Goodbye Hawai'i, Hello Bear Lake

Goodbye Hawai'i, and aloha Gram and Pop!  Oh wait, this isn't til Thursday.  Oops.  But yes, we had to say goodbye this week.  It was so much fun to come visit and get to see and spend time with Gram and Pop, but unfortunately we eventually had to go home.  But before then, let's recap our week!

Monday was a bit of a down day.  In the morning we headed for Temple beach.  We were all ready to boogie board and swim when Monica saw a jellyfish floating in to shore, so we ended up playing on the beach instead.  The jellyfish weren't even supposed to be coming in for another week or so (it has something to do with the moon) but there were a whole bunch of them every time we went to temple beach...

In the afternoon we decided to do a little souvenir shopping.  The kids had picked up some stuffed animals along the way, but some of us were still looking for something else.  We went to a wood carving place, and actually ended up buying a turtle that we didn't take a picture of.  So if you come to visit you'll have to check it out.  Right by it was this shrimp place, and the mascots were too good to not get a picture.

We also went to the temple visitor center.  This was Grayson's favorite place of the whole vacation.  They had an audio clip you could listen to at the Christus statue.  There were also a bunch of other fun temple based activities to do scattered about.

We had a good view of the beach from our front porch, and got to see some good sunrises.  I wish I'd taken more advantage the first few days when I was still waking up at 4 am.  By the end of our time there I was waking up more like 5:30 or 6.  That's late enough you miss the start.

We headed down to Honolulu to go to a children's museum.  There was a lot of fun stuff for the kids to do.  I liked this wind wall.  There were a ton of little metal pieces that glimmer and move when the air hits them.  It was pretty cool.

There was also a lot of cool Hawai'i focused stuff.  We did a star show that shows the constellations they use(d) to navigate. I also saw Maui's hook in the sky!  Don't know if I could actually find it at night, but I saw it during the star show (even without the line).  There were also a bunch of old Hawai'ian artifacts and places to learn how they wove baskets, made nets, and huts.  And in the rotating exhibit there were Legos!

We found a place where we could kayak or stand up paddle board in a river that frequently had sea turtles in it, and we had to jump at the opportunity.  We got one of each and all had a fun time navigating the river.  We did see several sea turtles, but often you'd see their head break the surface for a second while they took a breath, and then they'd disappear.

We stopped for shave ice on our way home for dinner.  In Hawai'i you have to do things the Hawai'i way, which is dessert first.  We went to Matsumoto's which was very busy, but very fast, so the wait wasn't too bad.

It was delicious.  I think I've learned some tips on how to make a better snow cone.  Those tips would be to pour on sweetened condensed milk, and add ice cream.  So I guess the trick is to minimize the ice/snow cone...

Hawai'i was sad to see us go, so they sent a little buddy to say goodbye!  It was so funny to watch this lizard.  I couldn't believe how slow it was crawling, it looked like it was in slow motion for a bit.

Brooke and I went to get food at the airport, and found a cool sign for a quick picture.

Our flight was only about 6 hours, but also all of the night.  We flew out in the evening and landed at like 5 am, so it was important to try to sleep as much as possible.  You may  notice in this picture that Grayson is not facing me.  Nope.  He had a champion sitting on his other side who didn't seem to mind one bit when Grayson fell asleep on him.

Once I woke up I did eventually get Grayson to switch sides.

It's a good thing we got such great sleep on the plane, because everyone in Utah was ready to party.  We went to my parent's neighbors to swim in their pool.  They've redone some of it, so there was a new slide, and Grayson even jumped off the diving board!

After some intense pool basketball (and scraping most of the skin off my feet!) we calmed down and headed to go see the new Moana movie.  I was exceptionally excited to see it after being in Hawai'i and going to the PCC and learning so much about the culture of the islands.  I know some people were disappointed it was basically the same as the animated movie, but as I said, I was in prime condition to love it.

On Saturday we headed down to Thanksgiving Point to let the kids spend time with their cousins on Monica's side.  We went to the Museum of Natural Curiosity.  It was fun, but I also remember feeling really tired.

On Sunday we drove up to Bear Lake (Idaho side) for my family's vacation.  After unpacking, we started things off with bingo night!  Everyone's always excited for some bingo.  When you get one away you call out "show me the money!"

Which, rightly so, is less exciting than when you finally get that "BINGO!!!"  Oh man, Grayson is pumped!

And that wraps up our adventures for this week.  Still got one more week of vacation ahead.  Hopefully we can adjust to the time okay and don't say up too late, because I think we're heading into this one pre-tired.