Aloha and Mahalo

The Scene at Waimanalo

Aloha to all our friends!  We are just returned from an amazing holiday on Oahu where we met up with some of our extended family for an adventure in Hawaii.

Our family left on Saturday, July 13th from Alice Springs at 10:00 am.  We flew for 3 hours to Sydney, had a 9 hour layover there, and boarded our international flight to Honolulu (10 hour flight time).  Oddly enough, we arrived in Honolulu on Saturday, July 13th at 11:00 am!

The Australian contingent were the first to arrive, and we stayed overnight at a hotel in Waikiki with a fun pool with an island in the middle.  Waikiki was very busy and quite a bit too crowded for our tastes.

Pat's at Punaluu

The view from our balcony...not too shabby!

Sunday morning we picked up Ri and Jeff from the airport and headed to the northeast side of Oahu!  We stayed in a penthouse suite in Pat's at Punaluu, which is a set of condos in a high rise building right on the beach.  It was so fun to have the view from the tops of the palm trees and look out over the ocean, eat on the balcony...just take an elevator down and cross the grass to get to the beach and turquoise Pacific!!  
From the back of the condo were the gorgeous views of the mountains; very green, steep, and almost always misty and mysterious.  

We found a few boogie boards and sand toys to bring down to the beach with us and spent lots of time down there.  The water was cool when first touched, but we got used to it so quickly and all of us got to get in and swim and bob around in the salt water.  It really is easier to float in salt water!  Punaluu was a beautiful area to stay and our group had lots of fun in the water...

Downstairs in our suite at Pat's

Beaux eating breakfast on the balcony

Jeff and Ri on the beach

Jones soaking up the sun

Beaux paddling out to catch a wave

Jax

Jones

Hilary and Riley bobbing around

Jax's sand angel

Aunt Riley in the surf

Jax

Jax catching a ride to the waves

Who's who?  Jones on the left, Jax on the right

We did get to Shark's Cove one day up on the North Shore which is a highly recommended snorkeling spot.  Ri and Jeff saw sea turtles and lots of fun colorful fish!  Beaux got to swim through a school of thin grey and yellow fish and Jax saw a round rainbow colored fish from where he was standing on a rock.  



Trent, Beaux, and Jax experimented a bit down there among the rocks, but decided not go into deeper water for snorkeling until we got the kids a noodle to float on or something.  

Jones had actually gotten sick on the plane trip over and was still recovering, so he went to sleep on a towel in the shade while we were there; I stood by him and shot some pictures of the Cove from where he was resting.  


For lunch we just crossed the street and ate at Shark's Cove Grill; just a little truck food stop they have with picnic tables all out front.  Then back to Punaluu for some shave ice!  Shave ice is so very popular on Oahu!  Basically, it is a snow cone, but they are very particular about the shaving process, the temperature of the ice and syrups...it's a whole science!

Ri and Jeff went on Tuesday to the Polynesian Cultural Center from the time it opened at noon, to after the evening luau, and they said they still didn't get to see and do everything they wanted to!  I believe they have different villages set up for each group of island people (Samoan, Fijian, Tahitian, Hawaiian...can't remember all of them) and they demonstrated something specific to their culture at each one like climbing palm trees and starting fire with sticks.  They said the performance at the evening luau was the best.

Then Wednesday morning we checked out of our penthouse and tooled back down to the airport to pick up Gramma Nino and Grampa Popcorn, and Carrie and Marcus' family who had gotten in the evening before and stayed at a hotel the first night.  We rented a big van and another small car that would hold the 18 of us gathering there for the main week.  This time our rental was a home in Waimanalo, on the southeastern coast of Oahu.

This home was absolutely amazing!  It was called Waimanalo Blue, for the blue ceramic roof tiles and the many different uses of blue throughout the house (including blue granite countertops in the kitchen).  We met the owner there in the afternoon and she walked us through the house...and it just kept going, and going...It was beautifully decorated, lots of space for each family to hunker down.  Bathrooms for each bedroom, a large bunk room upstairs with a secret spiral staircase to the main floor, a large laundry room, multiple refrigerators, an outdoor shower with hot water to clean up before you come inside, a large hot tub, a very comfortable lanai (porch) with seating for eating, and best of all...a back gate with its own little path right to the ocean! 

First view of Wamanalo Blue

Waimanalo Blue's lanai and view of outdoor Shower

Our backyard!!

View of Waimanalo Blue from the beach

The ocean from this part of Oahu was so bright blue that it didn't even look real!  Absolutely stunning me every time I looked at it.  Trent picked up Cris and Jess's family the evening of that first day, and we were officially all there!

The beach behind our home and looking south toward Rabbit Island

There were a few quirks to the home (such as, Ri and Jeff were staying in the studio apartment adjoining the house and when they wanted to come to the main living areas, they had to either walk through Jess and Cris's room or the upstairs kids bunk room), but for the most part it was so perfect for our group...God took care of us on this for sure.

The waves at the beach were calmer in the mornings and then usually got a bit bigger in the afternoon, so the adults got a chance to hone those boogie board skills and get pummeled into the sand while the kids took rests in the house.  

Kids got pummeled too!  They recover faster...

We stocked up on groceries we thought we'd use for the week, and cooked most of our meals at the house.  The kids just loved running around the yard collecting lizards, watching some huge snails, swinging on their little swing, playing Marco Polo in the hot tub (ha, ha), and being chased by the Tickle Monster (Uncle Jeff)!  They all loved being at the beach and in the water until the sand got unbearable in their little suits.  The sand at this beach was so fine and white, it would just find it's way into your swim suit, on your scalp, etc, etc...So, then we'd just go to the lovely outdoor shower and get them all cleaned up again.  That shower had hot water, shampoo, conditioner, and soap, and I am pretty sure that most of the kids never even showered in the house for the entire week we stayed there!

Papa waiting to throw Jax into the perfect wave...Jax is wave crazy!

Jones Papa-Ridin'

Uncle Cris in the rain

Surfer chick Beaux

Jones; Beach Master

Sweet wave Gramma!

Giant 4 inch snail

Lizard with red frill neck

Levi, the Lizard Whisperer

So, for our time together at Waimanalo Blue, we mostly just hung out and alternated between being at the beach, relaxing, making food/cleaning up, and outings.  Waking up in a lovely home, to a lovely blue blue ocean scene, surrounded by people you love, walking out on the sand with coffee and watching the sun rise (well, I never did get out that early, but some of us did)...It couldn't have been a more ideal location!

Makapuu Lighthouse

Surfboard Fence

It may have been Thursday that we decided to try a hike inland Oahu to Manoa Falls.  It was very jungley and green, with massive leaves on plants and vines hanging everywhere and beautiful bird-of-paradise flowers just dotting the path up to the falls.  














Unfortunately, it was a rainy path and a muddy path, and we were pretty wet and dirty by the end.  When I say a muddy path....well, it was very muddy.  They had graveled the path until about halfway up, but must have tired of that task because from then on we were balancing on rock points sticking up out of the mud, traversing wooden bridges four inches wide, leaping from stair edge to stair edge, teetering on banyan roots while hanging on to nearby bamboo stalks to stay upright.  

The Banyon Tree Arch

The kids did so great trying to keep out of the goo, but we all ended up quite wet (it rained much of the trek) and muddy.  Manoa Falls itself was beautiful; a small stream falling quite a distance to a rocky pool below.  The guide book had said that we could wade in the pool, but when we arrived at the falls, there was a sign that warned us to stop here (about 25 feet back) due to the danger of falling rocks. 

On our way back down the trail, we looked at those clean white sneakers of people passing us on the way up with the same mixture of disdain and pity that we had seen on the faces of those who came down before us.  Rookie waterfall seekers!  At the parking lot there were hoses to wash off before climbing in the car to head our soggy selves home...But, we did it, it was beautiful, and all the shoes washed up decently.  I believe Uncle Jeff's white shirt and Grampa's white shorts were stained beyond repair, but those may have been the only casualties of the adventure.  The ones who had stayed behind for little ones' naps on this day were great heroes and had dinner all ready when we pulled our bedraggled bodkins out of the van.  Hooray!

On Beaux's birthday we went to Sea Life Park and got to see a dolphin show, a sea lion show, and lots of other sea creatures (turtles, sharks, penguins...) so that was really fun.  





It was very hot on Oahu when we were not at the beach feeling that nice refreshing breeze, so we were pretty hot and sticky by the time we were done there, but we were still glad we did it!
The kids even sat in the splash zone during one of the shows and got all wet from a dolphin spraying water out of the tank!  That evening we celebrated Beaux and Rowan's birthdays with pizza, cake, ice cream and presents.  Very fun day!

The Hot Tub!

Hot Tub with a view of the ocean

Happy Birthday to Beaux and Rowan!

Some of us took Saturday morning to go to the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet, where tons of vendors set up stalls and sell Hawaiian products/clothing/food/lots of interesting things.  We wandered around there for hours and found some fun souvenirs.  I bought hair flowers, sun dresses for Beaux and I, shell necklaces, bracelets, folding fans for the kids, some oriental puffed veggies, and some North Shore peanut butter that was so good....so good!  I bought three flavors of PB:  coconut peanut butter, coconut macademia nut peanut butter, and white chocolate raspberry peanut butter.  Even now as I write it is hard to imagine how much deliciousness was packed into a spoonful!  Mom and Dad got us each a t-shirt from a stall there, as well, so now we are pretty well outfitted Hawaiian tourists.  :)

Let's see, I believe Sunday we decided to try the Dole Pineapple Plantation.  It is located in the center of the island, so we all loaded up into the van and car for the hour or so it would take to get there.  

So cute Beaux!  I did not notice the trash can in the background until later...

Gotta love those shades, Rowan!

There is a large hedge maze there that we all wandered through and found hidden stations, so that was fun, but very very hot.  You don't get much breeze in the hedges!



That took about an hour and then we wanted to ride the little Pineapple Express train around the plantation before driving back to the windward side of the island.  The line for the train was huge and the train only ran every 30 minutes, so we ended up having to wait an hour in line with all the little ones to ride it.  Luckily we were under a covered waiting area, and we all ate a Dole Whip to pass the time (and help take the edge off the lunchtime hungries creeping in).  The pineapple flavored ice cream was very good...but soft serve in the heat of Oahu doesn't last long!  We were very funny trying to lick up, wipe up, keep up with all the runny ice cream of our party!!  

Finally we got to ride on the train and it was a lovely scene to ride around and see all the little pineapple plants, also they had coffee plants, cacao plants, mango, banana, and lots of others.  Ruby, Rowan and Levi all fell asleep to the soothing Hawaiian music playing during our ride.  Pretty cute!



Monday morning Grampa and Jeff left early early to be at Pearl Harbor by 7:00 am for tickets and tours of the Arizona, Bowfin, Missouri, and Aviation Museum...Not sure I got the names of all they toured correctly, but they got to spend much of the day there and had a great time learning at the sites and museums.  I think the rest of us spent Monday at the house and/or beach...which was excellent!  We don't like to be too busy and it is hard on the little ones to have their nap schedules all crazy.  I must say, they all did wonderfully well considering the long flights, time changes, activities, new surroundings, and living with lots of people that they had to cope with.  It was such a blessing to see the cousins play together again, and get to hold and talk to the little people we haven't seen in so long...I hope it was worth it for all their parents!  It was worth it for us, for sure.

Video rest in the bunk room!

Ro wearing Uncle Trent's Honolulu Police hat

I guess it was Monday afternoon when Gramma, Ri, and I decided to really quick try snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.  Trent ran us down there in the van at 2:30 pm, and we were to meet him at 4:00 pm to be picked up.  Well, by the time we paid admission, been forced to watch a video that didn't start until 3 pm, had to hike down the steep road to the bay and got our snorkel stuff sorted out and on, we had about a 1/2 hour of actual snorkel time left!  We jumped in and got to it.  It is such a funny experience to just leave your face in the water for so long!  I saw gorgeous yellow, black and white, blue and pink, stripey, swirley fish, and a huge rainbow colored one.  They swim right underneath you and I felt like I might swat them out of the way on accident with my arms.  So, I loved seeing the fun fish, but I didn't really like swallowing salt water and the bobbing of the waves made me slightly sick, so I won't be making a career of snorkeling.  Fun experience though, and my first time!

Tuesday morning Carrie, Marcus, Ada and Rowan had to leave early to catch their flight back home.  It was awesome to see them and they made it home safe and sound.
We thought we might try some local food for lunch, so drove into Waimanalo town and ate at the L&L Barbecue, and afterward checked out Dave's Ice Cream (made in Hawaii) for some fun local flavors!  Both were excellent!





Wednesday morning Trent took Jeff and Ri to the airport to catch another early flight home.  They only had a day between getting home and leaving again for Winema camp in Oregon with their Puppet Team, I believe, so hope all their travels have been/are going great!  We were busy most of the morning packing up to check-out and move up to the North Shore area.  We had to run into town to return the big van, which we traded out for three smaller cars for the three groups of us left:  my fam of 5, Mom and Dad, and Cris and Jess fam of 5.

The house we rented for last leg of the trip was situated back up on the northeastern side of Oahu, in the town of Laie, out on a point that juts into the ocean, and up on a cliff. 

We stayed in the yellow and white home with balconies and gazebo

 It was not nearly as nice as the previous home...everything was dirty and sort of like someone just pretended to know how to install/construct.  The layout of the home was very nice and their ideas of decorating and furnishing were great, but I think the problem is that it was just not taken care of well.  It was so hot there when we arrived that the air conditioners could not overcome the heat until nighttime, and still every afternoon it would heat right back up again.  Mom and Dad slept down in the Studio, with a murphy bed and it's own living area, and it ended up being where we hung out most because the air conditioner seemed to be able to keep up down there.  We did not have direct access to the beach, so that was not as great as the other two homes we stayed in.  But we did pack up and take cars to several local beaches, including the one that our home looked out over the water to. 

 

Our beach umbrella...I think the palm tree won

One of many black crabs we found at the base of our cliff in the ocean

The beach we could see from the house is just south of the famous Hukilau beach...you know, from the song!?  In fact, I believe one night we did see a hukilau happening in the ocean right below our house!

A hukilau is a fishing party, with nets and usually uses lots of people from the community going in the water to circle around with the nets and scare the fish in the right direction, and then help pull in the nets and collect fish to share amongst the group.  After the kids had gone to bed one night we were in Mom and Dad's studio having some coffee and we noticed flashing lights down in the ocean below the home's backyard cliff.  The water there is only a few feet deep, but pretty rocky or maybe coral, I'm not sure.  Well, we all went out on the balcony and watched for a while.  It looked like twenty people down there in the dark, some waving flashlights back and forth, some splashing with their arms, and some clapping.  From the silhouettes from the flashlights, we could see nets and maybe a floating basket and all those people moving slowly from shore out to an area past our house, and then they must have gathered the net back up because they all headed back to shore.  We have no idea what they were fishing for, but they must have been locals because we couldn't even imagine charging out into the ocean in the nighttime like that!  Hopefully it was legal, and we maybe witnessed a traditional hukilau...although, I couldn't really find anything about why they would do it at night.

Another beach we tried out is known as "Pounders" for the rolling, consistent waves that pound the shore.  We packed a lunch so we could picnic and grill hot dogs and burgers and play longer before Ruby and Levi's naps.  It was a very pretty beach and the kids all had so much fun getting right in the water and boogie boarding in on the sand!  Dad and Cris got in just a bit, but the waves weren't quite out far enough for the big guys to get much action.  









































































We were just about to start lunch preparations for grilling, when Judah got stung by a Portuguese Man o' War all around his legs and foot.  Poor guy, the tentacles wrapped all around and stung him pretty bad.  He was the first child in our group to get stung, but many of the adults had been stung at various times the past week.  The man-o-wars are similar to jellyfish, but slightly different in that they don't swim, they are just pushed along by the wind and current.  They are a blue-purple color, just a few inches in diameter but their tentacles can get pretty long.  



We could have done without those little guys on vacation!  Cris took Judah home and put him in a hot bath, and that seemed to help.  He was a smiling happy guy just a few hours later.  Of course, the kids were done with Pounders after witnessing that incident.  We went ahead and finished lunch and headed back to the house.

Like I mentioned, our house was on Laie Point; a peninsula of land jutting out into the Pacific.  At the end of the point is a fantastic scenic lookout, complete with mythical Hawaiian story about an ancient man killing a giant lizard and throwing the cut off pieces of its head into the sea where they are still visible today as small islands off shore.  One of these islands has a hole in it which was knocked out by a tsunami in 1947.  The whole rocky end of the point was formed by lava cooling as it hit the ocean and is made of tons of sharp pointy solid rock!  The locals fish or cliff jump from here.

Jones giving Ruby a smooth ride

The kids came up with a really fun game at the Laie house:  Coconut Factory.  The house was built up on a steep hill, and had stairs going down to a patio picnic area near the bottom of the property.  The kids found some crates and a dolly and started gathering up the fallen coconuts and setting up a stall at the picnic table to sell coconuts to us all.  They always work so hard when they've got some entrepreneurial scheme in mind!  Beaux made up a sign with their hours and prices and we'd all go down and buy coconuts with our spare change.  Course, we had to pay in Australian!











One of the days we drove up around the North Shore and took in some of the shops; an outdoor market where Cris and Jess bought some Greek frozen yogurt for their fam that they said was really good, and then we went through some beach towns until we got to the North Shore Marketplace.  Somehow we missed calls from Jess and they couldn't find us there, so they headed home for dinner.  Mom and Dad and our family shopped a bit at the Aloha General Store where we bought Macadamia Nut Flower Honey, Shave Ice Scented Lotion, and shave ice and ice cream for the kids/men.  








Then we stayed in the area for dinner at a restaurant in Haleiwa called Breakers, where we ate outside and watched a little green gecko flit up and down the pole on our table's umbrella.  

















As we were leaving it was getting really close to sunset, and we tried to make it to Sunset beach for pictures, but had to stop a few miles west at Waimea Bay to catch it.  The clouds had rolled in so it wasn't spectacular, but very pretty all the same.

We had a great time with Judah and Levi and little Ruby, and of course their parents!  My kids are missing their cousins already (Ada and Rowan too).  The young Cornetts had to leave Saturday morning to drive back to Honolulu, turn their car in, and check-in for their flight home.  We've heard they made it home and the kids were good on the flights!  Before they left, we did manage to get in a trip to Ted's Bakery, famous for Haupia Pie (coconut creme, chocolate pudding and whipped cream), which was awesome, and the kids got cinnamon rolls and glazers.  American donuts, hip hip hooray!!

Saturday, those of us left went up to play at Turtle Bay Resort beach...pulled in, couldn't find an empty slot to park in a HUGE parking lot...decided those types of crowds are not our cup of tea and headed down to Sunset Beach.  We had a great time there! 





























 Again, smaller waves for grown-ups (this beach is famous for big waves in winter, but the North Shore is pretty calm in the summer) but great for the kids.  

There we got to watch an outrigger canoe race start off on its 8 mile journey around to Haleiwa, before my fam headed back to Laie for lunch.  Mom and Dad decided to try snorkeling Shark's Cove for a bit before coming back.  Sounds like they saw lots of fun fish and Mom saw a turtle, and Dad may have seen an eel!  Mom said it was probably better than Hanauma Bay for her, so I'm glad they got to do it!  We spent the afternoon resting and gathering our possessions back to their appropriate containers, and decided to do one last local meal, so drove south a few miles to North Shore Taco for food for Gramma, Grampa and me, then headed back up to the Pizza Hut for breadsticks and personal pan pizzas for Trent and the kids.  It started cooling off and trying to rain, so we called it quits on the shores of Oahu and headed inside for the last night on the island.

Amazingly, by Sunday morning we got everything packed up, thrown out, or boxed up for the housekeepers in time to check-out and drive ourselves back to the airport to come home.  We had to say good-bye to Gramma and Grampa at the rental car return and have quick hugs as we jumped out at the international departure building for Hawaiian Air.

There are many more teeny adventures that happened within the larger adventures each day, lots of funny things the kids said or did, and tons of heartwarming moments of reacquainting ourselves with family that there just isn't time to share.  Let me just say thank you to all who participated and sacrificed to make this vacation happen; we love you all and thank God that we are lucky enough to have you in our family!  We so, so missed those who could not make this trip, and are looking forward to the time we will see you and spend time with you again!!

Much Love,
Hilary

Aloha....Until we meet again (like the song...)