It’s been a long summer and fall. Thankfully, now that our film Finding Josephine is out and the Tennessee winter is getting colder… Indiana and I found time to slip away to the beach for a while.
The first time we came here to Hawaii was in February of 2015 when Indy was just about to turn a year old. Though our trip was near her birthday, it was actually for mine. I was turning fifty soon and Joey knew that when I was a young Marine, I’d been stationed on Oahu and hadn’t been back there since then. So she arranged a wonderful family vacation for all of us to spend two weeks in paradise to celebrate me turning the big ‘five-o.’ Not long after that, I shared a blog post about the trip, that included this sweet video.
Now, it’s four years later... and Indiana’s about to turn the big ‘five.’ Her birthday is a little less than a week away and she’s having a ball here playing in the sand...
And on the beach...
And in the waves...
and meeting the locals...
Our neighbors and friends Gabe and Mandy are here with us (with their little one Ash), and I think it’s been so good for them to get away after all their family’s been through in the last month. I know it’s been good for us to be with them.
Joey’s best friend Julie and her husband Joe are here too. They come to the same spot every year and are the ones who first told Joey about it in 2015. They’re so much fun and we’ve all had a wonderful time sipping on Mai Tai’s and soaking up the sun.
We only have a couple of days left before we go home and we will be kind of sad to leave here, but also excited to get back. As I mentioned, we have a big birthday coming up this weekend and Joey’s sisters and mama and daddy are coming down from Indiana to celebrate with us. In the meantime, here are a few more of my favorite moments so far.
Indy crashing a grown-up sunrise yoga class...
Indy dancing in the back of the luau...
There are way too many special pics and moments to share here in one blog post, but my favorite one is below. Me with our little one. Just holding her. Thinking about the past and all God has done in our lives... and dreaming about the future and all He has still yet to do.
P.S. The other thing being here on vacation reminds me of... is the day back in 2004 when I was at home and Joey came into the farmhouse and said she just saw Blake Shelton driving down the road in an old truck being pulled by another big truck with a camera crew in the back filming. It was really fun for her and exciting for me because we both knew they were making the video that day for a song I had recently written with Paul Overstreet about a guy wishing he was on “some beach, some where...”
Thanks Blake! You blessed us greatly with this one.
