Headaches

Fortunately last night Evan stayed awake until 9:30pm so that he slept until 7:30 this morning. Which meant we were up for the drive to the North Shore. Unfortunately, before we left we discovered that Jon appears to have lost his wedding ring, either in the Hilton's lagoon or in the condo's swimming pool. No luck finding it yet. But, as with the last trip we had here where he added a scrape to the fender of our rental car, better him than me as I tend to blow these things off. Things happen, and there's no use ruining time in Hawaii over something which we have no control once it's happened.

Now that we were already in a poor mood, I did a terrible job of reading the map on the drive, adding another 20 minutes or so, plus there was a bit of road construction. Regardless, we made it to the North Shore in one piece. It didn't seem like there were any turtles at Turtle Beach as we drove by, which was our initial destination, so we continued another mile or two down the road to Waimeia Bay. The water there was gorgeaous and blue. Evan got to sit on a four-wheeler and meet a lifeguard. Plus he was once again adventurous and headed into the water. It's right in between the summer (calm) and winter (surf) seasons however, so we couldn't take Evan in very far while feeling safe. We still had a great time playing in the sand and a bit of water. And then headed over to Haleiwa for Hono's shrimp. Mmm...SO GOOD! I had the butter spicy shrimp like last time and Jon tried the Garlic Shrimp. Then we stopped by Matsumoto's for shave ice. I have to say, it was good, but...I'll probably get yelled at for saying this, it wasn't necessarily any better than a snow cone back home. Sorry. The Hono's shrimp though...I dunno, there's just something awesome about eating shrimp cooked up for you out of a truck.

We made it home safe and sound and the boys are both napping.

The 6am Wake-Up

Evan decided to wake up at 6am on Tuesday, so rather than try for the hour or so drive to the North Shore, we decided to walk across the street to the man-made lagoon at the Hilton. Of course, this seems to have been Evan's favorite beach. There are no waves, it is backed by a parking lot and one side has a wall up with a small window in it to view the construction going on next door. This morning (Wednesday), he asked us if we could go to the "pretty beach". We said "Sure, we'll go to the pretty beach," he added, "the one with the trucks?" As Jon then added, "beauty is all in the eye of the beholder." Anyhow, he loves it so I'm sure we'll spend some more time there. We've actually bought tickets for a luau there for Sunday night. We really lucked out as Jon can only go out on Saturday and Sunday nights due to work, and this is the onyl Sunday night in October that this particular luau, right across the street from us, is taking place. Hopefully we can keep Evan from taking a dip in the lagoon!

Monday

I'm not really sure how I managed to write a full blog everyday while we were here last time. It just doesn't seem like I have the time this trip. Maybe it was easier to write because everything was so new to us. This time, Anyhow, on Monday we drove to the Windward side of the island to Lanikai Beach. It's just down the road from Kailua Beach, these are both rated two of the best beaches in the world. It was beautiful. Here's a couple of pics:

Evan finally likes the beach and ocean now and can't get enough of it, almost to our detriment. But thank goodness he likes it now. Evan also was the little social butterfly, introducing himself to a four year old girl from Oregon named Anna and a little boy two days older than him from San Fransisco. Oh yeah, and Jon found a dead Moray eel in the water. He was fascinated, but not quite convinced enough it was dead to pick it up out of the water with a bucket. That's ok though, I didn't tust it to be dead enough to even go into the water anywhere near it.

We're Here

That's really all I have to say for now...we're here. We made it here to the condo, by way of a day and a half in Los Angeles visiting with Audie, Grandaddy, Baachan, Auntie Martha, Uncle Larry and Flora on Saturday. Evan has done a great job so far. My laptop tells me it's currently 4:51am in Cleveland right now...ugh.

I'll write more tomorrow about our trip to one of the world's most beautiful beaches, Lanikai. It was a great time and it appears Evan now enjoys the sand and the ocean. We're so grateful he's getting over this fear, it made going to the beach very difficult last time. It's much more enjoyable now. Seems like I'm the one having more issues this time around. I guess jetlag is getting to me more than I'd realized. Yesterday I put the dirty clothes in the dryer instead of the washer and ran the washer empty (they are an efficiency/top-bottom set-up), then ordered dinner from a restaurant I thought I remembered being one place but was actually about a mile further down the road, and I was walking to go pick it up, so that was no fun. Tonight, my cell phone made it's way into Evan's bathtub and I have no idea if it's going to work again plus I whacked my knee on the corner of Evan's bed here. I just want to go to sleep.

Goodnight.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Well, we are now home in Cleveland. I didn't have a chance to write the last day or so that we were in Maui.

The day before we were leaving Maui it rained on the north side of the island. You can see from some of these photos that it was not raining on in South Maui. Actually, this day was probably the most sun we got while we were on Maui. We drove down to Maluaka Beach, just south of Wailea in front of the Maui Prince hotel. It was gorgeous. We just hung out and took turns walking with Evan up and down the beach. We could see the area where we were staying from the beach we were on, and saw it getting poured on. On the drive down, we could see snow up on the peak of Haleakala. While at the beach, Loribeth called my cell phone to tell me it was on the news that it was snowing on Haleakala. Apparently this is a big deal and never happens.

Snow on Haleakala:

Once we got back to the condo, we ordered lunch from the Okazuya Deli, they have really great stir fry. The night before we left we took it easy. We picked up Loribeth from work, and Amanda came over. We ordered some appetizers from the Lahaina Store Grille & Oyster Bar and watched Comedy Central for a couple hours before heading to bed.

January 31, 2008

The morning that we left, Thursday, January 31, we saw some great rainbows from our lanai. We also had the chance to watch a mother and baby humpback whale, about 100 yards offshore, swimming across our field of vision. What we really saw was the baby practicing its breaching, jumping out of the water, the two whales spouting next to each other, and the hump of the mother's back coming up out of the water as she swam next to her baby. So, none of the full breaching and tail slapping that we saw off on the horizon a few days before, but it was still pretty cool. Loribeth ordered us white chocolate chip macadamia nut pancakes and a big kahuna omelet from Gazebo. Breakfast was delicious. Loribeth sat with Evan and played on the computer. He now knows about pbskids.org and asks for the Cookie Monster page.

I dropped Loribeth off at work, and we took a photo of the amazing view of the house where she is a nanny for the rich and famous:

I have to admit, I will miss the Maui condo. We stayed at the Hale Ono Loa in Honokowai. It is two buildings down from where Loribeth lives, in the Kaleialoha. The particular condo we had, Unit 109, was fantastic. It is one of only 5 units in the entire complex that is ground floor and oceanfront. The yard for the other 4 units is all connected, but this particular one benefits from having a "front yard" that is practically to itself, so we didn't need to worry about Evan bothering anyone when he ran around outside. It was perfect. We were able to sit outside and eat our meals or have drinks and watch for humpback whales, sea turtles, sunsets and rainbows. We had the same view from a huge picture window inside the living room area of our condo. Here are some pics of our yard, if only I had such nice landscaping at home!

The trip coming back to Cleveland was a long one. We flew out of Maui around 4pm to Honolulu, our Honolulu flight was a red eye around 8pm, we landed in Houston at 7:30am (2:30am Hawaii time), and finally got to Cleveland around 2:30pm Cleveland time. Evan did a pretty good job sleeping on the flights, with the exception of when he coughed so hard that he made himself throw up all over me on the flight to Houston. Fortunately, there was only about an hour left to that flight before we landed.

And now that we are home, there's really no place like home. It's great to have reliable mexican, italian, thai, vietnamese, middle eastern and indian food to choose from within a ten minute drive of our house. Jon went to the grocery store and was back in no time, he commented at how when the lines started getting long at the grocery store last night that they paged some people to the front of the store to help bag groceries. That and he paid half the price he paid for milk in Hawaii. It's amazing the conveniences we take for granted.

At the same time, we took Evan to The RainForest in Cleveland today to get him out of the house. It was amazing to think we were hiking through a similar forest in Hawaii, only it was a real one. I think when I stepped outside this morning my tan instantly evaporated in the cold. As we were getting into the car to leave The RainForest, I slipped on a patch of ice.

So, it's good to be home, but I am definitely looking forward to working on my tan again in April when we go to Hilton Head!

Here's some pics from snorkeling that we finally had developed.

Enjoy!

Hanauma Bay:

Lu'au + Wailiea

Yesterday I had a real vacation day. I didn't check email and I didn't write a blog. It was wonderful. It rained in the morning where we are staying in Honokowai, so we drove Loribeth to work, and then decided to drive down to South Maui, to Wailea Beach. Praise God, we had the one spot of sun on the island and were able to have some fun and go swimming. Evan got over his fear of the sand today while we were at the beach. We had a great time, with the exception of a hungry Jon discovering there's no such thing as "fast food" here. Both drive thrus we tried to go through were a pain and we ultimately didn't end up getting food for lunch and coming home for leftovers before leaving for the lu'au.

Loribeth met us at the lu'au. We chose the Old Lahaina Lu'au, since Loribeth said it was the best. It was amazing. It may have been my favorite activity on our vacation. Evan went with us. I had made reservations for the traditional seating, which involves sitting on pillows on the ground with a low table to eat from. It turns out these tables are front row for the lu'au, so we had an amazing view, plus it was the perfect height for Evan and he didn't have to sit on our laps. Since it had been rainy earlier on, the sunset with the clouds was beautiful on the shore in the background. The food was amazing, it was so good. Evan sat still and paid attention to the hula dancing. It was probably the most peaceful moment I've had in a long time, I actually started to cry a little bit, because it was so nice to just be able to all sit together and enjoy something together, without having to be running around, or Jon being frustrated, or Evan running around crazy or squirming or screaming. All of us actually enjoyed it, it was wonderful. It began to rain a bit in the middle of the performance, so they cut it early by about half an hour, which is too bad, because it did stop raining, and I didn't mind the rain at all I was having such a great time.

We came back afterwards and hung out at Loribeth's and Amanda's condo doing some laundry and then went to bed.

This was one of my favorite days in Hawaii.

Best Banana Bread on the Planet

Today Jon and I learned that the "best banana bread on the planet" can be found by driving a one-lane, two-direction road for five miles, up and down mountainsides and cliffs along the ocean at a place called Julia's in Kalakuloa. It isn't actually a place so much as a little green stand at the side of the road.

To begin our drive, we actually drove north to Kahana and dropped Loribeth off at work. Then, we continued down to Slaughterhouse Beach. Apparently this is a good spot to see spinner dolphins, however this morning was very windy in that area and the waves were rough there, so no dolphins. We continued on to Nakalele Blowhole and hiked part of the way down to see it. The surf was just right that this was more impressive than the Halona Blowhole on Oahu, but it was way too windy and rocky to walk Evan all the way down to the blowhole.

Evan feel asleep when we got back into the car, so we decided to drive the long way around the north section of the island. It was a beautiful, and somewhat nervewracking drive, but Jon seemed to enjoy it. Once we got into Wailuku and went to the Iao Valley State Park and walked around, looking at the Iao Needle.

We came back and spent some time hanging out at the condo, walked along Ka'anipali Beach, and then Loribeth and Amanda came over and cooked dinner for us. We've had a lot of fun hanging out with them, it's been so nice having people here who know their way around, and it's been great spending time with Loribeth! Now we are watching The Pink Panther, and soon it will be time for bed.

Tomorrow's the luau!!!

Ka'anapli Beach

Sunset from our lanai