Welcoming A New Family Member Into Our Home!

For those of you who may be wondering about the title of this post... no, I'm not pregnant! Nope, we've adopted a lovely 24 year old niece for our Hawaii trip! When we were in Georgia for Derek's brother's wedding the week before we left for Hawaii, we asked Derek's sister's daughter, Christina to come live with us. Things fell into place pretty easily once again and she agreed! She took a few weeks to finish her semester of school then flew out last week to join us for the duration of our trip. What a blessing it is to have her here with us already (and not just because we can now have a regular date night- though that is AMAZING!) and our kids have already informed her that she's now their sister. :) She doesn't start work at Starbucks for a week and a half so we're trying to get in as much fun stuff together as we can before that happens! We started off with Surfing lessons on Waikiki beach. None of us had tried it before so it was a pleasant surprise that we were all able to get up on our small beginner waves and have a wonderful time surfing. Sadly, exhaustion set in extremely fast and by the time we were done we were all quite exhausted. The next morning all of us were so sore and personally, it took days before my arms and shoulders felt normal again. All that paddling to get out to the waves definitely took it out of me!

The day after surfing we took it a bit easier by starting off the day with a parade. It was Aloha Week here and there was a parade going right past our apartment building. We just crossed the street and sat on the curb looking at our own place and had the best seats in the house. I must say that living in the city is so fun to me right now because I can't imagine ever doing it again. I was kind of picturing myself in "Miracle on 34th Street" being able to watch the parade from my city apartment! I couldn't remember the last parade I had ever seen that wasn't a Disney parade. This parade also had princesses in it, but they were real Hawaiian Royalty riding on their horses and adorned in capes & leis and my girls were going nuts! Over and over they kept telling me, "It's a REAL Princess, Mom!" It is odd to think of our country having royalty and a Royal Palace... only in Hawaii! After the parade we jumped in the car and headed a mere 15 minutes away from the city into the mountains for a mile hike through the rain forest to Manoa Falls. The falls were so pretty and of course, so was the entire hike. We ended the day muddy and tired but quite satisfied with our day.

Now it was Sunday. We have visited a few churches but not found the one that we'll be staying at yet. We all got up and dressed and in the car and simply couldn't find the church. It was pretty funny but since we were quite literally all dressed up and had no where to go, we figured that we could find somewhere pretty easily! So off we went to the Bishop Museum. This was a very cool museum. We didn't cover near enough and will have to go back. We did a show about the Hawaiian sky & constelations and toured a few rooms of the museum about the Royals & the old Hawaiian culture. They've got a great area for kids too where they have lava demonstrations and you can explore a fake volcano and learn about it. This absolutely counted as a school day! :)

The weather here has been amazing. We hardly sweat unless we're doing something active and then if you step into the shade it's immediately perfect. The rain here is so different thatn Florida's thunderstorms. You can quite seriously open the blinds in the morning to see an overcast drizzly day and by the time you've filled up sippy cups and put 3 bowls of cereal on the table it's cleared and is the most perfect Hawaiian day yet. These last few days have differed in being much more rainy. The rain here has hardly surpassed a drizzle but it's kept at it for a few hours each of the last few days. Poor Derek, who rides his bike 2 or 3 miles to and from work each day has come home quite soaked a few days. Yesterday the weather returned to it's normal and hopefully we can now convince Christina that was a fluke! We went down to Ala Moana Park & walked around and walked to Magic Island to watch the sunset. We've been here several times to see it set and it's been different every time. We just don't get sick of it!

Today Christina had to work but as soon as she was home we set off to get her out of the city for the first time. We drove 30 minutes out of the city to the East and stopped at Lanai Lookout Point. This is my favorite spot on the island so far. We've stopped a few times but not been in good climbing shoes. We made sure to be this time and we climbed down the rocky hills & cliffs and explored all around. We didn't leave this small area for a good few hours but it was amazing to watch the waves pound the cliffs and spray water sky high and see all this beauty close up. We found a small cave hole and climbed in it. There at the end of the hole was a good sized exit that went out into the side of the rocks where the waves were spraying. It was a very cool spot. The kids were amazing in sticking close to us and being troopers and going carefully when there were drop offs and slippery gravel and it was such a fun experience to share with them! Once again, we went home tired but happy!