Aloha!

Sometimes Bob beats me to the pictures and gets them all up on Facebook. Then I forget to put them on the blog.
So here's a post I should have done last month:

Welcome to Hawaii!!

{Do these guys look thrilled, or what?!}

Sometimes I wonder if a direct flight is really better than having layovers/time to stretch. However, we did manage to convince Braxton to take a nap and it turned into a more relaxing flight after that. The kids all had their own personal entertainment portals on the seats right in front of them, so we didn't hear from the rest of them much at all. Go figure. It wasn't until we were walking from our terminal to baggage claim that I realized how many kids we had in tow, "Where's Braxton? Grab the stroller! Where's your bag? Why aren't you carrying anything?!" We made it though. All of us. And all our stuff. Eventually.

After a big day of arriving {read securing a rental car, fiddling with our GPS, acquiring directions, reacquainting ourselves with humidity - "Mom, I'm sweaty!", locating the resort, finding dinner -mmm Zippy's, meeting up with Mike and Julie's family at Costco to go shopping for a week's worth of groceries to feed a small army, picking up Grandma and Grandpa at the airport and then finally getting back to the timeshare for unloading and carrying all said groceries up to our room on the 10th floor} we all passed out pretty early that night.

Most of us were up with the sun at 6am the next morning...


Mmmm, cereal tastes so much better with a sunrise.


Then off to explore with Grandpa...

And of course getting familiar with the location of all the pools...

The next day was Sunday. A perfect day for a drive around the entire island to show my family my old stomping grounds.

"Look kids, my old junior high! See that sign? I made that! That's my haole hand!"

Stunningly life-like, wouldn't you agree?

I'll spare the details here, but it suffices to say that my family has now seen the majority of the fascinating architecture of my formative years. Yes, I'm sure they were fascinated.

The tour started first thing in the morning and took us from Ko Olina across the island via the H3 to Kailua to attend church in the 2nd Ward. From there we took the scenic route through Kailua/Kaneohe on our way to the North Shore. We met up with Grandpa and Mike's family in Laie for an early dinner at Aunt Sue's while she was teaching out there at BYU-Hawaii. We were heading home just before sunset and so of course we decided to go full circle and continue around the island so we could stop at Sunset Beach for some pictures.

We spent another day on the North Shore, mostly hanging out with the honus at a little beach I'd only ever heard about but had never been to. Score!

This picture makes me laugh. Is it just me or does Q look as if he's saying,

"Dad! How the heck am I supposed to swim with these turtles all over the place?!"

Seriously, most of those dark spots aren't rocks, they're turtles! Even I had a hard time not running into them, but it was such a cool experience for everyone.

We took a break from the sun by heading back to Haleiwa for some shave ice. Between all of us I still don't think we managed to sample even half of the flavors they offer!

Tuesday was the day I was "in charge" of planning our excursion. My grand plan was to take everyone on an easy hike up to Maunawili Falls. On our way to Kailua we stopped at the Pali Lookout to take in the view of "my side" of the island. I still think it's the prettiest side.

Unfortunately, this was the only "easy" part of our day. The hike to Maunawili Falls wasn't quite the stroll through the forest I remember from my younger days. It's still a pretty mild hike, but we forgot to bring bug spray and we had convinced Grandma and Grandma to come. It turned out to be a little more high adventure than I anticipated, but it made for some good stories when we came home. I don't know where the pictures from our video camera are, so for now I'll have to leave you with a link.

The next day was Wednesday and that means Swap Meet Day.

I don't have a whole lot to say about the Swap Meet. It's hot. But the kids managed to find some cool stuff in the short amount of time we were willing to walk around in the blazing sun.

We debated whether or not we wanted to drag the little ones around Pearl Harbor for the rest of the afternoon. We decided they were all a little young to appreciate the somberness of the Arizona Memorial. Turns out Braxton was too young/small to tour the Bowfin submarine so that pretty much made our decision for us and we ended up on the Mighty Mo.

Did you know that it was on this Battleship that they signed the document that officially ended World War II? Pretty cool, I say. And it's a freaking Battleship folks! How often to you get to run around and play "army man" on a real Battleship?! Good call, Dad.

Thursday was our last day with Grandpa and Mike's family before they had to leave. We got to spend it in one of my very favorite places with one of my very favorite people (Bob - where the heck are my pictures with Meagan?!)

Mike and his boys took some kayaks out to the Moks and the rest of us played on the perfectness that is Lanikai Beach (minus the portuguese man-of-war that found Quintin).

Ahh, paradise.

On our last day we took our time packing up all our souvenirs, chocolate covered macadamia nuts and dirty clothes. Then we spent our last few hours at the PCC hopping from village to village to get the highlights - coconut jokes and tree climbing, making/trying really hard to make fire, weaving a fish, swinging poi balls, getting warrior/princess tattoos, immitating Tongan drummers, slurping up watermelon and pineapple icecream and taking a canoe ride.

It was time to go before we knew it, but we got a farewell sunset just before we made it to the airport.

Mahalo Hawaii - I can't wait to come back again!