Amy goes to work with Mike... in Hawaii

I travel a lot for my job. Rarely do I travel to exotic locales though. Rarely is not never though.


I cashed in some frequent flier miles and Amy and I travelled first class to a conference at the Fairmount Orchid on the big island of Hawaii.


And of course I took some pictures. If I don't photoblog it, it might as well not have happened.


The flight took about six hours. Amy went to the bathroom about 11,748 times. Good thing first class has its own bathroom.




After landing, we encountered a particularly amazing naturally occurring phenomenon in the rock.








We smiled a bit bigger as we drove toward our hotel.




Once we got there, we spent some time at the pool.

Later that evening we had a our first reception. The host of the convention flew in Kenny Rogers to play traditional Hawaiian music.

Okay, that wasn't Kenny Rogers. But whoever that was performed on a very cool grass stage.




There would be many more receptions. I think that these "meet n' greets" filled with people she didn't know had to be Amy's favorite part. Especially the cool name tag she got to wear.

Not being able to take advantage of the hosted bar probably grated on her a bit.

Actually her being there was very strategic from a business perspective. People tend to like Amy. Since my job is essentially to get people to like me and thus want to do business with me, having her there is like an unspoken endorsement. People get to know her and figure that if I was able to get her to like me enough to be carrying my fifth child, I can't be all that bad.

The hotel also had this amazing naturally occurring waterfall.

Okay, not naturally occurring, but nice backdrops nonetheless.

The second to last day we took a Catamaran trip out into the ocean to snorkel with sea turtles, fish, hermit crabs and other things. Snorkeling is great, especially if you are trying to give your skin a nice, red hue.

My favorite part of the trip had to be the scenery. There was beauty everywhere I looked.

Oh, and there were a lot of pretty flowers too.

The last night we attended the "Meeting of Kings". It was a beautiful show that traced the history of all the islands of the South Pacific.

Amy impressed me by knowing a lot of this stuff already. Leave it to the homeschooling mom to have a handle on the obscure details.

The highlight of the show for me was the "fire knife" dance. First, because it's cool and dangerous, but also because I thought it would provide an opportunity to play with my camera.

The dance did not disappoint. Can't say the same thing about my camera skills. Taking pictures in low light is hard. Taking pictures in rapidly changing light is even harder. Especially when the autofocus keeps hunting. I took over a hundred shots and got very few keepers.

But I lucked out and got a couple really nice ones just as he was getting ready to eat the fire.

First he just tried a taste.

(I love this picture. They should put it on their brochure.)

That little taste must have suited him well because he went for a much bigger bite after that.

Sadly, our 5 days in paradise came to a close. It's okay though. By this time we were really missing our kids. We knew they were in good hands, but we still were imagining them with us while we considered which activities they would like best.

But it was nice to spend time with just the two of us.

Even so; next time, we bring the kids.