End of our trip

Well, I had all good intentions of keeping the blog updated day by day as the trip went on. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) the trip was jam packed with stuff from early in the morning, until late at night. With the exception of yesterday (Friday) I was up at 5:30 every morning to either go on a scuba trip, or a snorkeling trip or something like that. So as I sit here on Saturday morning packing my stuff up to go home, looking out the window (at this picture I just took 5 minutes ago to remind me of what I woke up to every morning)...


I'm wishing I would have posted more pictures along the way. I'm so glad we got to come on this trip. It was so fun to be with all my extended family for a trip like this. It was also fun for my kids (the 4th generation represented on this trip) to be able to interact with their 2nd cousins. We did some fun things. We went to Warren and Annabelle's in Lahaina. A funny "Myth and Magic" show that all the adults went to.


Dallas had been to the show before, and I had heard how good it was. It was definitely as good as people had made it out to be.

We went to a Hawaiian Luau down the beach at the Marriott. Our group occupied 5 tables. Towards the end a minor food fight erupted and lasted until the lady behind Dallas at another table got hit with a cantaloupe.

This is Jared getting ready to throw an object of food.

My family also did a lot of scuba diving on this trip. On Monday, my Dad, Jonathan and I dove Lanai. We dove with Lahaina Divers and dove Cathedral 2 and "Wash Rock" On the first dive, Cathedral 2 (for those of you who don't know, the "Cathedrals" locations at Lanai are the most well known and popular dives) I had a low fill tank but didn't check my air before getting in the water. 10 minutes into my dive, I realized I only had about 1200 psi left and would have to cut my dive short. I was pretty frustrated with myself for not checking my air, and for missing the best dive of the day. There is a group of 3 brothers that do underwater photography. They call themselves "C3 Submerged". They are well known for their underwater photography. One of them dove with us. We talked a lot about cameras and had a great dive. Check out their website at www.c3submerged.com.


I had borrowed a camera from Brian Beecroft and took it along on most of my dives. It's a lot harder taking pictures underwater with a point and shoot, than it is on land with a D-SLR. Needless to say, I'm not super stoked with most of my pictures. The picture above I was able to take before I ran out of air on my first dive.

On Wednesday we went back to Lanai but with the rest of the family (minus Jen). We dove Cathedral 1 and Nobb Hill. Both were cool dives. On Thursday we dove with Ed Robinsons Dive Adventures. Everyone on the internet had said these guys were the best. Their service really was good. We dove Molokini and then Dove 5 Caves. We saw SOOOO many turtles on the second dive. We also swam into a cave that once we were in, we surfaced, and found ourselves in an air cavity within the cave that you could breath in. It was really cool. Unfortunately Jen wasn't able to do dive on the second dive because she was unable to equalize. At Molokini, we were treated to this shark.....

On Friday we went to Lahaina (again....it's about an hour drive) and had surfing lessons. It was so much fun. Maury, Wendi, Alex, Beau, Rocky, Krista, Jen, Sydnee, Lindsey, Carli, Tiffany, Jared and I all went. We seriously had a blast. Everyone did soooo good.


We're all very thankful to Grandma Hazel for bringing us all together and making this trip possible. We will plan on making a book for everyone to remember the trip by. If anyone from the trip has any questions or photo requests, feel free to email me.

Not so sleepy Sunday

Many of us woke up today with the greatest intentions. Intentions of going to church in Kihei. A lot of people actually woke up and got ready. When we all arrived at the church building we found out that today was stake conference so the time had changed. We decided instead to all go out for breakfast. So those of us who actually got up and went to church ended up enjoying everyone else's company at Stella Blues.

Here we are in front of the LDS church in Kihei once we found out there was no meeting at 9:00 like we all had planned on.

We were quite a sight to behold for the other patrons of Stella Blues. They were real good to get us all seated and taken care of so quickly. Of course by the time they got done cooking all our breakfast meals, it was almost time for lunch!
After we got back to the hotel, everyone started doing their own thing. Including watching football. Others went outside and set up on the lawn near one of the pools. The grass area was so large and comfortable.

Carli was a good sport all day. Despite being limited by her cast, she was able to keep herself entertained all day and have a good attitude about it.




Tanner is such a good baby you hardly ever even know he is around. Here he is trying to get his hands on my wide angle lens.

Andrea and Reed returning from.....well, who knows....the "don't ask don't tell" policy applies here I think.


Alex, Sydnee, Lindsey, and Carli all got henna tatoos.


Cameron really enjoyed playing football with all the big boys. He got trampled on a few times for sure.

Jared, Jen, Tiffany, Krystal, and Courtney playing cards.

What could possibly be said about Tanner?

Some of the girls ended up getting into the game too.

A Molester Among Us

So we show up at the airport in Phoenix to leave for Maui. My cousin Brian (pictured here) shows up with a comb-over haircut, a cheesy Hawaiian shirt, a molester mustache, pasty white legs, and cheesy white tennis shoes.

I figured he'd shave the 'stache once we got here, but no such luck.

We've been having a great day today so far. I'll include a couple pictures. You can click the pictures to see them larger.

Off to Hawaii

So we're off to Hawaii in a couple hours. The whole Tanner family including cousins, aunts, uncles, grandma etc are going to Maui for a reunion of sorts. Plan on lots of pictures. I'm hoping to get lots of diving, photography and tennis in. Three of my passions. I'll post them here first

Guilty Pleasure

I found something in Ohio that beats Arizona. I was out getting some collar stays for my shirts at the mall one night and got lured into a nail shop for a pedicure. When the lady told me it was $35 for pedicure I quickly turned and around to leave and said "No Thanks". But then I asked if they used the potato peeler razors. They do. I love those razor things. They use them in Georgia too. But they aren't allowed to use them in Arizona. I have very bad heels so it was very refresshing to have all the dead skin cut off. Yes, I'll admit it. I enjoy getting pedicures. Especially when my guy friends go with me and sit next to me and we get pedicures together. There's nothing more manly than a boys night out to get pedicures. Too bad I'll have to do them solo in Ohio for now.

A tumbleweed no more

Someone recently described me as a tumbleweek blowing in the wind as I was on my photo tour through Northern Arizona. That tumbleweed just got blown into a corner and isn't going to blowing around much more.

Starting tomorrow I will be flying to Ohio and starting work with a company based in Akron. No more photography, scuba, tennis and yardwork during the day I guess. As Jen mentioned on our family blog, it's been nice to have a break for a couple months, but it will be good to get back into something engaging. I'm going to spending a lot of time in Ohio. The weather there is quite a bit different than here. It's going to take some getting used to.

I'm hoping that maybe at night I'll have a chance to do some photography. Maybe not, but I'll try. Wish me luck!