The Ragusa Family: Hawaii

Today was simply AMAZING! The kids woke up at 5:45am and it was still dark outside. We left the condo around 7am and drove down to Kahalu'u Beach Park to go snorkeling. It is supposedly one of the best on the island so it was worth the drive for us. The beaches are so different here.....mostly lava. This one had black sand. It was amazing!

But one small problem....Sea Spines were everywhere, in every crack. Of course Drew was the first casualty and had a bleeding toe. It went down hill from there. He wanted nothing to do with the water after that. This was maybe 5 minutes into being there. UGH! I jumped in the water to start snorkeling and quickly RAN out of the water when an eel swam right next to me! I offered to tend to Drew since he didn't want to be in the water.

One small snag when we went snorkeling.......Lauren's toe got split open on tube coral. It bled and bled. We debated on taking her to get stitches to close it up or not. Decided to put on a band aid and call it good. It is just her foot right?

Just want I wanted to see and came to the beach for...SEA TURTLES. Four of them came up to shore. They are so beautiful and HUGE! I was shocked at how big they were. I tried dragging Drew, literally at one point, to go see them but he wouldn't move. So I left him on some of the rocky lava crying so I could go see these turtles. Great mom huh!

Andy and the kids snorkeled for awhile and then Andy made Drew get in the water with us and we snorkeled for about 2 hours. There were hundreds of fish LITERALLY! We used an underwater camera so the pictures aren't the best but they are still good. Drew loved it! So glad he got comfortable and wasn't afraid of stepping on the sea spines! Made the morning so much easier! At one point a sea turtle swam up next to me! That was SO AWESOME!

We got back to the condo, showered and my sweet mom had lunch ready for us! After lunch we left again to go whale watching! This was NOT cheap but so worth it (if you see a whale). This experience was so much fun! You have to picture a large raft with and engine. That was the boat we were on literally. We were a little late leaving and my mom said they were probably patching up the raft! You sit right on the side of the boat and it is going super fast in the ocean. I kept asking if Emily was still in the boat. We were so sore from the waves but so worth it. We only saw one dolphin after being out for 3 hours. Kinda sad but even being on the boat was worth it!