Hawaii Vacation, Day 5!!: Friday, March 4th

Friday morning we slept in until 8:45 a.m.! We enjoyed our balcony, ate some breakfast, did our devotions, and saw 2 whales from our room! Jesse spotted them first and then we watched them for a little while before running down to the shore to get a closer look. We took turns looking through Jesse's binoculars so that was fun. They were pretty far away but it was exciting to see them!

A view from the shore toward our hotel room.

The whales are behind me but you totally can't tell in this picture- they're there, though!

After our "whale watch", we walked around the resort, taking some more pictures. This is the chapel couples get married in at the resort.

One of the chapel's stain glass windows.

Dolphin Quest is one of the resort's coolest things. Dolphin Lagoon was located close to the lobby. There were 5 or 6 dolphins that you could pay to go in the water with and they did tricks and were fun to watch. Friday morning we sat and watched them for a little while and took some pictures.

Not sure if you can tell but there's a dolphin jumping in the back to the right of the blue umbrella:)

After Dolphin Quest, we got in a hot tub and then decided to drive to a couple coffee plantations before our 3 p.m. couples massage in Kona.

The first plantation we went to was Hula Daddy and they were awesome! Our guide gave us a personalized tour of their orchard and it was really interesting to see coffee beans before they're roasted and learn why Kona coffee is different because of their soil, elevation, and unique weather.

Here we are next to Hula Daddy's roaster tasting some gooooood coffee! After our tour, we got chocolate covered coffee beans and they were delicious! Of course, we were already high on caffeine on the way to the 2nd plantation:)

The 2nd plantation we toured was Holualoa Kona Coffee Company. We wanted to go there because they were certified organic and we were curious if we'd be able to tell the difference between their coffee and Hula Daddy's but I think we decided that Hula Daddy may actually be organic, too, but they've only been around for a few years and might not be able to get certified organic until they've been around a little longer. Anyway, HKCC still made excellent coffee. We thought the coolest thing there was getting out of the car and smelling "popcorn"- but it wasn't popcorn, it was coffee. They roast their beans 2 different ways- 1 in a traditional roaster and 1 in a drum and the drum coffee is what smelled like popcorn. We taste tested them both and could totally tell the difference. We both liked the drum roasted better. It says "Coffee Shack Roast" on the bag in case you want to try some sometime.

HKCC- no frills at this plantation!

Jesse enjoying our self-guided tour.

We made it into Kona a little late and had trouble finding the massage place but did and it was nice and relaxing:) But then we had to high-tail it back to the resort because the Luau we had tickets to opened their doors at 5:30 p.m. We opened our hotel room door at 5:30 p.m. still needing to shower, etc. so we were obviously a little late for the Luau but it wasn't a big deal. They were still serving appetizers at our table so it all worked out!

Here's a picture of us on the way into the Luau. We sat with two couples from Seattle (1 with a 3 year old boy who was super cute) and one couple from Wisconsin. We also tried some fun tropical drinks- Blue Hawaii's and Lava Flows- both tasted like dessert to me:) The food was also delicious!

The show was called "Legends of the Pacific" and it was really good. We especially liked the fire dancing. Toward the end, I got pulled up on stage by one of the dancers, much to my embarrassment! Each dancer chose someone from the audience and we were supposed to try to dance hula, I guess. I did my best and sat down as quickly as possible! Jesse got a video of me, of course;) After the Luau, we rode a boat back to our room (the resort had 2 trams but also boats that ran from 2-9 p.m. if you wanted to take a boat instead of the tram or walking) so it was fun to finally take the boat and have a cool end to our evening.

A few pictures of our room on the Big Island.

Friday was the day that Jesse's Mom left and my parents came to watch the kids for the remainder of our time away.

Corban loved cutting with scissors all by himself!

Malorie likes to do everything her big brother is doing...she also LOVES the camera!