photos of the grounds.

Black Rock

We were sitting by the pool looking out at the ocean when we heard a HUGE splash!  This is a photo of our view... not zoomed it AT ALL!  See the whale breaching right there to the right of center!  It did this 3 or 4 times!  This is right off the tip off Black Rock.  All the people snorkeling got quite the view!

Not to bad of a place to eat lunch!

After lunch we went to one of our favorite beach from last time we were in Maui!

As you are laying on the beach at any given moment you could look out at the ocean and see a HUGE splash of whales breaching.  This splash was WAY out on the horizon but you could still see it.  Some were bigger than others and it made you wish you could really see the size of the whale that made that splash!

Diving in!  The way that this beach drops off you can easily dive in!

 We had an amazing trip and can't wait to take the kids back sometime when the whales are this active!  It was breathtaking!

As we were headed to the airport we got a call from the people that have Wednesday night meeting.  They had some flowers from Tiana!  We brought home a big bag of Plumaria that we got to make into a lei for her!  She was SO excited and took it to preschool!