So, we're back from Hawaii... and I swear, Ben's grown like a weed in the two weeks we've been away. Hawaii was amazing, truely, one of the best holidays ever. Okay, the weather wasn't the best, the torrential rainpour was a bit of a problem but the up side of that was it wasn't too hot :) Still got a bit of colour on our pale irish skin...

We had a bit of an issue with a coconut tree - Bob was showing him the trunk and all of a sudden Ben decided that the tree was not his friend and he got very upset... This bad temper lasted for a few days and so we decided that we had to visit the tree again and give it back its temper - piece was restored after that :)

Here we are at the hot pools in Puna and on one of the black sand beaches near Mauna Lani - Ben loved the pools and we spent a good part of Monday swimming there...

This is the Caldera at Kileau... It was humbling and a little scary to be standing on one of the most active volcanoes in the world... The steam vents are all over the terrain and it was an amazing experience visiting this place... The only problem was that we didn't realise the enormity of it and didn't give it enough time... We got lucky with the B&B we were staying at because our host had written about 24 tour books on the island and gave us the most amazing information about where to go and what to do and that really made our trip very special

I could go on and on, but I'm going to sign off now - a small aside... we've finally managed to take a few photo's of Ben smiling - hopefully there will be more in the months to come... :)