Hawaii: Thursday--Around the Island

Thursday morning we set out at the crack of dawn (my friend, Dawn, always says, "Don't say 'Crack of Dawn.'" Anyway...) with two main objectives: to see the island of Oahu and to visit the Polynesian Cultural Center.

We begin with the tour of Oahu. We could've driven all around the perimeter of the island, but had read that it was beautiful to drive through the mountains.

I said, THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS. Here we go. This is the H-3 tunnel.

And out the other side. Breathtaking!

Riding in the car is just as boring in Hawaii. This boring vehicle is our rental minivan.

Ah, a chance to get out and do fun things. First we pose in front of Chinaman's Hat.

Isn't this a pretty park? I guess (according to Uncle Jack who knows these trivial bits) many scenes from "Lost" were filmed near here. If I had to be lost, this is a good place.

After the first day, the girls gave up looking for shells (there are none, at least not that we could find), so they refocused on glass. They accumulated quite a nice collection of polished bits of broken glass. They also accumulated quite a collection of not-so-polished (read: sharp) bits of glass. We made them throw them back. A LOT of broken glass washes up on the shores of Hawaii. Wear water shoes.
You can see Rose Bud doesn't keep her shoes on. My rule is, if you choose not to wear shoes in a dangerous area (ie: the glass-ridden shores of Hawaii, the yard after a re-roofing, an e-coli infested manure pit) then you rescind your right to whine about any cuts on your feet or infection therein. Hence, all small children get to keep their shoes ON.

Looky! Mrs. GT came on this vacation, too!


to be continued...

Super Secret Wednesday Adventure

Mr. GT had to work late tonight, so after supper I announced it was time for our Super, Secret Wednesday Adventure. I shushed everyone into the car amidst cries of "What are we doing? Where are we going? Will I have to walk? (this from RoseBud who has a sprained ankle) and Where are we going?!"

If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret! Kids!

Oh, boy! Climbing the tower! This is a great surprise!

Cheese!

Hi, Mom!

Hi, Mom!

Hi, Mom. Rose Bud chose to wait in the car and read Foxtrot books since it's hard to do steps on crutches.

Fun with a crazy bubbler.

It shoots way out onto the sidewalk.

It's hard to drink this way.

This is the most fun drink I ever had!

And then we had ICE CREAM!!!!

Hawaii: Wednesday--Birds, Breakfast, Beach, Bus, & Burgers

Our stay in Hawaii began with a beautiful, sunshiney morning. Everyone had a good night's sleep and was raring to go. The kids started out with one of Auntie Sarah's muffins (the double chocolates went fast!) and were introduced to our local feathered friends.The "birds with the black mohawk" as Banana Boy called them, were intriguing. We also had pigeons, little "wrinkled" doves, Brazilian cardinals (stowaways from.... Brazil!) and sparrows. Here is a lovely action shot.

As part of our lei greeting/free shuttle to the hotel, we also got a free breakfast and Hawaii orientation (and sales pitch for tours, thank you). The breakfast was very nice--juice, coffee, eggs, sausage, english muffin, banana mini-muffin, pineapple. They met us at the door, put flowers in our hair and adorned us with leis (which we had to give back). The photo lady (bossy, but definitely knew her stuff!) arranged us all and they snapped a picture which we could later buy for $18 (we didn't). As part of the orientation, we got to see a little hula/ukelele demonstration and hear some tips for visiting Hawaii (see more than just Waikiki, wear sunscreen, buy our tours) The free breakfast made it worth going.

After the breakfast (from which we snuck out in shifts during the tour talk), we headed to the beach.

Yay! The ocean!

It's all Rose Bud wanted to do. She loves the ocean and was so happy to now be able to claim that she has swum in both the Pacific AND the Atlantic.

Diamond Head and Nonny from Waikiki Beach

We swam and jumped in the waves for about an hour (no pics, camera batteries dead), then headed back to the hotel for more muffins and a nap. Well, Nonny and Banana Boy napped. The girls and I went down to the pool.


The original plan for today had been for us to go to Pearl Harbor and from there, Auntie Sarah was going to pick us up for a BBQ at her house nearby. Now that plans had changed, we decided to take the bus. Mr. GT got online and found bus info for..... TheBus , as it's called. The City B Express stopped practically outside our hotel door, so that was easy. The transfer was easy.

Then we looked at our notes and saw that Auntie Sarah had told us to get off at her stop. Only, we had no idea where her stop was. We asked the bus driver and he told us to remind him again in a half hour. Ashley, this lovely new high school graduate (it was her last day of school) tried to help us out and shared all sorts of Hawaiian lore with us. We learned about poi, going to school in Hawaii, her family (she comes from a long line of bus drivers), where to buy awesome soft-serve and more. She was very chatty.


I reminded the bus driver, but he wasn't ready for us. Ashley (pronounced AHsh lee) had to get off shortly before we did. Finally , we neared what the bus driver thought must be our stop. By now, we had the whole bus trying to solve our dilemma. Everyone was rooting for us!!!


AHshley

Turns out, the confusion was that I said our stop was a street on which the bus drove more than a mile, hence no one knew exactly where to let us off. We eventually realized that it was the NEXT note on our page which was our real stop and just in time, we were there. We walked a few blocks to Auntie Sarah's house. Look at her great view of Pearl Harbor!

Nonny with almost all of her grandchildren (Sunshine is missing, of course)

It was good to reunite with family we haven't seen in nearly two years. Rose Bud had fun reconnecting with her cousins and exchanging cell phone numbers.

The little kids went outside and promptly began to clean up Auntie Sarah's yard. What fun to sweep up all the flower petals with homemade palm brooms!!!

Robert grilled hamburgers, we all visited and Sharon and Julie's boyfriends arrived for dinner. JoJo (goes with Sharon) and Bear (belongs to Julie) were both super nice, polite and friendly young men. We all fell in love with them. JoJo brought his guitar and the kids all played and sang for us.
By 7:30, the kids (and adults) were drooping, so Sarah and Robert drove us back to our hotel in two vehicles (there being 7 of us and two of them) and once again we crashed into bed for a solid night's sleep.

Hawaii: Tuesday--Away We Go!

Grandma and Grandpa arrived Monday at noon. Sunshine figured out that this was for real.

We arrived at the Madison airport bright and early at 7:15 and were first in line. Good thing. There was a thunderstorm in Denver and they were holding our flight in Madison with the hope that a delay would give the weather time to clear in Denver. With only a 45 minute layover in Denver, that meant we'd miss our connection.

She got right to work rebooking us. Given the fact that there were 7 of us, this was no small task. She quickly rebooked us but when she went to confirm it, there were not 7 seats on the second flight. Next she worked to split our party. We had 3 adults (including 2 parents) so this wasn't a catastrophe. That didn't work either.
Photo by Pepper

Finally, she came up with us all taking our original flight to Denver, catching a flight to LAX and then connecting to Honlulu. This resulted in two two-hour layovers and an arrival time 5 hours later than we expected. At least we'd get there.

Photo by Pepper

It's all a blur, but I think we waited an extra hour to board our flight to Denver. This was Daisy and Pepper's first time flying. Banana Boy pretended he had never flown. For all practical purposes, he was right. I'm sure he doesn't remember the 42 hours he spent in the air when he was 1 1/2!

The rest of our flights were uneventful other than delays at each airport. In Denver, we landed just fine in the storms, but our next flight was delayed because our new aircraft hadn't arrived.

Photo by Pepper

Since there is no longer meal service on domestic flights, we had to bring our own. Fortunately, cheese and turkey are not a gel, nor can you use them to make explosives, so we were allowed to bring them in our carry-ons.

At LAX they had to remove a small bolt from the engine housing to insert a probe to inspect the engine before an over-water flight. In replacing the bolt, they stripped it. Fifteen minutes to replace the bolt, 45 minutes for paperwork and we were delayed another hour.

All the kids liked flying. Everyone, except Banana Boy, was too excited to sleep much on any of the flights, plus we had a cool entertainment system on our 3rd flight (albeit prone to crashing and rebooting) that kept everyone, uh, entertained.



We were originally supposed to arrive in Honolulu at 3 pm. We'd promised the kids we'd hit the beach once we got settled. And Auntie Sarah was planning to meet us at the airport.

All that, and a lei arrival, was shot by our new itinerary. We arrived to a dark Hawaii, no lei greeting, no airport shuttle.

Luckily for us, there was another family on our flight (which happened to become a different AIRLINE altogether in the rebooking) who had a lei greeting with our same company. We accosted that greeter who then went into a panic over our situation because she had no leis for us (at this point our bodies remember that it is 2:30 am in Wisconsin and we could care less about a lei. How about that airport shuttle????).

We finally managed to explain to her that we were supposed to have arrived 5 hours ago on a different airline and can we please get a ride to our hotel. Crabby other-family-arriving-on-the-correct-flight was not pleased with the delay. I suppose their bodies wanted to be in bed, too.

Greeter Lady got us all to baggage where we threw another kink into her plans/schedule by meeting Auntie Sarah, who was able to reshuffle HER plans and come later to the airport. Greeter Lady really had no time for a family reunion, and I'm sure she was wondering why the relatives didn't just drive us to the hotel (answer: 7 of us wouldn't fit in the extended-cab Ford Ranger)

Auntie Sarah brought us a life-saving gift of 2 dozen muffins which we ate for days--breakfast, lunch and entertainment for the kids as they fed them to the pigeons from our lanai (balcony).

Everyone's favorite pigeon, Mr. One-Leg (or something like that) He's also missing a few toes on the good foot, if you look closely. He sure loves muffin, though!


Finally Greeter Lady got us all herded onto the bus and then we waited a few more minutes while her assistant ran across 3 lanes of airport traffic (taxis and such, not planes) with our leis. We were too tired to take a picture of us getting them in the dark bus.

We all finally fell into bed about 9:30 or 2:30am our time. Everyone slept like a rock all night.

Hello From Hawaii!

Grandma: Read the real names to Sunshine. He won't get the nicknames


Banana Boy, Pepper, Sharon, Nonny, Julie, Rose Bud, Daisy At the beach

Eating lunch in the airport

Mommy and Daisy on the airplane

Hi Sunshine and Grandma and Grandpa!!!!!

We are having fun in Hawaii! We went to the beach and played in the ocean! We saw Auntie Sarah and Sharon and Julie. We had supper at their house. We ate hamburgers.

We all miss you and we love you so much!

We'll be home soon!

Have fun with Grandma and Grandpa and take good care of the chickens and Spider.

Love,

Mommy, Daddy, Rose Bud, Daisy, Pepper and Banana Boy (who has not seen a Banana Tree yet)

Answers and Questions

I promised you some coherent thought on my should I stay or should I go now musings. I don't know if it will be coherent, but here are some thoughts.

I think there is a place for both people who can go and people who can give.

Not everyone CAN go to India. Some people can't physically travel. Some have small children or other obligations keeping them from world travel. Some people really don't have the interest in visiting a third-world country. Some people aren't equipped to work with children or homeless children or disabled children.

And not everyone can GIVE.

Everyone CAN pray.

Yes, $4000 is a lot of money to go.

But to go supports the people who do this work on a daily basis in a way that giving alone can't. It reinvigorates them, re-inspires them, reenergizes them. It reaffirms that what they do is the right thing to do and other people care about their work too.

To go sends a message to the children that they are WORTH IT. They are so valuable, so important, so loved that strangers from across the world would come to meet them and love them and help them to blossom.

To go teaches our children that this is how we shine the light of Christ. It teaches them that they can do this. Ordinary people, people they know do this. It teaches them that there is more, much more to their world than what they experience every day. (and I hope to learn that, too!)

And all the money in the world won't accomplish anything without hands to put it to use.

So, here is my idea for dealing with my conflicted feelings.

I'm confident that God will provide the $4000 for us to travel. I can put together the money for us to go.

What about if we raised ANOTHER $4000 to help Sarah's kids when we get there?

Does that sound unreasonable?

If 10 people gave $200, that would be $2000.

If 100 more people gave $20, that would be $2000.

Do I know 10 people who could give $200? I think so.

Do I know 100 people who could give $20. I'm sure I do.

Are you one of them? Would you pray about it?

Consider this: If you put aside $1 every week between now and January, would you share the $20 you save with Sarah's kids?

If you put aside $10 every week between now and January, would you share the $200 you save with Sarah's kids?

Would you pray about it?

And read Leslie's latest, latest comment for more thoughts on this.