We left early morning on January 2 and drove to the airport. Our drive to the airport was way longer than our flight. The flight itself was about 25 minutes- there's only time for the flight attendant to pass out a pre-packaged juice. We arrived in Kauai in the morning, picked up our rental car, and headed to Lydgate Beach Park. Audrey was excited about this cool playground because we don't have a playground in Laie.
I thought this lizard was like a sticky toy on the slide, until it moved!
and then went to the Smith's Fern Grotto Tour. We got on the boat pretty close to where the Wailua river feeds into the ocean, and then we rode up the river to the fern grotto. You can see how green and lush everything is in this picture:
A grotto is a natural cave- I didn't know that. This one is special and sacred to the Hawaiians and used to be where they held their wedding ceremonies. It's really hard to tell how big it is from this picture, but the tour guide told us about 70 people could fit inside of this cave! Now they have it blocked off to preserve it, so we were standing on a platform maybe 50 feet in front of it.
Our tour guides performed a wedding hula here too.
Here's a video of Audrey as we are heading back to the boat. Also just an FYI, there are no alligators in Hawaii :)
After that I realized how fast things can happen with the water, so I can't have my phone out. Audrey also learned that she has to wait for Mom or Dad! Luckily the worker was very nice about it, and everyone kept going down the waterslide.
The resort was beautiful!
Our tour guide was really great and told us a lot of interesting facts about Hawaii history and what kinds of things grow here. He said it's harder to get things to not grow, than it is to grow (weeds and vines will over take plants easily). I learned that Kauai will most likely disappear in 1 -1.5 million years due to plate tectonics and erosion.
Wild boars! They keep some wild boars fenced in, and they gave us Mission corn tortillas to feed them. :) We all had fun trying to throw the tortillas to the babies. Some of the boars are mean and would bite the other boars on the butt to assert their dominance and get the tortilla! You do not want to run into a boar in the wild here- they're very dangerous.
It had such a different feel from the resort and it was fun to have both experiences. Here we are playing miniature golf.
Obligatory Lilo & Stitch pictures:
We went into this book store and I had to take a picture of its name: Talk Story. This is a phrase that people use a lot here in Hawaii- for example, "the girls are going to get together tonight and talk story."
I kept talking about how beautiful the dishes were, so Brent drove back to the shop and said "I'm buying you that dish. You need it." I told him it was too expensive and would be too hard to get home, but he insisted, "You never want anything so if you want this, we're getting it."
We then went to a sea glass beach and had fun looking through all the beautiful sea glass. We took home a few pieces. Ava falling down the dirt hill on the way to the sea glass beach was not fun though, and she scraped up her hands and knees and got all bloody.
Then on to Waimea Canyon, which is called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. The first stop is the red waterfall, which is one of the things I remember most from when Brent and I came 13 years ago. It is other worldly!
Coen got lots of solo pictures because he hiked up with Brent.
After Waimea Canyon, we went to the Spouting Horn blowhole. I can't even explain why, but I love these so much. There's one on Oahu and I just think it's magical. You wait and are patient, and then this one growls like a dragon as water is pushed through the narrow opening in the rock, and then boom! The water shoots up like a geyser. It can shoot as high as 50 feet. I just stood there mesmerized as the kids were yelling and begging to go back to the hotel. Brent put them in the car with a TV show and let me watch the blowhole longer. I saw a sea turtle swimming out there, and it was a beautiful sunset, so I really enjoyed it.
Yep- you read that right. Ava is old enough now that we left them with her (and one of our phones) while we went out to Mexican food.
The view from our hotel- so lush!
Audrey really wanted a picture with this butterfly:
Our last day was Friday. This day we went all the way to the north side of the island. First thing we had an appointment at the Kilauea Lighthouse (National Park) which is also a bird refuge. There were so many white seabirds on the side of the cliff behind us in this picture! The waves were ferocious, smacking against the side of the cliff.
We went into the visitor center and the kids got a bingo card to show them what types of birds they might find and they were trying very hard to find all of them. We saw albatrosses there, which are a large seabird. Wikipedia tells me that their wingspan can get up to 12 feet!
The lighthouse is 5 stories tall and was constructed in 1913.
We saw the nene, or the Hawaiian goose. It's hard to see in this picture since it's gray, on the gray sidewalk in front of us. It is the state bird and only found in Hawaii, and they nearly went extinct in the 1950s, but were bred back.
The National Park lends binoculars, so we could see the birds a little better.
Here is what an albatross looks like! Not life sized, mind you.
Audrey was super excited to choose this notebook from the gift shop with her "adventure money" from Brent's mom.
We drove along the north coast and got lunch at a yummy place in Hanalei (Fresh Bite Farm to Beach, in case we ever go back :)).
We drove to see Opaeka'a Falls from the road:
We had tour guides on the boat who explained the history of the grotto to us on the way up. On the way back they performed a hula and other musical numbers.
Our walk through the lush garden area to and from the boat was so beautiful.
After the boat ride we got an early dinner and then went to check in at our hotel- I had gotten a deal through Priceline for 50% off at the Outrigger Kauai Beach Resort. It was a super fancy hotel with beautiful swimming pools. That evening we mainly enjoyed the hot tub since it was kind of chilly, but the next morning the kids were so excited to do the waterslide.
I was eating breakfast by the pool while Brent and the kids went down the slide over and over again.
There was a worker by the waterslide that would hold up a little sign when it was all clear and your turn to go down the waterslide. We forgot Audrey's floaties on the trip, so Brent was going down the waterslide first and then catching Audrey. Well, one time Audrey raced up the stairs in front of Brent. He assumed she would wait for him at the top, but she didn't. Instead she went down the waterslide and went right under the water. I was sitting at the table eating my breakfast, and looked down at my phone (I swear for 10 seconds only) to see if I had gotten a good picture of Coen. When I looked up, the worker (who was fully dressed) was getting out of the pool, holding Audrey! I ran over to them and took Audrey from her, as Brent was running back down the stairs after not seeing Audrey waiting at the top. We both thanked her profusely for jumping in and saving our child. Doh!!!
After we checked out, we headed to Costco to get the cheapest lunch in Kauai (Costco pizza slice), and then we had a train tour scheduled at an old plantation.
Our train took us through banana tree fields, and all other sorts of fruits and vegetables. Here's Audrey doing "choo choo!"
We had a beautiful ride through the plantation and then the train stopped and we all got off to feed....
A video of us feeding the boars:
The kids also fed the cows some hay:
That evening we went to the beach in front of the Marriott hotel, where Brent and I had come on our post-honeymoon, 13 years ago! It was so strange to be back and see everything again, but this time have three kids in tow, and to actually live in Hawaii. We could have never predicted we'd be back in such circumstances!
Here's a little example of mine and Brent's personalities- I sat at the beach, perfectly content, but Brent wanted to get back into the Marriott hot tubs that he remembers from all those years ago. I told him no- we don't have wrist bands, we're going to kicked out etc. So I sat on the beach, while Brent went into the Marriott and hung out in the hot tub, chatting with everyone in there. He was having such a grand old time that he came and got the kids to sit in there with him. I stayed on the beach, refusing to break the rules. Classic Jen & Brent.
It was a beautiful sunset that night, and we watched a cruise ship take off from the port and head out to sea.
Also, we are pretty sure it is here that Audrey lost her sparkly sandals. Sigh.
We checked into our next hotel (I had booked this one originally but they only had two open nights, which is why I found that resort for the first night). This hotel was a quaint little inn that had breakfast and lots of lawn games.
On Thursday, our third day there, we went off to the south part of the island. A worker at the inn recommended a few places to stop to on the way to Waimea Canyon. I'm glad I asked a local, because we had lots of fun! First stop was a town called Hanapepe, which the setting of Lilo & Stitch is loosely based on.
We passed this beautiful shop and I had to go inside and take a look at the hand painted dishes. I took pictures of my favorite ones but they were so expensive, so Ava and I just looked and left.
The town is famous for its swinging bridge, so we walked across it- some of us more brave about it than others. 
Here's a video:
He took a picture of some women painting in the shop.
Brent bought me this piece as well as the rectangular platter that was in the first picture I took.
Next we stopped at a black sand beach. We ate our subway sandwiches here, but black sand just isn't as pretty.
The actual canyon is 10 miles long and up to 3,000 feet deep. This is not the funnest place to visit when you're scared of heights. It is a beautiful place, but my hands were sweaty and my heart pumping, and I was overly protective of the kids or Brent getting anywhere NEAR an edge. After Ava had taken a tumble down a dirt road at the sea glass beach, I was extra on edge. As you can tell from this picture, we didn't pack hiking shoes, so we only did one mini walk that is super safe.
Yay- an observation deck with guardrails! It was too sunny for the kids to look for a picture, so the back of their heads looked cute too :) 
Here's a video of the blowhole:
We let the kids each choose a TV dinner from the grocery store and they ate them in the hotel while watching TV- their dream! After we got them all settled, Brent and I went on a date!!
We walked through these caves that are across from the beach at the end of the road on the north side of the island.
Then we turned around to start heading back toward the airport- watching the clock since we had a flight that evening. We stopped and got ice cream for the kids:
Then I saw that there was a nearby park. Our poor park-deprived four-year old was shrieking with delight as she ran toward the big playground. This park was in Princeville, and man was it nice! They also had different exercise things for adults that are jogging through the park. Here's Ava trying to do the rope climb.
Here's how the kids acted in the car in all of our driving:
After getting dinner at Costco once again, we made it to the airport with plenty of time before our flight. We asked the kids what their favorite part of the trip was, and it was the waterslide at the first hotel! I really liked the train ride. The kids thought it was awesome that each day we rode on a different mode of transportation- boat, train, car, airplane. Although the kids fought like craaaaazy any time we drove anywhere in the car, it was still a wonderful vacation and I'm so glad we did it! So many cool memories, and as Brent and I were sitting in the airport, waiting to fly back to Oahu, we started planning- when can we come back to Kauai?
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