Hawaii : Awesome!

Kevin had a great post written for Hawaii, which we have since lost, so you'll have to bear with me while I try to recreate Hawaii in my head (now a distant memory).

Day 1: Arrival.

Noralee did great on the flight over. Apparently she has my ability to fall asleep with take-off, so Noralee fell asleep about 15 minutes into the flight and took one of two naps. During the time she was awake, we just played, read books, and Noralee discovered the ipod touch... which has now been renamed as "li ling dian hua" - or Noralee's phone (that's what she calls it). The ipod touch was a hand-me-down from Michael Jio-Jio - thank you! Noralee loves it, so Kevin and I do too. Hooray for toddler apps!

Hawaiian Airlines was really nice - they actually serve you a meal, which was actually pretty decent and the fligt attendants were very helpful. We were lucky enough to have a seat to ourselves on the way out.

When we got to Oahu, we had to do the whole rigamarole of the rental car - which took a looong time. (On the positive note, we brought our GPS - thumbs up!) And finally we were on our way to Waimanalo, which is where we stayed for the week. Waimanalo is just outside of Kailua, which is half an hour from Honolulu. We were hoping to get away a bit from city life, so decided to stay a bit of the outskirts of town.

We decided to stay at Open Plantation for the week - the grounds are beautiful, and more importantly, from Noralee's perspective, there were a couple of dogs and horses on the property.

Once we got in a settled down a bit, we decided to head on out to Waimanalo Beach, a ten minute drive. The water is amazingly blue and Noralee immediately loved the water. She's an Aug 30 baby... is she a water sign?

Noralee also goes to bed relatively early because of the jet lag. Actually, for the whole trip, Noralee is basically on CA time - meaning waking up at 3:30 and wanting to go to bed around 6 pm.

Oh, I forgot - Day 1 also includes eating at LL Drive In, which is Hawaii's fast food institution. I heart macaroni salad. Noralee loves rice, so she's happy. Later, we try cooking for the first time in our little kitchen. There's not much to be said about that - I cooked the first few nights and then gave up... but this does not matter, particularly on Day 1 because we have yummy Hawaiian food in our belly.

Overall: day 1: success! Good food! Noralee does great on the plane! We get to the beach! We teach Noralee to say, "Hawaii - awesome!"