Aloha

Hawaii was exactly what we expected, tropical and warm and wonderful! We started out everyday with the awesome breakfast that the hotel provided for us. There were pastries galore, which made us all very, very happy. It's not a vacation unless you start your day out with 3 or 4 donuts right?! Pleasant surprise, they also served rice, kimchi and miso soup! Breakfast was rockin' awesome every morning.

Saturday morning we headed out to a giant flea market at the Aloha Stadium. It was HUGE, and hot. They had tons of fun souvenirs, and it was fun to walk around and hang out with my family.  Patrick and Ashley had a kicking contest to see who could kick the highest. First, Ashley is 6 feet tall, second Patrick can't touch his toes. I think you can see where this was headed.

Chad got yelled at for playing with the gun, we were wasting the battery life of the sweet gun. Just confirms the fact that you know the battery life is about 5 minutes.

 

After the flea market we went and got Udon Noodles for lunch. I think Taylor was the only one who had ever had this before. It was awesome. After taking a few minutes trying to figure out what we were going to order we jumped in line and had some of the best food. Chad and I went back again that week. Not only was it great, it was cheap! We wish we had somewhere like that around us.

That afternoon Chad and I went to the beach where we were way too enthusiastic about the ocean and sliced up our feet as we ran out and into the coral. Ouch. Chad paid for that all week. We played volleyball and hung out until we went to dinner, Jack in the Box for the parents and Flynns and sushi and Jamba Juice for Taylor and us. They were right next door and it was the perfect compromise!


Sunday was Mother's Day! We had a busy day planned out, starting with the Dole Plantation. I was unreasonably excited about this one. We went on a train ride around the grounds and learned all about pineapple. For some reason pineapple grew on palm trees in my mind. In all honestly all tropical fruit grows on palm trees in my mind. So imagine my surprise when I learned otherwise! Every day's a school day!

 

 

 

The pinapple ice cream was Delicious!

On the way to the North Shore we were on the look out for a shrimp truck. We passed a few super sketchy looking trucks before stopping at an even sketchier looking one, Giovanni's. They had a nice set up of picnic table and such but the truck itself? I'm surprised we didn't get something. An added bonus? This grilled corn on a stick. It was to die for. In fact, all the food we got there was to die for. Best part of our stop though was hands down the bathrooms. We really should have took a picture. After waiting in the slowest line ever outside what I thought was a little bathroom, we opened the bathroom door and had to walk down this janky little hallway shack thing and then step up two steps onto a platform where the toilet was. It was super weird. The shrimp made up for the initial weirdness of the bathrooms.

 

We met Elder Taylor up at the Temple after lunch and wandered around and took pictures. The temple was huge! Especially compared to our Detroit one we are used to. And the long road leading up to it just made it that much more grand. We finally headed back to the hotel and spent the evening hanging out on the beach.

 

Monday was Pearl Harbor Day. We were picked up bright and early from our hotel. Luckily the time change really worked in our favor. The majority of the week Chad and I were up around 6, or earlier! Somehow Chad's favorite part of anywhere we went were the birds. Lol, ok, maybe not, but if you were to look at all our pictures there are a ridiculous amount of pictures of all the birds. We had too much fun with the pigeons. We played with them at Pearl Harbor as well.

Chad being a creepy stalker

Stretching out yoga couples style. Dan in Real Life anyone?

That afternoon we rented snorkeling gear, best decision! None of us had snorkeled before so we were excited to try it out. We geared up and headed out on the beach right outside our hotel and after hunting around we found the fish! We loved it! There wasn't a ton of fish but searching for them was a lot of fun!

The first half of our week was great! We were busy trying to fit everything in and it was all a lot of fun! As the week went on it just got better and better...