As a Christmas gift to the family, my dad took us to Maui for 2 weeks. He paid for the airfare, room and some food for 5 of us. It was my Mom, stepsister Michelle, her husband Daniel, my dad and I.

We stayed at the Maui Islander Hotel. We had a 2-bedroom condo. It was nice except I had to sleep on the pull out sofa bed. Oh well at least I was close to the kitchen. Ha ha ha.

This trip was a dream come true to me. I was finally gonna be able to see the Christian R. Lassen gallery. He is my favorite artist but I talk about him in another link.

Our first day there was wonderful. I have never seen water so blue and clean. We drove around the island getting food and such. We stopped at an over-look to take some pictures and could you believe that we saw whale spouts! It was so cool.

Well, once we got back to downtown Lahaina, my first stop was the gallery. It was even more beautiful than I could imagine. I cried when I looked at all of these paintings he did.

I walked up Front Street, which is right on the ocean. Gee could it be any more picture perfect? I got to see the restaurant Cheeseburger in Paradise based of the Jimmy Buffet song. I also got to see Bubba Gump restaurant that is based off the Forest Gump movie. I hung out there a lot. I got to know a bunch of the servers and the bartender Kane. They were so awesome. I took pictures with lots of the staff and they signed them and mailed them back to me here in Ohio.

I also spent many days on the beach getting tan. I did a bit of snorkeling too. I even bought a cheap snorkel set so I could go daily. I did pay for a snorkeling outing. I saw so many cool things. I got to see a sea turtle and barracudas. It was just too cool.

I also spent some time at a store call David's of Hawaii. It's basically a head shop. They sold gag/joke stuff, water pipes-not bongs, and sex stuff. It was a cool store and had cool employees.

I got to be the first person on the Breast wall. Yes, my boobs are on a wall in Maui. 3 times in fact. Once by myself and 2 times with the employees. Mamma Maui, as we called her, had a small store right outside David's. She sold handmade jewelry and other things.

We did a whale watching tour with the Maui ocean center, it was great. We did see whales. It was very hard to get good pictures of them too.

The weather was great except for a few days when it rained. But on those days we went to the aquarium and did indoor stuff.

I did get a tattoo when I was in Maui. I met Lassen. That was the best part of my trip.

I never did make it to Pearl harbor but that is just a reason to go back. Yes, I will be going back someday. Aloha!