Hawaiian Fun!

So this took a lot longer than planned, but we've been so busy between work, birthday parties, moving people, and rebuilding my parent's deck I just never found the time. But it's here now.

This is the house we stayed in, it went in a "V" shape. The main 
part you can see is the living room area. The the little bit of the house you can see on the right is our room. This was the view from the balcony outside of our room. We did have the best room in the house. There was a pool in the middle of the "V"

We had a lot of fun there.

MONDAY: I was hoping they would find my luggage, so we stayed near Honolulu/Waikiki. We went to the aquarium, which was fascinating. They give you these phone looking things, and you punch in the number that's on the display and it tells you all sorts of things about what you are looking at. We were there during

the feeding and training of the Hawaiian Monk Seals, so we got to watch that. Those animals were so cute. These are just a few of the weird things we saw there. The jelly fish look cool in the tank they had, I wish the picture did a better job of showing that. There were some sort of sea dragon we were entrigued by. And Drew really enjoyed watching that shell thingy. The Aquarium was fun, but I still had no luggage!

TUESDAY: We went snorkeling where they do the Dolphin Adventures, I think it's either in Ko'Olina or Nanakui. We saw the boats of snorkelers swimming around, all of a sudden a bunch of dolphins came swimming up. We hurried and put on our gear and went out. I loved it! We tried to go there again Saturday, but The under current was really strong, and a bunch of scuba divers said t was really rough and wouldn't recommend going out there. The pictures we took while snorkeling still need to be developed. 

WEDNESDAY: We went to the swap meet that morning, and got all kinds of treasures. We then went to La'ie and Drew showed me the house they stayed in last year. We just stayed around the beaches of North Shore till we met up with Evan, Drew's friend from his mission. 

Later that night we went to my Auntie Reina's House for dinner. My Uncle Barry Barbequed. My cousins A.J. and Rusty didn't really come around, but the littlest cousin Bryanne made herself known. She was so cute.

THURSDAY: We drove around the coastline, stopping at almost all the beaches. We didn't go into the water at my favorite beach, but I loved it. It was around noon, and we were the only ones there. The sand was softer than the other places. Yes, there is a difference between the sands at the

different beaches. Some beaches have nice soft fine grained sand and others have rough kinda shelly sand. And you may have only been one

 beach over. It was the strangest

 thing. At the next beach, Kahana Bay, Drew decided to snorkel. Some while he was standing in the water, some guy started yeling at him from the parking lot. He was trying to get Drew's attention because right next to him was a sea turtle, he could have bent over and touched it. From Drew's angle, it looked like a rock though. Every time Drew turned to look at it, it would put it's head back into the water. It was totally teasing him the rest of the time on that beach. It would follow Drew around and always be

right behind him. It took Drew forever to finally figure out where the turtle was. It was entertaining. We stopped at several random places, like this lookout point in Waimanalu. It was so beautiful. I really enjoyed driving around the island. It was peaceful, minus my sunburn.

FRIDAY: I didn't really want to be in the sun because of the sun burn, so we went to see Get Smart at the Kapolei theater. We Just hung out and started packing and cleaning. We had to be out of the house that day. There was all this left over food, so we called the missionaries and gave it all to them. They seemed pretty grateful. That night we drove my cousin and his buddies to the bars. They were entertaining! It was cool meeting all of his

 friends, because he'll go out to sea, and when he ports, he will post a bunch of pictures of him and his shipmates, and now I can put names with the faces. So these are My cousin Garrett, his wife 

Jessica, and his buddies Bobby and Jason. Yes, they are all wearing the same outfits, this is what happens when you drink on your lunch break, you go into Hot Topic, and buy matching clothes. 

SATURDAY: We tried snorkeling again, with no luck. We then went to my cousin's house to drop off our bags, we were staying over that night. We ate lunch, then went on a tour of his ship. I wish I could have taken pictures, but they've become super strict about that kind of stuff. I couldn't imagine living on this ship for several months. It's crazy how many people actually are on that ship when it deploys. We even got to see the control room, even though it is suppose to be restricted. There were a ton of other ships from other countries there. Apparently they do these war games, some events like the olympics, but also a big game with "bad guys" and "good guys" every year the countries take turns on who is bad and good. So we got to see ships from Chili, Canada, Japan, China, and a few others. Again I couldn't take pictures, but wish I could have, because one of the ships was so different than all the others. The craziest thing about the base is their grocery store, which isn't even on base. We drove around base, walked around his ship, and they never once asked for ID from Drew and I, only from Garrett. Then we go to the grocery store, and they ask for ID, and give us this paper that states all these rules like;

1. Must stay in the presence of your guests.

2. Can not help shop.

3. Can not touch the shopping cart.

4. Can not touch any of the items in the store.

ect. We just laughed that the grocery store has much more rules than the actual base. I kept the paper of rules, just in case nobody believed me. 

That night we played games on my cousin's play station, and had a BBQ. One of my cousin's nieghbors used to be stationed in San Diego, and his old ship was in port, so he brought some of his buddies to my cousin's house. One of the guys from San Diego kept asking Drew all these questions about our religion, and didn't see how any religious person could be in the armed forces, because religious people are suppose to be a peaceful bunch, with no fighting and killing. Then he went on to say he believed in Buddhism which is one of the major religions against war. He was crazy!

SUNDAY: We woke up, had some breakfast, then got ready to leave. We were trying to meet up with my Auntie and her family one more time, but didn't have any luck. My Auntie had to drive her dad to a funeral. We went back to the swap meet with my cousins and their friend Bobby. Then we went and ate lunch with them. We got the few last gifts, like my Dad's father's Day gift, then went back to my cousin's house till we left for our flight. Drew and I had seats away from each other, but they managed to switch it around so we could sit by each other. What a long flight home!