Hawaii

My parents are celebrating 50 years of marriage this month.  The way they wanted to celebrate was to take the entire family to Hawaii.   28 of my clan descended on Oahu last week.  We were there for varying days, my family being there for a full week.  We had a wonderful time spending time with our family and seeing the beautiful sites of Oahu.  The next few days I'll share pictures and describe what we did.

I have to say, never being in Hawaii before, I experienced a varying range of emotions.  I don't really know how to explain it.  I was trying to describe it to my dh as a spiritual experience that wasn't religious.  Sounds new-agey doesn't it?   I felt things so much more vividly and had such strong feelings and emotions while I was there.  It was an odd experience.  I kept thinking, "if I only had a journal I'd be writing all this down to remember."  Of course, I didn't and now my memory is fading of what I felt.  I'll try to share some of the feelings I had while I go through the various days events as a way to try to remember our week.

We left for Oahu on a non-stop flight.  We were scheduled to arrive 8:30pm HI time, 11:30 to us.  The plane was delayed an hour, which got us into Oahu around 12:30 our time.  After we got our bags and found our way out to the rental car shuttle it was well after 1:00 in the morning in our brains.   After getting the carseats loaded into the rental car and figuring out how to get to the hotel, we were off.  The kids were so tired and really wanting to go to sleep!  We pulled into the hotel, got situated in our rooms and finally, fell asleep, around 3:30 our time!  Can you say exhaustion!  

The kids still woke up bright and early and we went out to explore the hotel grounds.  The hotel we were staying at, JW Marriott Ilihani at Ko Olina, was beautiful.  They have saltwater pools around the hotel with stingrays, hammerhead sharks, a variety of coral and coral sea life including an abundant amount of tropical fish.  The kids loved looking at the ponds and discovering all the sea life that was in abundance in these pools.  Having studied Jeanie Fulbrights Zoology 2 book earlier in the year, they were having fun now experiencing it first hand. 

Our first day was spent exploring the hotel, checking out the lagoons and pool (more on those tomorrow) and resting.  Only one of my sisters had arrived the same day we did.  The rest of my family was coming in the next two days.  I ran into my sister and her family in the afternoon of that first day.  We got the kids together for a little bit, then did our own thing for dinner.  We were so tired from the long flight the night before and playing in the sun most of the day, we all fell asleep pretty quickly.

Tomorrow I'll share about our time down at the lagoons. 

 

See sidebar for photo montage of day one.