For this trip we went to the Island of Tahiti, one of the islands he served on, and Moorea, which is an island he did not serve on. If you don't want to read all my stories about our trip - I created a video, which sums it up:
Now for the details:
First off, if you are going to go to Tahiti- here are three tips:
1.) Wear lots of sunscreen with a high SPF. It's hot and sunny!! We both got burned!
2.) Bring bug spray!! My legs got massacred one night!
3.) Be prepared to spend a LOT on food. It is not cheap on Tahiti. We got pizza three different times because it was the best value. (If you get pizza, get the cream sauce- yum)!
Okay- those are really the ONLY negative points, but so worth it!
We took the red eye, and landed nice and early. After picking up our rental car we started to drive around the Island of Tahiti. We stopped at a Marae, which is an ancient Polynesian Temple.
We found some beautiful gardens that had a waterfall.
We had to stop and take a picture of Josh with the car in front of the golf sign because Josh got one with his bike as a missionary. Here are the two pictures:
One of the coolest things we saw our first morning was a beautiful black sand beach. The sand was so fine and soft. The coast line was amazing. There was a stray dog walking around the beach park, and Josh told me if he starts to come towards us, just pretend to pickup a rock, and he would go away. I guess the poor strays are used to getting rocks thrown at them. He never did come close.
We saw a cave and some more gardens. Here we bought some delicious small bananas. We saw several banana trees throughout our trip. They were the sweetest, yummiest bananas ever.
Before catching the ferry to Moorea, we stopped at the dedication of a new stake center. Josh had served in this stake, and we were hoping he might see some people he knew. While we (I mean he- I can't speak French) did talk to a lot of local Polynesians outside of the stake center getting ready for the lunch, most of the people were inside for the dedication. We did, however, run into a past missionary that lived with Josh. He was the "meanest" missionary- always breaking the rules and such! ha ha In fact, when we talked to him at the church, he said he was mean on his mission. At our wedding, one of Josh's mission buddies told a story of how this missionary had a cell phone and kept calling his girl friend, but Josh was the brave one to call President about it. It was so funny that "cell phone" missionary is the one we ran into. It was really fun for Josh to talk to him.
We were able to get free Tahitian food at the stake center, and I got to try some of Josh's favorites, minus the raw fish, of course! My picture of the luncheon wasn't great, but I still have one for the memory.
The big ferry was our next stop...
I can't tell you how many times Josh stopped to buy fruit. I finally snapped a picture of him at a fruit stand, but my little sports camera does not zoom in, so it is hard to see him buying the fruit. (I left my phone at home, so most of my pictures are with my little camera).
By the time we got to our hotel, I was exhausted. Sleeping on planes while pregnant is... well, you can imagine! We were hot and sweaty, so we swam in the hotel pool for a bit. Josh did snorkel a little, and then we ordered dinner to go, and brought it back to our room, where we were upgraded for free to a bungalow with a private plunge pool. 
For church we went to Josh's mission president's ward. I am not going to lie- church was a little miserable for me- ha ha. I loved talking to the English speaking sister missionaries before church, and one even let me borrow her French hymn book, so I could attempt to sing the songs in French, but there was no air conditioning in the church. There were big fans up really high, that I couldn't feel, and I left my water in the car. I really wouldn't have minded too much, except, I was sweating out all the water I drank that morning. Finally, I went and got my water and brought it into the church for the rest of the meeting. It was cool to hear the testimonies spoken in French or Tahitian, and Josh translated a little bit for me. It was especially cool to sit by and talk to President and Sister Tarati. We also met the new Temple president and his wife who were also visiting the ward. We were in their daughter's ward in Colorado. Small World!
After church we went to another Marae. This one was bigger, and we thought we would just walk around the Temple sites for a nice Sunday activity. The only problem was... we took the wrong path. Apparently, you can do some good hiking around the Marae, and we ended up going for about 2 miles trying to find the short little path around the sites and back to the parking lot. It was all shaded and very beautiful. Josh found some big snails. This might be tmi (and maybe it will make you chuckle), but I had to go to the bathroom so bad... Remember all that water I drank during church? At some point I finally decided that holding it was not going to be worth it. There was no one around, so Josh stood guard, and ... I will let you guess the rest! ;-)
When we finally made it back to the car, we drove to the top of the mountain to see the view, called Belvedere. It was breathtaking with the two coves.
Since it was Sunday, and we didn't want to swim on Sunday, I convinced Josh to humor me with some maternity photos. I was only 23 weeks that day, so my belly isn't huge (it's still big), yet, but I have never taken maternity photos, and I will not take them when I am really huge. It was kind of fun, but my little sports camera really wasn't the best for it. Josh got some better ones with his phone the next night before dinner.
One place we stopped to attempt some pictures didn't turn out because a Tahitian ran up to the car and asked for us to tow him. Thank goodness Josh speaks French. I had no idea what was going on, but I guess the guy needed us to give him a push (I mean pull) start. Before we knew it, he was tying a rope to the bottom of our car in the back. We pulled his little car with our little car for a few hundred yards before his car started. Then we stopped going, and he unhooked the rope.
We also gave a nice couple from Europe a ride after we saw them hitchhiking. We just took them from one beach to the next, but it presented a great opportunity to talk about the church.
Sunday evening, we watched the Sunset on the beach. Then we walked along the board walk where the over-water bungalows were located. As we were watching the water, we saw an octopus. It was so cool. We also saw our first black tip reef shark, and we heard that a lot more sharks came out that night, but it was pooring rain at the point of seeing the one shark, so we went to our own bungalow before we saw the other sharks.
Our first real water day (excluding that first night) was so amazing! The water is the most clear I have ever seen. The coral is beautiful for being this close to shore, and the variety and colors of the fish were amazing. Out of all the places I have snorkeled, this ranks number 1.
We stared the day by using the hotels paddle boards.
We snorkeled around the bungalows, and saw some pretty coral with tiny pretty baby fish. I got them on my video. (Side note- my sports camera is so cool. I hooked it to my snorkel mask).
Then, we had the chance to go to a motu (island off an island). The hotel drained the pool for the day, so since we couldn't use the pool they were offering free rides (usually $80) to the motu to snorkel. We loaded up our fruit and snorkel masks and jumped aboard.
There were actually two motus next to each other, so we snorkeled in the channel. Once we realized the current took us down the channel, we hiked up pretty far up the island on the shore, and let the current take us down as we saw the pretty fish and sting rays. We took a few breaks for fruit and water. Towards the end, I was tired, but Josh wasn't done, yet. He jumped back in the water with a teenage boy from our group. They saw a shark.
When we were snorkeling, Josh was surrounded by fish. Then later on, one fish did not like him. It kept baring it's teeth at Josh and acting like it was going to charge.
We met a couple families from Heber, UT. They were actually members of the church, too. It was fun meeting all sorts of people. We ended up going to the same lunch place as them, which was a permanent food truck. It was my least favorite meal, but it was also one of the cheaper ones. (Still pricey for what it was).
We also stopped at the Rotui (juice) Factory on our way to our next hotel. If you know Josh, you know he LOVES fruit and juice. Of course, he bought some juice at the factory. Pineapple was his favorite. Mine was vanilla banana.
Our new hotel, The Inter-Continental, had fresh flowers all over our room. They also left me a sewing kit, so I decided to make my own flower head leis. I put on my dress for dinner, and we walked the grounds. (For the record, I liked our first hotel - The Hilton- better).
The Inter-Continental had a dolphin area and a turtle rescue area, but the beach was not as good, and there wasn't really good snorkeling right off the shore.
Our next day was rockin!! This was our big day to Lagoonarium. It was $35 per person, but so worth it. We rode on a motorized boat to a different motu. The motu was set up where each party had their own tiki hut. There was a bathroom, water, and coffee to drink. (I am not a coffee drinker, but I am not sure why anyone would want to drink it on a hot day- ha ha). The owners set up ropes all around, so as you snorkeled you could hold onto the ropes. It was pretty wavy, so we were so glad they put ropes up. Josh and I snorkeled using the ropes all the way out to the reef.
I took lots of videos underwater here because Yom (I think that was his name), fed the sting rays, birds, and sharks. A couple times he threw the food right in front of my head. One shark swam right under me. I screamed, but it was awesome!! I counted about 7 sharks at one time. I was too tired to go out for the second feeding, but Josh said there was about 12 sharks that time. The sting rays loved Yom. As soon as he got in the water, they were all over him, and he even rode them in the water. He brought them around for us to pet. It really was a cool day!
We met another couple at Lagoonarium who were from the mid-west somewhere. It turns out the girl's parents live in St. George. Small world- once again!
That evening we ate hamburgers for dinner across the street from the hotel, and then I went to bed about 8. I was in bed around 8 most nights because I was exhausted by the end of the day!
This is a side note, but you don't realize what you can't eat while pregnant until you go to Tahiti. ha ha They love their food under-cooked or raw. Plus, there was a lot of fish options with mercury. I even had to have them take my steak back to cook it more one night because it was not well done, as I asked. Another time, I got an omelet. It was only half cooked. Another time, one of our pizzas had egg yolk dumped on top. Luckily, it was only on a couple pieces, so Josh ate those ones. The food I did eat was really good, for the most part, but man- don't got while pregnant if you want to try all the local cuisine!
Anyway, the last day, we had to head back on the ferry to Tahiti because our flight was an early one the next morning. We kind of lazed around in the morning, but ended up giving another couple a ride. We were checking out of our hotel, when a couple was talking about missing their ferry because they would have to wait for the taxi to take them to the ferry. (Tahitian time is worse than Mormon Standard Time ;-). Josh offered them a ride. They ended up buying me a donut on the ferry because we saved them a bunch of money for the taxi.
Back on Tahiti, we picked up some treats for the airplane from the Carfor (like Walmart), and then went to see the Temple. We wanted to do a session, but it was closed and they didn't have clothing rental.
We went on a short little hike to a big pretty waterfall.
Then we stopped at the blowhole. I only got a video of the blowhole, so if you want to see it you will have to watch the you tube video I made. There was some pretty cool views of the coast and water at that stop, too.
We found one of Josh's houses he lived in as a missionary. We tried to say, "la Orana," which means "hello" in Tahitian, but no-one came out, so we assumed they were off doing missionary work. The house was on church property for the missionaries. As I took the picture, the door opened, and a sister was surprised to see us at her front door. I guess her companion was sick, so they were home at the moment. It was fun for Josh to share some of his memories of the house and church grounds with the sisters.
I forgot to mention that we went to the Papeete marche (market in French) to buy some souvenirs for our kids and get some guavas. We ended up buying some delicious banana po'e. Then we got some super creamy coconut cream ice cream.
We found some pretty flowers at the church on the ground, so I put them in my hair for our last dinner on Tahiti.
I ended up with some Tahitian cash in the end that I ended up spending at the airport on breakfast, but I did take a picture of it because it was so cute with turtles and birds.
This trip was a much needed break. Molly, Josh's mom, was so gracious to come to our house and watch our kids. Josh and I needed this long date together, and I came home feeling rejuvenated. Now, I can conquer being a mom and everything else again, Thanks Molly for watching the kids! Thanks Josh for taking me back to your mission! Thanks to everyone else who filled in on my other duties I left behind. :-)
