Hawaii - Day two: The PCC 07/21/11

A lot of people asked us if we were excited about all the yummy food we were going to eat now that we were out of isolated Juneau, and boy oh boy were we!  But not so much the food that is native to Hawaii, but more about the Chili's, and Outbacks and Dairy Queens!  So here we all are, so happy for our first meal at IHOP!  Oh so good!

After breakfast, we had a little time to wander around before we had to meet the tour bus to the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC).  We rented a condo in Malibu right across from the Hawaiian Hilton Village.  The kids were just amazed at the beauty of it!  There were fish ponds and fountains all around, and we were hard pressed to convince the kids they shouldn't catch the fish.

I mean look at that!  Isn't it a beauty?  The Hilton had a little wading pool that wasn't connected to the ocean that was a nice warm up for the ocean the first day.  I think it was just for the Hilton guests, but whatever.  What I liked is that they raked the sand first thing in the morning!  Can you imagine being a sand raker as a profession?  

 The flowers were awesome!  These were just flowers that were just laying on the floor.  These were junk flowers!

The kids love their papa!  Either that or they love their papa's phone.  Whatever.

We're so happy we went to the PCC first, and as part of the package, they bussed us around the entire island and showed us the hot tourist spots.  It was great because some of the spots we were planning on visiting we visited and said meh, and other places we were iffy on we got excited about.  Here we are overlooking the beach from Diamondhead.

Some things never change.  Tony Parkours in Juneau, and Tony Parkours in Hawaii.

Here we are at the Dole Plantation.  You know, we had heard that pineapple in Hawaii was like nothing you've ever had before.  Whatever... but they were right!  The pineapple itself was enough to make us want to come back a second day!  But isn't this tree cool?  It's a Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree.

We finally got to the PCC, and while it was cool, we had a TERRIBLE tour guide!  We saw all these cool things that all the other people were doing, and he would just walk right by them.  We did a LOT of sitting around waiting for this show or that.  The shows were good, but it would've been nice to do some activities.  But this guy was freakin' hilarious!

There was a fun show that had all of the Polynesian dancers from all of islands.  

The one activity we did get to participate in is the Tongan spear toss.  Apparently when there are disagreements in Tonga, one way they're settled is by tossing a spear to a certain spot, and whomever is closest wins the argument!  None of our kids won the argument.  :-(

We were excited to get out of Juneau so we would get out of the rain.  Of course, Hawaii has just as much rain as Juneau!  It was nice that it felt like a warm shower, though.  And very cool that it absolutely downpoured for 10 minutes, and then it was sunny for the next few hours.  But people were looking at us like we were crazy as we were just walking around like nothing in the pouring down rain.

The food was AMAZING at the PCC!!  They did a traditional Hawaiian boar roasting where they bury the boar underground and cook it.  So tasty!  And the men carrying the boar weren't too bad, either!

 Isn't our family lovely?  There was a program in the evening in the outdoor, and here we are waiting for the show to begin in the evening.

The show was fantastic (six months later Tony's still talking about the guy who got hit by the spear and did he die for real?).  And there was another one of those fun torrential rains to run through to the bus!  These are the faces of some very happy people at the end of the night!

Hawaii - getting ready and day one. 07/20/2011

The day has come!  We are on our way to Hawaii!  We woke up at 4am so that we could get to the airport at 5am.  Have you ever seen more cheerful folks at 5 in the morning?  They know what's coming!  

Scott's father was an airline pilot, and he spent a lot of time in airports growing up.  It made it very useful when we breezed through security in Juneau (it's a very mini airport) and we had a full hour and a half of waiting.  It bode for a long, painful flight:  "Are we boarding the plane yet?  Is that our plane?  When do we leave?" and from Tony in utter disgust, "Is this Hawaii?"  Scott often called the kids over and pointed things out, teaching them all about the goings-on at airports.

Cady is really turning into a fashionista.  Papa definitely isn't helping her at all.  Scott bought her the cute sunglasses (broken before we even got to the condo) and flipped her hair the night before.  At least he started flipping it.  He's got the best intentions - the execution has to be carried out by Mama, though.  I can just see them in 10 years, Cady dragging Scott around by the credit card getting prom dresses or... well, whatever daddies and daughters do together in teenagerhood.

After an agonizing wait, finally it was time to board!

This is Tony's (and all of the kids') second time on an airplane, and Tony couldn't even contain himself.  He was bouncing back and forth excitedly.  I thought he was going to wet himself!

It's very hard seating five people together, so we did two together, two together, then one by themselves all in three clumped rows.  We thought it would be a great reward to be able to sit all by yourself.  Apparently not, though.  Randy tried sitting by himself for the first leg of the journey (from Juneau to Anchorage), but he felt very separated and loney.  The rest of the trips, we did LOTS of switching around with the other passengers so that we were in clumps of 3 and 2 next to each other.

The flight to Anchorage was breathtaking.  The view of the rugged mountains was very powerful, and I had no idea there were so many glaciers!  It was definitely awe inspiring, and made me feel lucky to get to live in such a beautiful place.

We had a five hour layover in Anchorage, so we decided to get out of the airport and taxi it to a nearby park.  I pretty much fell in love with Scott all over again at the park.  He had so much fun with the kids!  Well, I'm not sure if he was having fun, but the kids were having fun with him!  He pushed the boys on the swings...

... monkeyed around with Cady on the monkey bars...

... and got stuck in small spaces with Tony.  The kids had so much fun playing with laid-back and fun Papa.  I love that man so much!  We ate lunch in the park with our friends, Mark and Kelly (I curse myself that I didn't get pictures!  I was too busy eating and catching up!), then headed back to airport to make our final journey to Hawaii!

Randy and I sat together this time. It was a five hour flight, and we had lots of toys and coloring tools and books.  The airplane also let us rent movie players that had lots of tv shows, movies, and games already loaded onto it.  Randy and I got to sit together and watch Goonies!  My era, yes, but his choice.  Love that boy!

Finally, after a very long flight, we were there!  This is us just off the plane, and even the airport is tropical and beautiful!  This is the last picture of us from this day because I started the trip off right by leaving my camera in the taxi.  My new camera that we spent far too much on.  Yeah... I wasn't to happy, and neither was Scott (this was the third camera I'd lost in six years).  A few tears, multiple phone calls, and lots of prayers later, and the taxi driver dropped the phone off at our condo.  This was just the first in many times we our prayers were answered on this trip.

The Salmon are running! 07/14/11

We finally found some salmon!  We went up to entrance to the Salmon Creek hatchery (imagine there being salmon there?).  It was low tide, and there were salmon all over (dead and alive.  the smell was not alltogether pleasing).  At the very entrance of the river, the salmon were blocked by something or another, and they couldn't go anywhere.  Above, Cady has just touched a salmon, and she is delighted!

The creek was pretty shallow, and the salmon were VERY big.  You can see their fins sticking out of the water, and you can see just how many there were!

The downside?  It was pouring down rain!  We were absolutely drenched, but the downpour almost made it more fun!

New Bikes! 07/06/2011

Yes, we finally broke down and got the kids bikes.  The weather had been so good, and we kept saying we'd get them after Hawaii, but Fred Meyer had a good sale on bikes, and there's a trail just across the street.

What's even better is that they get to take their bikes to RALLY (their school-based daycare).  They're so excited!

Tony got his very first big-boy bike!  He could not be more happy!

Thank goodness for his training wheels, though!  He was permanently tilted to the side.  We had to adjust his wheels constantly because the wheel kept getting higher and higher and he was tilting more and more.

Sheep Creek Trail - July 7, 2011

Blogging is rather like scrapbooking, isn't it?  July 5th, we went hiking up Sheep Creek Trail.  It absolutely kicked our butt!  But don't the kids sure look happy before we started?

It was a crazy steep trail!  Lots of climbing.  Here we are sitting down on a break.

I tried many, many times to get pictures that showed how far we went.   Unfortunately we went a week to early, though!  The next week, the creek was teeming with salmon!  By the time we got to the creek, though, I wasn't really thinking about pictures.  Sorry guys.

Whale Watching in Juneau

Summer in Juneau is here, I guess!  I had heard May was the best month of summer, and from there it's pretty rainy and cloudy, which has turned out to pretty much be the truth.  But we've made the best of it in true Alaska fashion with lots of hiking and fishing!  We even did a bit of camping!  What yo don't see here, though, is that the tent was set up in our front yard.  The kids got a kick out of it, though!

We've been having fun exploring the different trails around here.  This one is called Salmon Creek, and it's a hike to an old electric building thingamajig then up to a reservoir.

We only got to the thingamajig, but we let the kids take off their shoes and play in the water.  You can probably tell by the looks on their faces, though, that they weren't too keen on the idea.  The water was coooold!

But it was a sunny day, and it sure was pleasant to just soak of the rays by the river!

Cady and Tony in the midst of a deep conversation over their watermelon, strawberry and grape bowls.

There are so many dandelions here!  The kids think that Juneau is the most beautiful place they've ever seen because of the abundance of yellow blossoms.  And these suckers are HUGE!

Of course that means tons of dandelion seeds to blow, which is always fun!

Randy when to his second year of scout camp this summer.  It was out on the beach, and boy was it beautiful!  As we were hiking in one evening, rays of sun were coming through the clouds, and I got to teach Tony what a sunbeam is, and whey Jesus wants us to be one!  Needless to say we sang that song a lot on the hike in.

Here's the beach while the tide was out.  Just beautiful!

My dad sent us up his old fishing poles, and our landlords gave us a bunch of their stuff, too.  So Papa and the kids have been doing a lot of fishing at the lake across the street.  They stock it with little rainbow trout, and they've been having lots of success in catching them!  What I love about the above-picture is that they're out there practicing casting in the pouring down rain!  Gotta love Juneau!

Tony was the first one to catch a fish!  Way to go, Tony!  He was very happy to bring it home and watch papa clean it.   He was not so happy to have to eat it.