Holy Cow! Perfect Vacation. Generally I don't even like vacationing, pretty much for 2 reasons, it is expensive, and unproductive. But this one was paid for, and I (in a limited time) got to do all that I could to try and help a softball program that I was once part of. I always say I hated it there, but really I just hated losing (still do). So it was fun to share my perspective on what needs to happen to change that. BYU-H is a special place and it was so neat to get to go back. Oh and Isaac and I had a BLAST.
The first morning we got in early and headed over to Pearl Harbor.
We found this old timer there to talk to while we were waiting for the boat (of course we did, it's Isaac) but it was fun. He was 14 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I'm not sure but that's gotta be pretty close to the same as Grampa Frei.
Standing on the Memorial the "Mighty Mo" in the background.
Isaac read and read while we were there, I had been before and kind of had softball in the back of my mind but it was still way cool to be there.
From there we headed to the North Shore. We stayed at Turtle Bay...nice! Here's the view from our room:
It was so great to just leave the door open all night and sleep listening to the ocean. We loved it.
Thursday we got up and went to the Dole Plantation, we were pretty much on Utah time so we were there pretty early, it wasn't open, which didn't stop Isaac from talking to the real workers across the street. He ended up buying a case of pineapple-straight from the warehouse-of course he made friends with everyone there "made there day" in fact so when the lady was ringing him up he said "You can give me a better price than that if you want." And she agreed and gave him her price. Wheeler dealer this guy.
Here a pic of him cutting up pineapple in our room. It really was delicious.
And the mess...
Which was really only 1/2 of the mess because we tried to save (nasty) coconut water, I don't know, like we didn't want to waste it or something. It was a disaster but whatever.
Since we were up and at'm so early we also had time that morning before softball to go to the Laie Hawaii Temple open house. It was awesome. When I lived there I had done baptisms but it was neat to be back when the open house was going. It was beautiful!
When I got done with softball this day I walked out to find the rental car with a surfboard tied to the top, I should have taken a picture of that but...
Went dinner with Ashley Parry and her boyfriend, that night, it was fun, and later that night went exploring an old WWII bunker with one of his roommates. They were sports to take us.
Too bad my eyes were closed in this pic but I didn't have'm retake it because I figured I was going to close them every time.
Look at my surfer guy! He's happy as can be! One of the days he dropped me off at the softball field and headed to castles beach. There were some other people there taking lessons, so he perked his ears up and was able to get up a few times :)
The next morning we went back, me with camera in hand. But it wasn't quite as successful. The water wasn't as good. But after I set the camera down we had so much fun just playing in the ocean and trying to both catch the waves on the board turned sideways...it was just goofing around but we laughed and laughed I loved it.
Really its taking for ever to make this post. I might have to finish and polish it up later. For now though...here's a start.
But I don't want to leave out my favorite Hawaiian Isaac-isms
"The seas are angry my friend." Apparently that one is from a movie or something.
"Mahalo" and sometimes "Mahalo, I love you" Flying on Hawaiian Airlines he picked right up on this one. And last but not least: Mele Kalikimaka is merry Christmas in Hawaiian but "Mele Kalikamaikoo..."is just part of a song Isaac likes to sing to me, the next line is "I love you" its pretty cute.
One of the mornings, maybe the day we went to the dole plantation...I don't know anyway we were driving back to the hotel and Isaac saw a sign that said "Free Tours" of course we turned around, but what it actually had said was "Free Trees" and he didn't even get to get one because they were only giving them out on Saturdays, of course we talked a good story about going back to get one, but we didn't. Anyway we ended up at Waimea Valley, they were sure ushering cars through there because I guess they were filming some movie there. Journey to the center of the earth?? Something like that. Apparently "The ROCK" who I don't even know who is was there, I of course was unimpressed. When we were driving out we drove through some of the smoke they'd pumped in there for something, that was the extent of that.
But Isaac did find these cool peacocks to feed banana he picked up from the trash, "talk" to, and try to get them to show there feathers. It was pretty dang funny-this little collage of pics doesn't really do it justice.
And supposedly this really old African tree is a big deal...so we took a picture.
And Isaac wasn't so keen on going to the PCC if it was just a "Bunch of Dancing" but he went while I was at softball. He really liked the Samoan village, and then he watched the canoe parade. Then we went back together after I got done and went to 2 more villages. We also got to see my sister inlaws parents who are over there on a mission. That was fun. They recommended the coconut cake on North Shore for dinner so we went for it. Watch the sunset at Sunset Beach, ate, and had cake left over for breakfast (and Isaac a snack to help him survive the swap meet too)
We didn't take a camera to PCC-oh well.
Sunset
Most of Isaac's head and part of mine, we do what we can :)
Breakfast of champions! Those Oh's were pretty good too.
SO SO MUCH FUN.
