Hawaii, day one. 2-11-22

We have been married 40 years!

To celebrate, we took a trip to Hawaii.

Dean's sister Marianne suggested we stay with her son Matthew and his girlfriend Angie. We thought that might be a little awkward, since we had never met Angie, and hadn't seen Matthew for many years.  When Dean contacted Matthew,  Matthew was super kind and told us we would be welcome to stay with them.   Matthew and Angie live on the Big Island.

 So this is where we get to call home for the next week! 

Not only is the home amazing, but we felt super comfortable with Matt and Angie!  We rented a car,  (white Jeep in the first photo)  thinking we would see the island, and just come back to Matt's place in the evenings.  

Day one we wanted to go to a beach!

M & A suggested we go to Beach 69.

This beach was beautiful!  We got our chairs set up, and pumped up one of the paddle boards.  While I was helping pump up the board, a wave came up and grabbed one of my sandals!  I have had those sandals for so many years, and the first 10 minutes of our Hawaiian vacation I lost one of them!  

Dean took the paddleboard out to see if he could find my sandal.  No luck, but it was fun trying.  

We were enjoying the amazing surroundings, which included me following this crab, trying to get a picture of  him.  With no warning, there was a LOUD blast!  We assumed it was a gunshot...a little panic for us, and and others on the beach. 

 As it turned out, that paddle board sitting next to us exploded!  I think maybe the heat may have made it burst.  It was so loud!

So our first day at the beach was amazing....but not perfect.  Having to walk back to the car with bare feet, carrying the heavy paddle board, caused one of my arches in my foot to have issues, and one of the paddle boards was dead!  Oh well, this gave Dean a project to work on for the rest of the week.