Early Tuesday morning we left our house to drive to the Oakland airport, where we took our flight on Hawaiian Airlines to the Honolulu airport on Oahu. It has been awhile since the kids have flown on a plane, so the whole flight experience made the trip unique and fun from the start. And the fact that at over 5 hours, it was an extra long flight compared to what we have ever done before. I've always enjoyed long flights, and so having time to both play a game on my laptop for over an hour, hold Waylon, and then watch a full movie during the same flight made it enjoyable enough for me. Add on top of that experiencing the excitement through my kids as they enjoyed looking out the plane window as we took off over the Pacific Ocean, and then again seeing the islands of Hawaii come into view as we neared our destination.
This first day we had nothing specific planned, it was exciting enough to meet up with Lance's family at the airport and go back to stay with them at their house on the base. Cameron and Landon instantly bonded with Porter as Haylee paired up with Victoria, and they hung out and played games together very naturally despite it being a few years since they had last seen each other. That evening we had BBQ hot dogs and steak as we discussed plans for the following day and rest of the week.
Wednesday we hung out at Lance's house in the morning, until about 10 am or so. Still getting used to the 3 hour difference in time from California, it felt like a long morning as our family was ready to be up and about around 6 am. Lance got out his remote control cars and drove them around the front and back yards while Sheila, their dog, got her exercise by chasing after them. After 10 we left for the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC), which is next to BYU Hawaii (BYU Hawaii runs the PCC, which is evident by many of the performers and staff that were announced as being students from there). We stopped by a beach on the way, Shark's Cove, to have sandwiches for lunch. That's when I realized how much time I was going spend on this trip taking pictures, as the beautiful views were plentiful.
On the campus of the PPC, the grounds are extremely well kept and very pretty. Then center is split up into several "islands", each representing a Polynesian nation, such as Samoa, Tonga, and Hawaii. Each of the nation areas have a performance area where a show is performed, explaining some of the nation's heritage and customs. There are also usually craft areas around to help kids learn some type of skill or craft going along with the presentation, like making baskets, twirling poi-poi, making coconut oil, and more. While we didn't have time to visit all of the areas, my favorite presentation out of the ones we saw were Tonga and Samoa, where the presenters had a fun sense of humor. During the afternoon we also did a canoe ride, watched a canoe parade, ate a pineapple sherbet served from a canoe on the river, and fed the fish in the river.
That evening while still at the PCC, we ate an island dinner buffet before heading over to watch the evening presentation, Ha, Breath of Life. It was mostly a group dancing show in a large amphitheater. The best part about it were the fire acts, including performers twirling fire sticks in circles and a humorous skit where actors in large leaf skirts tried using their skirts to smother out patches of fire.
The main events on Thursday were the Dole Plantation and Bellows beach. At Dole, the kids had fun running through what is supposedly the world's largest maze. And it's made of hibiscus. Later we took the Pineapple Express, a train ride through the fields of the plantation where long rows of pineapple, cacao, sugar cane, bananas, lychee, and more extended endlessly into the horizon. Finally, I felt we couldn't leave the plantation without having some of the soft serve pineapple ice cream. Pineapple has never been my favorite fruit, and it's certainly never been my goto flavoring. However, Hawaiian pineapple puts the fruit on a whole other plain…whether it's by itself, combined with something else, or used for flavoring, it tastes really good.
Bellows is a training area for the army, and during most of the week it's beach is accessible only by military and their families. So being able to go there because of Lance was a treat; very few other people were there. We felt we had all the room we needed for our two families. Being my very first time at a Hawaiian beach, I was impressed at how clear and pretty the water was, with the blues and greens of the water on top of the smooth light colored sand. Haylee, Cameron, and Landon instantly fell in love with the beach and were in the water in no time flat along with Victoria and Porter. Lance's family brought boogie boards and showed my family the art of boogie boarding on a wave and have it push you towards shore. The waves were just big enough at that time to do good boarding. You watch for when a wave is about to break, then turn around and dig your board into it and try to ride it as far as you can. It's pretty fun when you get it right. All of us took a turn at trying it and had fun for a few hours. That night we watched The Good Dinosaur, as Lance's family had not seen it yet, and I happened to have brought it with me.
Friday morning we walked around some gardens in Waimea valley. While the kids found some of the scenery and the waterfall fun to see at first, their patience quickly ran thin while us adults took our time enjoying the flora, especially with Lance and I going really slow taking pictures.
Around noon we headed to a small town, Haleiwa, to get some shaved ice at Matsumoto's. Really great shaved ice, supposedly the best on the island, according to Lance and Stefanie. And I'd believe it, they had many flavors to choose from, fine quality ice, and great tasting juice. Before getting that treat, though, we thought it important to eat some real food for lunch, so we went to a deli/market next door. They had a nice little selection of sandwiches, poke, chicken, mashed potatoes, etc. at really good prices. As we were eating lunch outside in front of the stores where there was a little grassy court area with some tables, I saw a familiar face walk by about 200 feet away. I got up to walk closer and confirmed to myself it was Adrian Ranft, a coworker of mine. I said 'hi' and she turned and instantly recognized me. It was only then that I realized other familiar faces from work that were with her, including her brother, Jerome Ranft, a sculptor; Bob Pauley, a production designer; and Pete Docter, one of our head directors (directed Up, Inside Out, and Monster's Inc.). It was great to chat with them for a little bit and exchange with each other about why we were in Hawaii. They were vacationing here a few days at the tail end of a research trip.
Our next stop was to a macadamia nut farm. There was a shop on the farm where all sorts of macadamia nut foods and merchandise was sold. Outside in back there was a place where you could help yourself to cracking open nut shells to get a feel for the process, though you had to be careful of the chickens jumping up and snatching your macadamia nut once you got it out of its shell. There were lots of great flavors of nuts, along with samples of each one to try. Lance was right when he warned us before that we wouldn't be leaving there without having purchased a fair amount.
Traveling around the island takes a fair amount of time because of the traffic, and so it was already time for dinner when we returned from the farm. We stopped again in Haleiwa, this time at Pizza Bob's for dinner. A low key atmosphere with great food and a personable server helped make it a great meal. That evening at home Lance, Eve, I, and some of the kids watched the Rogue Cut of X-men, Days of Future Past, as I was interested in seeing how that version differed from the theatrical one.
All week so far as we found ourselves in various gift shops, and we told the kids to hold out buying souvenirs until we went to the swap meet Saturday morning. It was basically an outside bazaar with tents circling a stadium with all types of vendors of merchandise and concessions. I'm not much of a souvenir person, but I did enjoy perusing around and looking for anything that caught my interest. I did end up getting a tiki tie, and red dirt shirt, a tooth necklace, and a glass cube dragon decoration. As for snacks, I got some hurricane hawaiian popcorn, wasabi peas, and some specially flavored pineapple (which tasted good, but I bought more for the humorous passion the salesman had for encouraging buyers than anything else).
That afternoon the ladies and kids went back to the PCC while Lance and I went to Pearl Harbor. The first day we were at the PCC we didn't see all of the shows and the kids didn't get to try all of the activities, so they were excited to go back. I'd been wanting to see Pearl Harbor, so Lance and I went first to the visitor center. We were too late in the day to do any of the official tours, so we walked around ourselves, took some pictures, and read some of the history. We then were curious to see what Ford Island was like, which was just on the other side of the harbor closer to where the US Missouri was docked and closer to the US Arizona memorial. We were surprised to find that the whole area is a base and it seemed only military personnel were allowed through, at least at the hour we were going through near the end of the business day. Thankfully Lance was an officer and so we were allowed past the gate with no problem. We walked around the base and got real close to the Missouri and Arizona memorial to get some great pictures in some areas that civilians would never have been allowed to walk around in.
Sunday we took it easy and waited until 11 am to attend Lance's ward for church. It was great to have everyone go to church together, as well. We took some pictures outside in front of the church by a huge and beautiful banyan tree. It looks very majestic how the roots hang down from it branches onto the ground. The remainder of the day we spent at Turtle Beach. As we traveled during the whole trip, we always split up into two vehicles: Lance, Haylee, Victoria, and I in Lance's Jeep, and Stefanie, Eve, Cameron, Landon, and Porter were in the rental van. Because the van needed to stop to get gas, those of us in the Jeep crew arrived at Turtle Beach first and right away saw a big sea turtle resting on the sand. He soon woke up and slowly slid into the ocean. By the time the van crew arrived, he was already long gone. Fortunately, later on two sea turtles, a male and a female, slid onto the beach to take a nap. We stayed there for several hours. Lance and I wanted to wait for sunset to take pictures, and the kids really enjoyed hunting for sea glass.
For our last full day with Lance's family, we went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. I had never gone snorkeling before, and found it fascinating to "swim with the fishes" - seeing the fish and coral so up close. Breathing through the snorkel was a little uncomfortable and took some getting use to; I tried swimming out with Lance to some deeper areas past the shallow reef, but I had a little trouble with breathing through my mask and so wanted to return closer to shore. Eve and Cameron also did a little snorkeling, but not Haylee, Landon, Porter, and Victoria. Snorkeling turned out to be a little tough for the kids to get used to and be comfortable with, and they had enough fun making a sand castle and playing on the beach. When the kids got hungry, we left Hanauma Bay and stopped by at a Jack-in-the-Box on the way home to get cleaned up for dinner. I wasn't too interested in getting any fast food for lunch, but then I saw it… a spam burger! Some restaurants in Hawaii put spam on hamburgers, and I just had to order one to get my own picture of it...
We were sad to leave for home on Tuesday. We had until about 11 am at Lance's to pack up and have a little last fun with Lance's family. We enjoyed some of Lance's homemade Superman ice cream, watched a few episodes of an old show Munsters, and went to a huge wide open field on base to play a little soccer before leaving for the airport. Such a memorable trip for our family!
2 comments:
Such beautiful pictures of your family. What a blessing!
Such beautiful pictures of your family. What a blessing!
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