Hawai'i The Big Island

Well, we've returned from our Hawai'i trip in one piece!  

Reid managed to prove to the world that one can live almost exclusively on french fries and ketchup for a week.  Cade proved that it is possible to revert back to a two-year-old for a week at the ripe old age of 6. (Note to self: attitude, temperament, and hygiene are a direct result of this child's ability to sleep.)  I proved that it is possible to photograph every single meal, snack, and gum wrapper and still not come home with enough photographs.  And Brandon proved that it is possible to share meals with someone who is photographing every speck of food without going completely guano.  This family had a lot to prove.

After the world's bumpiest flight and a longer-than-anticipated stop at the car-rental place, we got to the hotel, checked in, and had some snacks Brandon's company had set up for us.  It was dark when we got to our rooms the first night so we didn't even know what the view was until the next day when the sun came up.  I said "parking lot" and Brandon said, "peekaboo ocean."  He was right, dangit Yay! ;)

Our room.  I loved that bed... sigh...

The boy's room.

Our snazzy bathrooms...

 The sun just peeking out on the first day over the mountains and the parking lot.

 You may be wondering what I was doing awake at the crack of dawn in order to be able to take pictures of the sunrise.  The boys woke me up at 4:30 am, that's what.  For two days in a row.  I was less than thrilled...

As it got brighter, we saw more little details.  Look at their orchid logo etched into the sliding doors!

Here is our peekaboo view!  The sandy area there is a great place for the kids to play in the ocean and for snorkeling.  They had a pool, but it was too deep for the boys and too cold for me, plus why would you want to play in the pool when the ocean is right there?!  This is the first resort Brandon's work has taken us to that the ocean was safe to go in at.  It was a real blessing!

 Here he is, the man himself, lookin' all suave at the beach.

 And here I am lookin' all me-like.

 Cade spent most of his time at the beach in the water.  

Reid spent most of his time in the sand again this year until the last day (again)!

Just call him Mr. Sandcastle...

When we got back to our rooms, we got a delivery from Brandon's company I wish I'd taken a picture of.  It was a pouch (for lack of a better term) about the size of a basket ball made of banana leaves tied with raffia.  Inside was a ton of Hawai'i made snacks!  Potato chips, macadamia nut caramel corn, dried fruit, chocolates.  Man.  I wish I'd taken a picture.  It was beautiful and delicious!

Had dinner the first day at Cafe Pesto.  Reid had a smoothie for dinner.  So did Cade.  It was a looooong first day.

On the second day, our friends the Hayes family arrived and we had breakfast with them and spent some time at the beach. 

Yogurt and watermelon.  The breakfast of champions...

This is the beach area.  You could rent those boats if you wanted as well as snorkel gear, body boards, and surfboards.

 Me and Tiffany.  I heart her. <3

 Mr. Sandcastle bringing water for his moat.

  

 

Cade really liked this boy in the red shirt.  He told me the boy's name is Sam.  I really have no idea if it's true.  He has a tendency to name people whatever he thinks their name should be when he bothers to ask at all, which is rare.

The funniest thing about this one is that while it was being taken, Cade thought he was the only one making a silly face!  HAH!

 

While the boys and I were in the water, Brandon joined a sand sculpting contest with some of his friends.  Here he is working on the head.

By dinnertime, the boys were delirious.  Reid is laughing his head off at a silly kid at the next table.  I think the hysterical word of the moment was "toilet."

 I drowned my embarrassment in house made ginger ale.  Man.  I gotta figure out how to make this at home!

The sunset from the restaurant.

We took a little stroll after dinner to try to soothe the boys a little bit.  

Cade had an encounter with two slightly older girls which left him too distraught to move.  Reid was expressing sympathy.  (The girls apparently told Cade he was cute.)

 On our way back to the room for bed, we found some fellow sleepyheads!  We saw these guys a couple of times.  They loved the warm black rocks!

We spent part of the next day in beautiful Kailua Kona on a submarine!!

Here we are waiting for the boat that would take us to the sub and snacking...

Reid, Mr. Sharpeyes noticed a "little big puffy spider." 

 Turns out the wall was crawling with crabs!  They were really hard to spot, man!  They blended right in with the lava rock.

Who is under water and loves it?  These guys!

We saw lots of fish and a couple of eels.  Reid's favorite part was the fake skeleton they tied to a real shipwreck for Halloween one year and just never bothered to bring back to the surface, which I would say is a little tacky if I didn't still have a Christmas wreath hanging on my front door in the middle of April...

Bye submarine!

We had lunch in Kona and ate purple sweet potato pie!

There were some children's activities run by the resort that Brandon's company had set up on a few mornings.  The morning of the fourth day there, the boys learned how to open coconuts.  And Reid learned how to score us half a fresh coconut.  He licked the entire thing!

 A little hula hoop time...

 A little relaxing time...

 They also taught the kids how to weave fish on poles, boats, and little baskets out of palm fronds.

 Later on, it was time for the group picture.  Say cheese!

We rounded out the day with a luau!

 Cade loved the pork.

The boys did not like the octopus...

We all liked the dancing.

 The fire dancer was terrific!

The next day was our huge trip around the island.  We wanted to see the volcano but it was a long drive, so I picked a few things to entertain us along the way.

Our first stop was Point of Refuge National Park.  This was a place where law breakers could come to be absolved of their transgressions.  If they did not make it here to this sacred place, they would be killed!  The area now houses reproduction buildings and statues and you can see artisans building canoes, carving ki'i, or this time we saw a man weaving with palm fronds.

Reid noticed that all the poles had ki'i faces carved in them, but wouldn't let me photograph him with them.

This was a little game table they have set up, but we didn't learn the rules.  I think it's similar to checkers.

A saffron finch.  A very pretty little bird we saw all over the island.  It is a non-native like so many things that seem to be prolific in Hawai'i.  We also saw tons of mongooses this trip!  They were impossible to photograph, but they were quite an exotic sight!  Apparently, they were brought to the islands to fight the rats in the sugar fields.  But since rats are mainly out at night and mongooses hunt during the day, all they really managed to do was ravage the native bird population, unfortunately...

 Our next stop was St. Benedict's Painted Chapel.  Apparently a priest a hundred years ago or so decided to paint the insides of this little place.  He did a great job!

 They say that many on the island were illiterate at the time and he used the paintings to teach by.

This statue is in the cemetery outside. While we were here, we saw the first of two geckos.  The second was inside the hotel!

 This little place saved our tails.  The food was great!

 Our last stop before the volcanoes was the black sand beach.  It was amazing how warm it was!  It started to rain while we were here.

 

And it never stopped.  This was the very most we saw of the volcano.  See that extra wafty area of fog there?  It's just to the right of that bush in the background... Yeah, that's smoke from the volcano.  This is what it looked like when we got there.

We went into a little museum.  Here, the boys get to touch a little bit of green sand.

This is what it looked like when we left... Those little ponchos came in handy, I tell ya!

We visited a steam vent quickly in the cold, cold rain...

The main thing the boys wanted to do the whole time was go to the Thurston Lava Tube.  Fortunately, the lava tube is something you can do rain or shine!

Soooo excited!!

 

 Mr. Model showing off his new head lamp. 

After we got rained out of the volcano, we stopped by a place Brandon and I had eaten at when we were here 12 years ago.  Ken's Pancake House.

There is a reason this statue is in the dining room...

 Here is my son's dinner.

Thursday was a day for smaller trips.  One of my favorite things this trip was the macadamia nut factory tour that was pretty close to our hotel.

 This is what they look like still in their hulls.

And here they are, hulled out, but still in their shells:

The boys loved rolling these little nuts all over the place.  Who needs to buy toys?!

We watched them fill the cans, seal them up, label and pack them and we also watched them cool huge batches of caramel macadamia popcorn on marble slabs.

There were nut crackers there and the boys happily shelled some for us.  They taste a lot like raw chestnuts!

After the factory tour, we visited Anna Ranch which was apparently owned and run by a woman named Anna Lindsey Perry-Fiske.  She was a rancher in the early years of the 20th century quite a feat!  The ranch is a museum now with tours through her house (which we didn't do) and an outside trail with signs depicting ranching and agricultural life on Hawai'i throughout the years.  The boys liked the rocks...

You see that house?  That's my new house.  As soon as I win that lotto. (She says, scratching lottery tickets furiously...)

Cade showing off his sunburn...

After lunch, we found a shave ice place.  It's Hawai'i.  You can't got to Hawai'i and not have shave ice.  It's like a law or something.  And this was really great shave ice!

Reid fell asleep on the way home, so in order for him to have a little more of a nap, we drove to the petroglyph fields near our hotel and Cade and I went on the trail while Brandon stayed with Reid in the car.

A few feet down the trail, there were petroglyphs that had been removed from their location and set up as a display.

Cade as a petroglyph.

Cade was my guide and rock spotter.  He did a great job.  No stubbed toes here!

Along the way, we spotted this guy.  That's right.  A Northern Cardinal.  Yet another non-native.  But it was nice to see him, anyway.  A little bit of home all the way in HI!

And here we are!  Behind Cade is a large lava bed full of petroglyphs carved by ancient Hawai'ians, centuries ago.  Nobody knows who carved them or what the symbols mean or why they are there, though many of them are self-explanatory.

A lot of them are of animals, warriors, and women giving birth, but then there are some, like that little four armed fellow (center left) that don't make sense.  Well, they don't make sense to me, anyway...

When we got back to the car, Reid was awake.  And just in time!  Brandon's company had arranged a movie night for the parents and a simultaneous event (with nannies) for the kids!  They had little short buffet tables packed with kid food like soda, fries, macaroni, and pizza.  They had video games for them, crafts, toys for the babies, and showed them movies, too.  Our night was an outdoor movie double-feature complete with picnic dinner!  The first movie was the new Muppet movie, but we got rained out before we could see the second one.  Which was just as well with me because I didn't really want to watch it anyway!  The boys had a great time.  When Brandon came back to the room with them, I cracked up!

Here's why:

This is what happens when you tell Reid to pose like Batman at 10:30 at night...  He's got the icy stare down...

Now, who would like to wager how long it took me to get the red paint out of the bed sheets in the morning?  Fortunately, a good soak got most of it out... *sheepish glance...*

On our last full day on the island, Friday, we had a nanny set up for a mid-morning reprieve.  We had breakfast with friends, left the kids with the nanny and went snorkeling!  The hotel we stayed at has some of the best snorkeling Brandon has ever done (Myself, having only done it once before 12 years ago!)  It was so nice to go again.  We saw a sea turtle!  I'm not going lie.  I was a little freaked out.  All he was doing was snacking on the bottom of the ocean, but he was so big!!  Brandon had gone out a few days earlier and saw 6 or 7!  Two swam right past him and one looked him right in the mask!  If that had happened to me, I might have had to be rescued at sea.  Otherwise, it was very deep there and you could see way down onto the reef at the schools of fish and loners, too.  It was a great way to spend the morning.  We took a shower, had lunch, and then it was time to pick up the rug rats.  Since Brandon didn't get to go see the petroglyphs the day before, we went to another nearby site to see some more, since on the map it didn't look like a very long walk.


I was wrong about the short walk aspect of this journey, but this trail was really neat.  Instead of being a walk through the woods like the trail the day before, this one was out on the lava beds and there were huge lava tubes everywhere.  This one had been used by early Hawai'ians as a home for 250 years!

You can see how deep it is, with a handy chimney hole where the boys are standing.



One of the many feral cats on the island.  They loved the resort areas and walked around like they owned the place.  We even saw one lying on a table on top of somebody's bath towels!  Having clearly forgotten his towel, this kitty is warming up on a hot lava rock.  What would Ford Prefect say?!

 Since the trail was longer than I had anticipated, we found these petroglyphs that someone moved to the outskirts of a golf course took a few pics and went back home.  Apparently, if we'd kept going, we would have seen another bed with over 1,000 images!

We had plans with friends for dinner, but a little more time to kill, so instead of going back to the hotel, we went to a nearby beach.  And then it started raining.

Here is our Jeep, patiently waiting for us to come back to our senses and get back in the dry.

 A few pictures, first...

 And then it was dinner time.  It was great to have our last meal with our friends, the Hayes'!  Good company is as sweet to the soul as good food is to the palate.



 After dinner, the Hayes' set up a plan with two other couples to have their older kids watch our younger kids so we could all go out and be alone together...  We went to a restaurant inside the resort and had drinks.  I finished my last (sigh) ginger ale... I miss you already, Gingy!  We talked about grown-up things like our kids and work and the state of the food system in America.  (When did such dull things become so interesting?!)  We had a fantastic time and when we went to get the kids every single one of the littles were out!  We picked them up and took them to bed and in the morning it was time to go!

One last goodbye (for now) breakfast with the Hayes' and then off to the airport to get ready for Easter!