This post is overwhelming to me and has taken several days to compile. We had a blast on our trip and packed in so much. How do I do Hawaii justice? I don't want to forget anything or ramble on. That being said, I'm going to break my post down into several separate entries.
Let me start from the beginning. We've been watching flight deals to Hawaii for several months and have attempted to buy tickets on a couple of occasions only to be disappointed and learn the deals sell out fast. I didn't think we were actually going to go to Hawaii because it felt like we were going to give up after so many failures. By the way, "we" refers to my family. Everyone was able to come except for my brother, Joel.
We jumped on buying some flights to Oahu and I'm so glad we did. We ended up flying to Long Beach and staying overnight there on Monday, May 13 at my parent's condo. James enjoyed seeing the condo because he often hears that Papa is in California. We had pizza and went swimming. At first, James was NOT a fan of the pool (which is typical as of late), but he warmed up to it with his adventurous daddy and splashed around.
We flew early Tuesday morning from Long Beach, CA to Oahu, HA. What a long flight. I was most nervous about the flight more than anything this trip. Entertaining James for 5 and 1/2 hours sounded daunting. We didn't realize how good it would be that James didn't sleep well the night before in CA. He ended up sleeping for almost 4 hours on the plane! I was a happy camper and got to leisurely read my book. (I finished 2 books on the trip-- a sign of a successful vacation!)
Also noteworthy... James got pretty scared on the plane and tucked his eyes into Andrew's elbow-crack (is that even a thing?) which helped him fall asleep.
How do I best summarize our trip? I've decided to break the trip down into commonly asked questions.
Where did you stay?
In a vacation rental home a rock throw away from the beach. We were on the island, Oahu and stayed in Kailua. My mom and Jeff nailed the place. It was like we were on a private beach. The views were breathtaking, the sand was white and the water was pleasantly warm. It was convenient to be able to decide on-the-spot to take a walk on the beach, or head over for the sunrise/sunset because we were so close.
Pathway to the beach
The house had a huge gathering area which could accommodate our large group. There were 10 adults and 3 kids.
One of James' favorite features about the house was the backyard. It made me want a yard even more than I did before. (Don't talk to me about moving right now.) James was entertained for hours playing outside in the ocean breeze with his cousins.
The house decided to give us a warm-welcome our first morning. We awoke abruptly to several fire alarms going off at 4:40am. They were extremely loud and went off a few times. The best explanation... It was so humid that night that the smoke detectors were set off. (All of the batteries were replaced that day in the fire alarms and we didn't have a problem the rest of our time there.)
Did you go snorkeling?
Yes and we weren't too far from a famous snorkeling place-- Hanama Bay. We had heard that snorkeling in Hanama Bay gets extremely crowded and you can't find parking as the day goes on, so we headed there bright and early. It was extremely nice of my parents to babysit the grand-kids while everyone else went.
The scenery surrounding Hanama Bay was beautiful!
There were definitely some pretty things to see in the water! We were there during low tide, so it was a bit shallow and at times I felt like I was encroaching on the fish. It was weird because seeing fish underwater kind of went in spurts. Sometimes we would see lots of colorful fish swimming around, but other times we didn't see many.
The middle picture shows that it was cloudy and dark when we first arrived. In fact, it was actually raining the majority of the time we were there which wasn't really noticeable when you were under the water. By the end, I started to get cold though. The sun came out right when we were getting out around 9am.
According to Andrew, "He had one of his best snorkeling experiences ever."
Did you get snowcones while you were there?
Most definitely and thanks to my brother (who served a mission in Hawaii), we knew of a well-known place to try called called Matsumoto Shave Ice. After tasting it, I can see why it's so popular. There is no going back after having ice cream at the bottom of your snow cone.
Side note... We ate these at about 9:30am. There is always room for dessert, right? I ate every last drop.
You've been warned.... There is still lots of the trip to cover, so my blog may be taken over by Hawaii for a bit.
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