Sea Life Park

I think Jon is starting to learn one of the tricks to parenting that I've discovered. Try to avoid situations where you know you'll have to say no. For example, going to Walmart and taking Evan into the toy section or pointing out the people swimming with the dolphins at the Sea Life Park. Fortunately, we'll be coming back here in January and bringing my mom along, so I am thinking we will all go to the Sea Life Park together and do the whole swimming with the dolphins thing then. Plus, as long as Evan is under two years old, he gets to do it for free with me and Jon.

Anyhow, the Sea Life Park was neat and we all had a good time, though it was very hot, no shade at the sea lion or dolphin shows or throughout much of the park. But it was nice, built much more for smaller children with all of the various displays close together, so that we saw everything in under two hours. I think mine and Evan's favorite part was feeding the sea turtles. You could get within six inches of them and feed them lettuce, celery and broccoli which was very cool. The park is also situated in a gorgeous location on the easternmost corner of the island, overlooking the ocean and Rabbit Island.

The rest of the day was spent sleeping and then we walked with Jon to work. I think we're headed to Kailua tomorrow.

For now, it's time to give Evan a bath and head to bed once he's done watching "Cars" for the 10th time this week.

Lost and Found

I forgot to mention, Wednesday night Jon found his wedding ring, he'd apparently set it down at the office.

Thursday Already?

Well, it is indeed Thursday. Evan is still napping, since he didn't fall asleep until 4:30pm. We had a good time today, drove about a half an hour up to Ko Olina Lagoons to the JW Marriott to hang out with a friend/coworker of mine who happens to also be here. A word to the wise. If you're driving up to Ko Olina Lagoons from Waikiki, make sure you either leave early enough to park in the very limited public parking or that you have the name of a guest staying at the Marriott there. After making the drive up and arriving about 10:45am, we discovered there is an entrance gate to the resort properties and lagoons. If all public parking is full, they tell you to turn around and try back again later. Umm...no. I would have been really ticked off. But, fortunately, we were meeting up with friends who were guests there. The security guy called the front desk at the hotel to verify their name and then let us in. We then paid $20 to park on the Marriott's lawn. So, point being, I'm glad we made it up there and got to hang out with my friend. It was nice to have had a chance to see the lagoons too and there were some fish and Jon got to do a bit of snorkeling. But, we won't be going back there. I'll stick with Kailua and Lanikai, still the two prettiest beaches here, or Hanauma Bay for snorkeling.

My friend and her husband also went up to th North Shore yesterday and went to Papailoa Beach, where the beach scenes from Lost are filmed. She showed us pics of "tent city" and of huge sea turtles right on the beach. We, of course, drove right by there the same day. So now, bless his heart, Jon has offered to make the trek back up to the North Shore while we're here so that I can see this beach. I've been receiving email updates regarding where Lost is filming, so maybe we'll even catch a glimpse of some filming while we're here.

I'll try to post more pics soon.

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.