Oahu Trip - 10th Anniversary

Monday:  We got settled into our Cozy Waialua Cottage which we thought could be too good to be true online but turned out to exceed our expectations. 

 Our view from the front of the cottage.

 Tuesday: Spent in Laie touring the temple grounds, BYU-Hawaii where we sat in on the devotional featuring Michael Ballam giving a talk called "We Seek After These Things". We met up with our dear friend from Michigan for lunch and spent the rest of the day at the Polynesian Cultural Center.

 Chris ran into an old mission companion from Russia at the devotional. We had dinner with his family later in the week. 

 Wednesday: We explored Waialua by riding around on our host's quad, discovering all sorts of strange places that are way off the beaten path. We knew we were really off the path when a farmer came out and yelled at us for being on his property. Sorry dude. We discovered this enormous carved/burnt image of a head while we were touring the old Wailua Sugar Mill private land.

Visited the Waimea Bay Valley Botanical Gardens for a great (paved) hike to a waterfall. Saw some amazing plants along the way. Chris got the tour from the head botanist checking out the most exciting plant stuff going on there.

Thursday: Went snorkling on the north shore at a practically vacant beach and saw sea turtles gathering around one of the giant structures out in the water. It was clearly their home because we were told they would be there. My mask was pretty foggy so I couldn't see the turtles until there were right in front of me. It was a bit scary. 

Dole Plantation. Crazy pineapples. 

 Enjoyed the rest of the day down south in Honolulu and Waikiki. Pearl Harbor was very cool. Then we lazed on the beach at Waikiki, walked up and down the strip, went to the international marketplace to buy our family a set of ukuleles, and finished the night at a great sushi place we stopped at because traffic was bad.

Friday: Can you believe we spent almost the entire day at the cottage. Did nothing but read and sleep and make food in our kitchen. 

 

 At the end of the night our host John, also a paraplegic, let me use his enormous truck to go 4X4ing up the coast to the very top tip of the north shore. Here is the sunset we made it just in time to see.

 Finished the night by going to Jerry's for pizza. Its a local hot spot in Wailua that had some sweet live music while we were there. Seriously, he was like a black Jack Johnson.

 Saturday: We shopped for nothing for the first time in our whole marriage. We just walked around and tourist shopped in Hale'iwa. Hit up Matsumotos Shaved ice for the second time in the week and enjoyed a shrimp truck experience with about 60 other asian folk who exited the tour bus to find their shrimp and a moutain dew waiting for them.

We ended the night by having dinner with the couple who lived in the main house. John, Laurel and Becky were amazing to us and we have forever friends now.

Sunday we went to church, learned a song on the ukulele and had dinner in Laie with friends from Chris' mission. Monday we cleaned up the cottage, located dry ice and a cooler for my dad's surprise Dole Whip present we took back on the plane for him. We enjoyed a fantastic breakfast with our friends from Utah Valynn and Brandon and then we got on our flight. The Dole Whip ice cream, though extremely melty in warm weather, stayed frozen hard as a rock in the cooler the whole way home. 

We had the best time!