Hawaii Day 2 and 3

 

Day 2:

This was our day to relax. We didn't do a lot of stuff. We mostly got settled, did some grocery shopping and went to two of the pools and the lagoon. I remember it wasn't super warm so it was cold getting out of the pool...that and the pools aren't heated. The best part was discovering a jacuzzi that had a waterfall w/ warm water coming in. That was pretty awesome. They also had a water slide. I went on it a few times. It was me and a bunch of kids!

 

Day 3:

Day 3 was consisted of visiting Pearl Harbor Memorial and hiking Diamond Head. We missed our exit to Pearl Harbor (mostly my fault) and ended up having to take the freeway a ways down b/c Hawaii apparently doesn't like freeway exits. It was nice though to drive through the tunnel to the windward side of the island where the vegetation was really green.

We have been to Pearl Harbor before but my parents had not. Due to my "detour" we didn't get there when we wanted to and ended up having a 3 hour wait time to take the ferry over to the USS Arizona. However, it was nice to just walk around, look at the different torpedos and guns they had displayed, and watch the video. The downside this time was that they are re-doing the theatre so the video was set up in a makeshift theatre made of black netting and folding chairs. Not as cool of an experience but that's okay.

As we headed over to the USS Arizona, Reagan told us there were dead men under the water and sharks and octopus (I think it was octopus). It was kind of creept b/c when we got to the memorial, she stared down into the water and pointed down and stated that she saw the dead men. I asked her what they were wearing and she stated they were wearing white and brown. It was creepy and kind of funny at the same time. I am guessing she heard about the dead soldiers from watching the video. I just didn't think she would add sharks and octopus into the mix.

Diamond Head was my mom's idea. What we didn't realize until we did a little more investigating before heading out was how intense the hike was. Its not a long hike, but its a lot of steep switchbacks. There are three stair cases too I believe. It is so steep and narrow that you have to walk up stairs to get to the top. I can't remember how many stairs but it was a lot! It was really hot too so we made sure the girls had plenty of water. Especially Reagan...her face was really red and I didn't want her to get heat stroke. There were a few people up there jogging up the mountain and stairs. Yes apparently there are people excercise (LOL) and do it at Mountain Head! :-) One guy was jogging with a jacket on. I thought he was crazy. My mom said he looked like he was going to pass out. The best was seeing the young folk struggling. Especially the 15 year old boys that should be racing up the hill! Once we got to the top, it was pretty amazing. It used to be a military post, but now its just a nice place to view that side of the island.

Hawaii Day 1

 

Friday was travel to Hawaii day. It didn't feel like a long day until we were taxiing into Hawaii and knew we had to pick up luggage, the rental car, check in, and buy food.

Our entire trip from San Diego to Honolulu was from 10am PST to 11pm PST. We had a long lay over in Seattle but when you get to use airline miles (thanks again Maughans!) you don't complain. My parents met us at the Seattle airport (they flew out of Oakland) and then the 6 of us all got on the same plane to Honolulu. Even though we had 4 separate reservations (I quickly learned how to utilize every airline mile and special available...regardless of how many reservations I had to do), I made sure we were all in the same row. We basically took up an entire "row" 3 on one side and 3 on the other side of the aisle.

We flew Alaska whose only downfall is that they don't have movies on TVs for customers! You have to rent a portable dvd type player for $12. On the way there, the girls had nintendo ds' to play with and we did have our portable dvd player and my laptop. However, we quickly learned that the plane is really really loud and the portable dvd player doesn't get loud enough. My laptop was loud enough but didn't like the DVDs. Luckily the girls wanted to sit w/ my mom!!

When we arrived, we were greeted by a woman who had leis for each of us and helped us down to get our luggage and get onto the rental car shuttle. We wanted to take a pic of us all in our leis, but after looking at the result, all I can see is how exhausted I looked!

We got our luggage and ended up w/ a really nice minivan though I still love mine better! My mom and I dropped G and my dad and girls off and she and I headed to Safeway. First off, my gps didn't like its location and then once we got there we were so exhausted but luckily I had made a list b/c if we didn't have a list we probably wouldn't have remembered what we needed.

There was a nice guy that helped us a bit (even found us a few coupons). He was probably coming off his evening shift there (it was about 10pm Hawaii time or later by this point...thats 1am PST). As we were leaving my mom got the keys out and we realized there was no key! All that was there was the clicker thing (or I call the beep beep). When we got to the van, my mom figured out that that was the key. It was an electronic key. I personally think its kind of silly but oh well. I can't even imagine what it would cost to replace that!

I think we ended up going to bed about 3am PST time...Midnight in Hawaii.

Hawaii

I have pictures from Hawaii. I am going to edit them and put some up here (w/ a synopsis of the who, what, where, etc) and then put the majority on facebook.

blogging

I haven't written anything in awhile. Most people want to know about the girls, however, I usually write my blogs on my laptop and since photos and music are not allowed on this bad boy, I can write blogs, but no pics will be on here. I have finally written in a blog I set up a long time ago. Its a place I can write my opinion w/o using the family blog (which in theory should be about the family)

soundingoffinsandiego.blogspot.com