We are shaking our heads in disbelief knowing that the end of our wonderful vacation is drawing near! A bonus for sure that Air Canada has granted us one day reprieve but still I keep getting these emails from all of you at home describing the weather.  I had the funniest email from my friend Jenifer today.  She attached a picture of herself along with the caption "I don't hate you!"

Thanks for the chuckle Jenifer but I'm going to put a contrasting photo below of what my day was like today.

Hard to believe we are on the same planet isn't it?  I'd hate me if I were you!

Day started out with me opening my eyes to the most amazingly beautiful sunrise!  It is not hard to get out of bed here and we are all up bright and early every morning.  Today we had our surf boards until 10 AM so Duane, Maureen and I headed down to the beach to get a paddle in before the boards had to be returned and Bill of course, deeming this a "girlie sport" decided to do something manly and went for a run.  The ocean was like glass this morning and we all enjoyed our time on the water immensely.  After we all had a decent paddle, Maureen and I paddled out and anchored ourselves to a buoy where we could enjoy the sun and visit.  As we were sitting there chatting an elderly lady came swimming up to us.  She needed to get past us to touch the buoy we had tethered ourselves to.  I told her she was welcome to hold onto my surf board but she said "No, she needed to touch the buoy for Bertha.  Bertha was her friend and she was 101 and she couldn't make it today for their swim because their ride to the beach had arrived too late."  Apparently she and Bertha do this swim together on a daily basis.  The distance from the beach to this buoy was easily the distance of a football field, maybe even a little longer.  Maureen and I were both amazed at this and upon further inquiry discovered that our swimming friend was 94!  I exclaimed that I would be sending my Dad an email tonight to tell him I had found the girl for him.  She just laughed and said she had already outlived two husbands and wasn't looking for anymore!  What a gal!

Returned the surfboards and decided to head out to the reef to check out the snorkelling.  It was the most amazing morning for snorkelling with turtles today.  I found myself face to face with five large turtles.  Bill was a few meters away from me so I swam over and told him to come and have a look at the five I had found.  He looked at me and said he had five right in front of him.  Ten large turtles all around us!  It was fabulous!  The funniest thing is you get the distinct impression that they are checking you out just like you are checking them out.  We have seen turtles in Maui on previous visits but NEVER like we have seen them this year.  It is so wonderful to see the reef thriving and beautiful with all the spectacular sea life!  We never get tired of it!  I think Duane has some group photos of the turtles and will attach them later.

Came back to the condo for lunch.  Maureen and Duane had an owners meeting this afternoon so Bill and I went off to check out a carpet store in Kapelua where these guys had purchased a beautiful Hawaiian carpet.  We were just going to "look" but ended up putting a deposit on one for ourselves.  We often like to buy a holiday souvenir and this one will fit perfectly into our living room.   We now just have to figure out how we are going to get it home.

Tomorrow we are off to Elleair to play golf.