weekly 2014.12.30 (once again, brevity is not my strong point)

We are having a quiet afternoon here in Waimanalo Beach, Oahu. Stick and the five big kids just left for surfing lessons in Waikiki and Bekah and I are home alone. For the last few nights I thought I’d write my weekly, but I keep falling asleep so this seems like a good time, seeing that I’m awake.

Hmmmm, where do I start?!?!? We are in Oahu where it’s currently 77* and I see at home it’s 15*. I would seem that we picked a good week to come! We got here on the 24th and will leave on Sunday night arriving back in SLC the morning of the 5th.

We started planning this trip back in June. We thought we were ahead of the game and planning so far in advance, but I quickly found out that we were actually behind. People apparently plan for and book Hawaii a year in advance. But we’ve never been here, so we had no idea. We originally wanted to go to Kauai, I inquired into 60+ different rentals and they were ALL full. We’d find a house we liked and decide to think about it for a day or so and then we’d come back and find it was gone. Part of the problem is that we want beach front property. Truthfully we could have found a regular house in a regular neighborhood on Kauai, but we want the beach in our backyard! We also could have found a small hotel type room in a big ol’ resort property, but we didn’t really want to do that either.

I was pretty discouraged at this point, so we decided to check Oahu, which was also pretty booked but we did finally find a house that was available. A small-ish house right on Waimanalo Beach, which is considered rural Hawaii, and has none of the hustle and bustle of Honolulu or Waikiki, which is exactly what we want! A few years ago, National Geographic voted Waimanalo Beach one of the world’s most beautiful, and I’d have to say I agree.  The water is turquoise and so warm we can’t believe it. The sand is light brown almost white and it feels like dry brown sugar, so soft!

We’ve noted a few differences from CA: hardly any birds at all, and no shells. Literally, no shells on the beach. Today Aaron and Harry found our first shells, but they found them in the water, not on the beach. Bekah thinks she’s found a lot of shells but they are all the size of my baby toe, toenail. Ha! All along the edge of the beach, is a row of trees, which is nice because they give the option of shade if you don’t want to sit in the blazing sun. Our beach was a little busy on Christmas day, but other than that it’s been 90% empty, which is just how we like it. The boogey boarding isn’t that great. The waves are coming in hard and fast but they’re breaking about 4 feet from the shore, so there’s not much of a ride. We will probably walk down to either the north end or the south end of our beach where the boogey boarding seems to be better.

Our house is little and old, nothing fancy. There are two bedrooms and two queen size futons in the family room so all 8 of us have a bed, and it’s definitely not the Ritz. But the price is right (just about the same price we paid last year for 6 nights, and we will be here for 12. Although last year’s house was much, much nicer) and the location is second to none, so we are happy! There is a cement wall around the property and a gate in the back that leads to the beach, about 25 steps through some trees.

No one knew we were coming, not even the kids or our parents. What we didn’t anticipate was that so many people were going to ask us when we were going to California for our beach trip. I guess we are predictable! I’m sure no one noticed that we always responded with, “Yes, we are going to the beach.” We never said that we were going to CA. It worked pretty well, because everyone assumed that we were going to Oceanside, like we always do.

We had our family Christmas on the 23rd and then left for the trip around 4am on the 24th.

We told the kids that Bekah and I were going to fly to CA and then we’d pick a name out of a hat on the way to the airport to see who else got to fly, just for fun. That way everyone had to pack their bags like they were flying.  Bekah picked Rachel’s name and was thrilled that all the boys had to drive and we could have a girl’s day flying together. The boys dropped us off and then left to go park the car at a Park & Ride, (but they thought they were driving to CA). At one point they thought the Park & Ride was a car wash, but then they realized that Stick was telling them we were all going to fly. They were pretty excited but Bekah was grumped when they walked up and met us at the gate.

The plane ride to LA was short and sweet and the plane was small but oddly enough, had adequate leg room. The kids all thought it was pretty thrilling. Once we got to LA we walked around for quite a while trying to figure out where we had to go next. I think the kids thought we were lost (we were) and that we were trying to go get our rental car. After walking a long, long way, (hello, LAX is massive, the kids were totally wowed by it.) out one terminal through a parking lot and into another terminal, we realized we were going to have to go through security again to get to our next gate. So Stick handed the kids the papers that showed the next leg of our trip. To say they were shocked, is an understatement. Bekah immediately started grumping though. She didn’t want to go to Hawaii, she wanted to go to the beach and she didn’t want to get on another plane. Ha! Once we told her that Hawaii was a beach, she recovered. Thomas was pretty shocked, he kept asking, “Is this the last surprise, or is there something else coming?!?!”

LAX was pretty much a nightmare. Everyone got through security but me, they pulled me aside and went through my bag. They took a bunch of stuff out of my bag, and ran it through the x-ray twice and then finally let me go. It was super busy, there were no seats, a million people, and we spent $60 on sandwiches. Finally we got on the plane which was nice and also had leg room (can you tell I’m a teensy bit scarred from our sardine can plane that we took to/from Puerto Rico last year?). Aaron and Thomas sat on the other side of the plane together, but the rest of us were close. It was a six hour ride, they fed us spaghetti and meatballs, and all in all it went by pretty quickly. I sat by Spencer and he was so cute. I think he said, “This is SO cool” about 84 times. And he really loved the plane food and told me that, “we should do this more often!” The fact that we got up that morning at 3:30am, after going to sleep at midnight helped me sleep on the flight, despite a lot of turbulence.

Just before we landed we saw Air Force One parked outside the airport. I had read online that Obama was going to be in Oahu the same time as us. In fact he’s staying on the beach about 8 miles north of us. Then while Stick went to get our rental car, we were waiting at baggage claim and we saw the “coach” from “Meet the Mormons” and his family.

It took Stick forever to get our car, but it turned out to be a brand new Toyota mini-van with only 60 miles on it. It only seats 7, so two kids are sharing a seat belt, but it’s a much nicer car than I expected. Our house in about 30 minutes from Honolulu and we knew we needed to get food first thing since the next day was Christmas and we didn’t think anything would be open. We got to Costco 10 minutes after it closed, which was not awesome. So we ended up getting some food at the local market where a gallon of milk was $7.99 which was also not awesome.

But the beach was awesome and the house was great and we were thrilled and shocked to think that we were in Hawaii! Merry Christmas 2014!