Hawaii - Day 3 & 4 (written by Cirdan)

We liked this restaurant, Breakers in Haliewa. The town is a quintessential Hawaii town in my book. I was pretty excited when we went there. The shops look like cool surfers shops, not new and modern but not dirty and trashy. Our first time at Breakers we went for breakfast. Good food, cool people although Heidi hadn't found her treasured coconut syrup. The locals are great, atmosphere matches. We were ready to roll after breakfast.

Then it was time for snorkeling! (and sunbathing for Heid, she got her share of that :) ) Shark's cove. Greg knows Oahu well so he knew this was a good spot to snorkel. It wasn't too rough, it was a great day for snorkeling. As always snorkeling is a great time, we saw some cool fish. Greg was telling me to look out for the state fish.....

We wrapped up snorkeling and had to grab a picture of course.

Heidi and Staci went to the pool to work on the tan while Greg and I hit the golf course, the Fazio at Turtle Bay. The 3rd hole on the golf course was right outside the back of the condo where we stayed.

The back nine of the course was awesome.....the grass was just lush and the scenery was amazing. A few of the holes are right next to the beach and have ocean views. It was a great round of golf....not because of the score but the surroundings.

Yes we are golfing, not chillin at the beach....or are we doing both? Hmmmmm.

To top off the day Grill Boy Ardee chef'd it up with some grilled chicken, corn on the cob, rice and some fresh bread- poolside of course. It was a great dinner after another perfect day in Hawaii.

I am such a morning person. Even though it doesn't look like it, I was always excited and ready to go when I woke up. I was on Seattle time for sure, I don't think I slept past 6:30 am. First couple days Heidi and I were awake at 5am.

Greg and Staci had just finished a big argument and we were trying to get to them to look at each other and make up. hahahaha. I'm lying but you would have believed it by the picture. Awesome.

Ahhh yeeeah! The famous Matsumoto's shaved ice!!! We were all looking forward to this. First time for me. It lived up to it's name. The shaved ice was fantastic and the store was real cool. A lady in front of Staci and Greg completely convinced them that the ice cream on the bottom HAD to have red beans. She said they were just amazing. hahahaha. Greg and Staci thought they must be great. Not so much. But at least they gave it a shot. One of the guys working there said they go through 100 blocks of ice a day, and 200 blocks on a busy day! Nuts! We grabbed some souvenirs for our girls and headed on our way.

Staci really wanted to go to the water park so we went to have some fun at Wet n Wild.

Greg and Staci on one of the slides. I think some people got bounced around pretty good right in front of them. At that point Staci didn't want to go, she had seen enough. Greg refused and somehow had her on the tube.

This was one of the best slides (yellow and orange one). Head first on a pad. You get to race! That was great for Greg who pushes off at Ready, Set. Yes that's Greg at the bottom with me and Staci just shooting out of the tubes. Greg was disqualified for his early start. haha

The cheater celebrates! I kid, I kid

We stopped at Pearl Harbor and check it out. We arrived just a few minutes too late to catch the ferry to the USS Arizona. It was alright though. It's hot with all that pavement, and Greg had already been there enough times. Heidi has about 20 minutes worth of patience for stuff like this so it was all good. We toured the visitor center area, took some pictures, video and split. I'm glad we at least made it there.

Notice the big blank...no pictures from dinner. Whenever we would go an hour or 2 longer than we should without getting a good meal everyone would get so quiet. The laughing and joking stopped. Well I guess Greg and Staci got quiet. Heidi and I would either get quiet or start getting snippy with each other. Can't blame Heidi, she's pregnant....she gets a pass. I'm just a grouch face when I'm too hungry. If Heidi had been in a little better mood I'm quite sure that she would have had at least 5 pictures at dinner. Good times. You can picture us eating some shrimp and Lobster laxing under the fans with a distant view of the Beach in Waikiki. We all shared these dessert shooters, 6 of them. They were pretty good, but the concept was real fun.

A picture after we were happy and full after eating at Bubba Gumps. Waikiki Beach is in the background. Some drunk girl thought she was funny by jumping in our romantic, special picture. Oh wait. That's Staci! Picture bomb! This is her signature picture bomb jumping pose. She is one of the most notorious picture bombers on the west coast.

Heid and Stac enjoying the convertible.

We went to Waikiki Beach and arrived just before sunset. Perfect timing. Sunset at Waikiki is spectacular.

Beautiful Lady. She had been looking forward to a lei the entire trip. Greg and Staci surprised her and bought this from someone selling them on the beach. Well it was "here take a beautiful lei"......by the way you owe me 10 bucks kind of deal.

Heidi had a good time with this. She basically had Greg and Staci walking back and forth, it was almost a full on photo shoot. It was a blast. By this time I was hollering action and cut, while about 50 people were watching us looking curious.

We had fun in Waikiki. Glad we stayed on the North Shore though because of all the people there. It was pretty crowded.

Hawaii Vacation Day 1 & 2

Hawaii bound!
Our plane left at 9:00am so we headed to the airport early. My dad took us and we picked up Greg and Staci on the way. They live in the neighborhood across the street from us. It should have taken 5 minutes (not longer) to get to their house but we got lost and it took about 15. That was the beginning of our adventure. I get pretty stressed if we don't have enough time at the airport to relax before boarding. There was traffic of course so by the time we got to the airport, got our bags checked, grabbed a bite to eat we were one of the last to board the plane. I was feeling super excited to be spending a nice relaxing week in Hawaii but at the same time missing Kaiya and Ella already. I tried to remember that they were with my family and would be well taken care of .
The plane ride was long! It took about 5 hours and 20 minutes. I was getting very antsy and hungry. The doctor told me to make sure to move my legs and drink lots of water because of the blood clot they found when I went to the ER. I did drink a lot of water but the bad thing is that I refuse to go to the bathroom on the airplane. I am not sure why but I have a fear about it. By the end of the flight I was surprised I didn't pee my pants. We bought some bagels at the airport and some snacks that they were selling on the plane to hold us over (I wasn't thinking and only took some protein bars onto the plane which I didn't want). We rented a couple of digE players so we could watch movies. Cirdan, Greg and Staci all sat in a row and I sat in front of Cirdan by myself. I ended up sitting next to a couple ladies flying to Hawaii from Atlanta. It took them 2 days to get there...they stopped in Seattle overnight.

When we got to Oahu we got our luggage and headed to the car rental place. As soon as we got outside it felt so warm and tropical. I was instantly in love. There were a billion people at the car rental so Staci and I waited outside with our luggage while the guys went and got the car. They ended up getting us upgraded for free to a convertible! Not sure the lady would have done that if us girls were with them. We ended up with a brand new convertible and were super stoked.
All of us were extremely hungry so after we stopped and got the condo rental keys (we stayed at the Turtle Bay Condos) and boogie boards we looked for some food. The car was already full with our luggage so we had to put the boogie boards in back with a big suitcase and me and Staci. We stopped at a little bbq place, the food was alright and Greg was kind enough to point out all the little cockroaches crawling all over the place. ICK!

This was Staci and I in the back of the car. Can you see her?

When we got to the condo we unpacked and the guys wanted to go check out the golf course. Staci and I went to the Turtle Beach right by the condo.

We met back up with the guys and decided to stop at a little fruit stand to get some pineapple and go to the Sunset Beach to watch the sunset. We bought a couple bags of pineapple, some coconut and the lady gave us some corn for free. We thought we were so lucky...free upgrade for a car and free corn?!?! As soon as we got to the beach and tasted the pineapple we all realized that it had a funny taste and it was not so fresh. No wonder she gave us free corn! The sunset was beautiful. That was my first time watching the sun go down. We then went to Foodland to pick up some snacks and dinner for the night. We ended up buying some sub sandwiches for dinner.

On Wednesday we woke up early (5:30am Hawaii time), and headed to the swap meet. We wanted to get some souvenirs and also needed to buy some beach towels. There was a stand with local jam so Staci and I stopped at it. The lady was very nice and very persistent that we try the jam. Soon the guys came over and we were all enjoying the yumminess. We ended up buying a bunch of jars. I also bought a dress that I could wear while in Hawaii.

After the swap meet we stopped at Walmart because we thought we could find a better deal on beach towels (we were wrong...oops). Then we stopped at the Dole Plantation. My brother told us that the tour wasn't worth the money so we ate some food there and walked around for a little while. I had no idea how pineapples grew. They are so cute when they are little! On our way out we bought a pineapple ice cream drink that was delicious. We also bought some candies and things to bring home.

We went home and changed into our swimsuits and headed over to Waimea Beach. The waves were really strong so I stayed back up on the beach while Cirdan, Greg and Staci went down to check out the waves.

We went back to the condo to get dressed and go get some dinner. By the time we started looking for food we were all starving and getting grouchy. We finally decided to eat at a place named Laie Chop Suey. It was pretty intense for a while with all of us starving trying to nail down where to eat. There was a lot of people there so I figured it would be good. We all ended up that night with stomach aches. It was not good food at all. The chow mein had this weird gravy stuff on it and the mongolian beef and sweet and sour chicken was not as good as we had hoped. After food we stopped at the temple. The visitor center was almost closing so we walked around and went to a couple of the presentations. We had a sister missionary helping us who was from the Philippines. The temple was so beautiful...I was looking forward to going back to see it in the daylight.

Some funny things that happend that made us laugh...
When we got to the swap meet Cirdan took off his shirt to put some sunscreen on. He had asked Greg to spray some on his back for him. While he was letting it dry Greg said..."Ummmm are you going to go to the swap meet with your shirt off...errrrr?" He was hesitant and really thought that Cirdan was going with no shirt on. It was really funny and we laughed about it the whole trip.

Also, while we were at Waimea, Greg, Staci and I were sitting there on the beach (Cirdan was off getting me water). I looked over and and made a comment about the scenery looking like a scene from Jurassic Park. We then started talking about dinosaurs and what if they came down from the mountain that we were looking at. We each said what we would do (run into the water etc) if these dinosaurs came charging at us. The conversation went on for about 5 minutes about these dinosaurs until we realized what we were talking about and had a good long laugh.

When we were at the Dole plant Cirdan starting video taping the Koi fish. Greg, Staci and I walked away thinking he would soon follow but as we were walking we kept turing around and Cirdan was still video taping the fish. He probably stood there taping for 10 minutes. We were laughing so hard at him because instead of taping us and our trip he was standing there taping a bunch of fish. Good times.