No, I did not take this from a picture postcard. I really took the shot myself. There is a reason Hawaii is called "The Rainbow State". It is beautiful and green and...wet much of the time.
To start this blog properly, I need to go back several months when our oldest son, David, told us he and his wife, Rachel, had decided to take their little family to Hawaii this summer and invited us to come along. It has been several years since we were in Hawaii, and it is one of my favorite places to visit, so, of course, we jumped at the chance.
So, here we are, boarding in Los Angeles, headed for paradise.
Staying in Hawaii or just about anywhere else for a week is very expensive if you stay in a hotel. And I get tired of eating out really fast. So, when we stayed at Park City as a family last Christmas, we used a site called "Home Away" and stayed in a really nice home there. David looked on the same site for Hawaii, and found this gem.
We got the top floor with three bedrooms--one for David and Rachel, one for Brent and me, and one for Rachel's mom--and James and Jared slept on the front room floor. It really worked well, because Hawaii is 4 hours later than Utah and 5 hours later than Illinois, so when 8 pm hit, we were all ready to crash.
We were right across the road from the beach, so the next morning, even before church, we hit the beach a little:
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| Not a big beach, but adequate for us |
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| That ocean is mighty big! |
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| Finding out what happens when you build you house on the sand |
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| Joy took a little convincing, but wound up loving the whole beach experience |
David had looked at places to stay on the North Shore. We were in a little town called Hau'ula, just five miles from the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC). We knew we would want to spend at least one day there, so Monday morning, that's where we headed. We took the Ambassador tour to help us get good seats at each of the areas we went to.
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| Joy makes sure her necklace is in place so everyone will know she is with the tour. |
There were a lot of interactive things to do.
David really got into the spirit of things. You can definitely hear Rachel cheering him on.
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| James got a Maori tattoo that means "Chieftan" |
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| Getting dressed for the occasion |
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| Joy had her own way of enjoying things |
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| The noon parade of boats from the different islands |
We went to the luau and the evening show, and dragged home and crashed.
The next day, we just hung around the house until lunch time. We had heard of this shrimp wagon (similar to our local taco wagons in Sunnyside) that was famous for its coconut-macadamia nut shrimp and garlic shrimp. It was pretty tasty, but everyone else had heard of it, too, so it was a long line and wait for what everyone wanted.
But it was worth it.
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| Mama even brought her little chicks for lunch. |
Chickens are feral in Hawaii. They are everywhere! And, usually, no one bothers them. Of course, chicken is one of natives' favorite foods.
After that, we stopped again at the PCC and just went around and did stuff that we found
interesting.
David and Rachel practiced to learn the how to do the fire baton. (We're looking forward to seeing them demonstrate it at their next winter luau that they throw for their friends in Quincy.)
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| James and Jared both learned to weave a fish. |
The PCC is right next to BYU Hawaii. Most of the people who work there are students at the college. It is also right next to the temple, and PCC sends bus tours to look at it, and those who would like to can get off and visit the visitor's center for a while. While David and family went into the visitor's center, I found a good way to enjoy the experience:
But, of course, we had to take a picture of the family in front of the temple. Families are forever, you know, and the temple is the way to make sure of that, so we will always point our families to the temple--whichever temple they like--and make sure we help ourselves see ourselves there as often as possible.
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| We are a forever family |
That brings us to Wednesday. We went to the Pearl Harbor Memorial and the battleship Arizona. James is a World War II buff. He loves the ships and airplanes of that time and stories about the war. He's young. He doesn't yet appreciate how hellish war is. The Arizona Memorial, though, helps us to understand a little bit of the price of war, and why it's a good idea to avoid it whenever possible.
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| A concerned father talking about the price of war to his sons. |
After that, we got to hang around the memorial for a while, and tour the submarine there, and the museum and they had periscopes and seats with guns to try out.
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| James examines the submarine plans |
The next day, Thursday, we went to Waimea Valley on the North Shore. There are two attractions there. The most fun is the waterfall that you can climb into and get washed off.
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| See those crazy people hanging onto the rocks? I wasn't in this picture, but I was one of them. |
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| The young folks |
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| The old folks |
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| All the folks |
On the way down, there were some side trails that showed and explained some of the kahiko (ancient) Hawaiian ways of living.
And flowers. Flowers, flowers, flowers!
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| Hibiscus--Hawaii's state flower |
And that's just a few of them.
Friday, David and family went to Hanauma bay near Honolulu to snorkel. Brent and I have done a lot of that type of thing, so I'm afraid it wasn't very interesting to us. Besides, we had arranged to have our Russian coach call us so we could study in preparation for our mission to Ukraine in January. As a bonus for the family (and us) we kept Joy home so they didn't have to worry about what to do with her while they were in the water.
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| Joy helping Grandma study Russian |
Saturday was a hard day. We all flew home. It was David's birthday, and we didn't even really get to celebrate it. I guess in a way, the whole week was one great big party. And I did give him a kiss and a happy birthday wish as we said good-bye in the morning.
Then we had to return home to try to yank our schedule back around before leaving for Japan in less than two weeks. I have found that it is easier, bio-schedule speaking, to go west than east. It is easier to stay up later than it is to get up earlier. It was hard, and I'm not sure we succeeded before heading out again. But here we are in Japan. And that is several more blogs yet to come.
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