Our final days in Hawaii

Beach by Hale'iwa

Beach by Hale'iwa

Jen and I hiking out to the lookout at Turtle Bay

Jen and Jelisa

Jelisa and Shellee--last snow cone:(

Jen and Shellee sitting on our new ride

Our amazing rental car--2011 Jeep Patriot

Inside our rental car

Dropping off our rental car at Enterprise

Jen at the airport with our ridiculous amount of luggage

It was sad to come to the close of our vacation as we walked up to Turtle Bay Resort to pick up our rental car. We were very pleased with the car we were given which was a 2011 Jeep Patriot--brand new! It had 777 miles on it when we checked it out and we died over the new freedom we experienced having a car. For the first time ever, we were able to park in our parking spot within Turtle Bay which was quite the accomplishment for us! We drove into Hale'iwa to get our last shave ice and were so sad to think that we wouldn't have another one so delicious in quite some time. For our last time, we decided to go to Matsumoto's because Shellee loves the coconut cream flavor there and because we had gone to Aoki's a couple days before.

It was exciting to be coming home to see our family and friends, but also sad to think that this place we had began to call home was soon to be distant from us--a very bittersweet moment. I woke up the morning after getting our car around 7 am to take a video of our condo. Jen and Shellee woke up soon afterwards and we got to work packing the rest of our stuff and cleaning here and there. Shellee had a great idea to take all of our leftover food to Susan as it was going to go to waste. We cleaned out the fridge, swept the floors, packed our bags, and loaded the car. It was sad to look back at our condo for the last time as we drove out of the parking lot to Susan's house. We didn't have our key anymore so I had to drop Shellee and Jen off to take the food in while I drove around killing time. Finally, Shellee and Jen came out and were so pleased with our decision to take our food to Susan as she apparently is going through financial difficulties and really needed it. Glad Shellee pursued the idea to do that!

We drove to Kahuku for the last time and looked around a little shop on the side of the road, then took off to Hale'iwa to do a few things for the last time. We ate at Kua Aina, picked up shave ice juice to take back to the mainland, then went to the Dole Plantation for Dole whip ice cream. After going to Dole, we headed for the Honolulu airport and found that we arrived sooner than anticipated which we didn't want because we had a lot of time to kill before our flight boarded. We decided to drive into Waikiki so that we could stop somewhere and walk around, but soon found that there wasn't a place to park anywhere! That started getting super frustrating as we had soon made an entire circle around Waikiki without stopping anywhere. Soon we were headed back to the airport and arrived again, way before we had to return our car so we headed back to Waikiki to find a California Pizza Kitchen that Shellee had seen. Once we drove back into town, we couldn't find it anywhere and yet again, there was nowhere to pull off so we turned around, got gas, then headed back to the airport which took us a ton of time! We were finally hitting about 4:45 pm and the car had to be back by 5 pm so we dropped the car off and took a shuttle back to the airport.

Once we were at the airport, we checked in and weighed our luggage and found out that one of Shellee's suitcases was too heavy. Shellee transferred some of her stuff to Jen's suitcase and we were good to go so we checked our luggage in. We were hungry and still had about four hours until we could board so we asked for directions to restaurants within walking distance and soon found ourselves in a goose chase. We decided to forget that idea and just go through the gates to eat at one of the restaurants in the airport.

Our flight boarded around 9:30 pm and we were soon off for a six hour flight back home. We arrived in Las Vegas at about 7:15 am and the Hoopes were there to pick us up which we were very grateful for! Shellee's brother Travis and his wife Lindsey also came along and we all went to Mimi's Cafe for breakfast. It was so delicious! Thank you SO much to the Hoopes for all of your work and efforts to make this trip happen--we sure appreciate it!