Day 6: Snorkeling and Hiking

Many of you have heard me talk about how much we travel with Todd's mom, aka my mother-in-law.  Well I can only hope that all my daughters get such wonderful and adventurous MIL's like mine. At the ripe of age of.... 29, grandma went swimming in the ocean for the first time today AND she snorkeled for the first time. She got to see a turtle only 5 feet away from us and a large school of black and yellow fish because this is THE BEST free place to snorkel in Maui! Seriously. You will see turtles every time - at least we do. I'm so glad she had that experience and we were all there to see her through it. I was frankly quite surprised that we didn't have to give her a shot of tequila before heading out. I understand the nerves. It's super scary to do things for the first time. She was a trooper. She held Emily's hand the whole time and proofed all the photos before evidence was made public. 

Don't we all hope to be...29 and trying new things for the first time? One can only wish. We accomplished all of this before 9am - because we are still waking up at 6am. Papa was out there with us too but he swam off and did his own thing. Apparently the rocks attacked him and he retreated to the shoreline where Katie and Jess were acting as our paparazzi documenting this monumental moment for Grams.

We showered off and headed out for a little hike. We found the Nakalele Blowhole and Heart Rock. Along the same trail, this was a two-for-one kind of expedition. We heeded the many warning signs and avoided getting too close. This ain't Sunplash as one sign reminded us.

Cute lovey dovey pictures were taken and then there was a hot and weary hike back to the car - where we left grandma. This hike requires more than flip flops. She kept the car safe since sadly there are a lot of vehicle break-ins while on hikes. What a shame that is. Oh yeah, and we saw a prayer labyrinth - that's the picture with all the rocks in a circle maze. Papa was missing his lady, but posed for a photo anyway 💕

More card games filled our afternoon, along with tasty leftovers, and a batch of homemade chocolate chips cookies. Yes, even in Hawaii our baker travels with us 😉 Jess was a happy camper and that was her request of the chef. 🍪

Papa had some back pain after our hike and rested with an ice pack on the couch. When the snoring began, I swiftly captured a photo of the snoozer. People will learn not to nap on the couch after a few more shots like this.

Todd, Katie and I went snorkeling again in the afternoon but this time we brought the underwater case and snapped some photos. Super cool. Enjoy 🐢🐠🐟🐡

Dinner. There's this place called Roy's. We love their dessert. They have a chocolate molten lava cake with vanilla ice cream that is to die for. We've actually ordered it to go before. That's all. Just dessert. So we went for dinner and had an amazing meal. Fish is their specialty but Papa had the filet and it was buttery and delicious. Oddly that's the only meal we didn't get a photo of. T and grandma had the butterfish, Jess has salmon (her fav), Todd had the Opah, and miss Katie had the ribeye. Emily had corn chowder and I had Caesar salad. Everyone had molten lava cakes and a few people samples the pineapple upside down cake. Yes, we are FULL! If you don't know this already, we plan vacations and then we plan where we will eat. Hence dinner at Mama's the other night. We love food and it shows - half our blog is about what we've eaten. And yes, we are already planning breakfast and dinner for tomorrow.

Our last stop of the day was Old Lahaina. We stopped to see the gigantic banyan tree - have you seen these things? They grow limbs and then the limbs attach to the dirt on the ground and they grow again. Honestly they look a lot like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Night all - we are home early and ok going to enjoy one last glass of wine as the designated driver for the evening. Oh yeah, Jess found a cat at the condo. She noticed he was very thin so she tried to feed him some chicken but he just wanted water. She named him Snickers - who knows if it's a he so the name is gender neutral. Night y'all!