March 2023

 Not a whole lot else happened in March.  Sadie and Kaden performed in Festival.  This was a big deal and they worked so hard!  I decided to have Kaden do this because I knew he would do a good job.  He really is talented, but he doesn't love to practice.  His teacher didn't know anything about Festival so I asked Vicki if it were possible to sign him up with her.  She was nice enough to let him and also help him learn his songs with extra lessons.  He also worked on them with his regular teacher Maia.  Sadie has done this before plenty of times, but she is given (she picks) harder songs every year.  Both kids were stretched and it was definitely hard!  I am so proud of their hard work.  They did amazing.  Festival was Friday night and Vicki had a recital the next day and she let Kaden come play his song at her recital too.  Unfortunately I made a deal with Kaden that he could drop piano if he tried soccer again.  And he decided that would happen immediately after Festival.  So even though he was so talented and did such a good job, he stopped piano right after.

Sadie and Kaden both sick and miserable together.

Kaden had been talking about going bowling and I decided to get Dylan out of the house and do something with Kaden since he's like the only one Dylan can get along with.  We went to the bowling alley but they were closing for a party and we couldn't bowl.  We started driving to another bowling alley but decided to stop at Leo's Place instead and let the boys play together there.  They had fun and spent time together and got out of the house at least.  Someday we will go bowling.

Bunny and kitty hanging out together.  You know the bunny is only up there because he's trying to bug Jax.  He's a big fat bully.  And he uses the bathroom on the deck constantly so he got locked up shortly after this for good.  Which is sad because we don't see him much.

Waimea Canyon and our last day

 We had to be out of our room at 11, but our flight wasn't until 11pm.  So we got food at the food trucks and hung out by the water for a bit.  This is along the path I ran.  Not a bad way to kill time.

Funny story, I forgot to pack a pair of long shorts.  So I had dresses and pants that I could wear with garments but not shorts.  So I wore my running shorts while we hung out here and changed back into garments and pants for the flight.  If you look closely in this picture you can see the purple bruise on the back of my thigh...

Then we drove to Wailua Falls.  Julie said her family climbed down.  Seriously, I don't know about them.  Ryan and I looked for a way down last time we were there and were never brave enough.  Not to mention it's not allowed.  But we did see people at the bottom this day too.  There's a way.  Maybe next time Ryan and I are alone we will do more research and find a way.

Then we drove to Poipu in hopes of seeing some monk seals or turtles.  We saw turtles but no seals.  Kylee and I walked along the beach past the hotel Ryan and I stayed at on our first visit and we decided it was far enough that we should just have Ryan pick us up and we would keep walking.  We walked all the way to the little shop that had smoothie bowls that I loved.  And we got there at like 3:01 and they closed at 3:00 and they wouldn't make me one.  I was soooo bummed.  

You can tell that Kylee was feeling better by then.

We headed further up the island toward Waimea Canyon and stopped for one last snow cone at JoJo's.

We drove to the top of Waimea and we were inside of a cloud and it was zero visibility.  I mean ZERO.  I think there was a fee you had to pay but we didn't want to pay it because there was nothing to see.  We waited for a little bit but it wasn't looking like the clouds were moving at all.  So we called it a loss and started back down.  We pulled off for these views, which were pretty awesome.  But not quite the same.

We made our way to Lihue and looked around one of the souvenir stores.  Then decided to have dinner at Costco.  And wow, we should've fed our kids there more.  The prices are the same as any other Costco, which is way cheap for Hawaii food.  After we ate we wandered around Costco for awhile looking at all the crazy foods they had.  A bunch of different kinds of dried fish, lol.  Anyway, we clearly had tons of time to kill.  We stayed there for awhile but the kids just kept begging me to buy them things so we finally decided to just go get checked in at the airport.  An 11pm flight is crappy any time, but when that means it's 3am at home, it's really crappy!  Somehow we all survived.  I've given up on stressing about trying to get sleep and just watch movies and close my eyes if I feel like it.  I will say I was pretty cranky at our connecting flight but I got more sleep on the flight to Salt Lake and felt okay after that.  Long travel days!  But our kids are troopers.  The people at TSA made comments about us like, "you have like a whole kindergarten class" and the one at the end said, "you guys did that really smoothly, doesn't usually happen with such a large group."  Kylee was like, "do I look like a kindergartner!"  Seriously, our family isn't all that big.  We did have a lot of bags though since we didn't check very many.

Surf Lessons

 We had originally planned to rent kayaks and do the Secret Falls hike but we didn't book kayaks soon enough.  Six years ago when Ryan and I went, we didn't have to book in advance.  But things have changed I guess.  I was pretty bummed, but I tried to find something else fun to do on our second to last day and I came across surfing lessons.  Now, I have always wanted to try surfing, but a middle aged woman doing it is not as cool as teenagers doing it.  So I felt braver doing it with my girls.  Ryan opted not to, but once he saw the "wave" we were learning on he thought he probably could have done it.  He just doesn't have a lot of faith in his swimming ability.  Dylan wasn't interested and Kaden was too small.  It was SO FUN!

The boys came to watch and be our photographer because we were going to eat at Duke's after our lesson since it was right on the same beach.

Pictures don't do it justice but this is such a pretty area!  The mountains and the beach together are my favorite.  Can you see that one small wave out there?  Yep, that's what we rode.  And it was perfect.  There were paddleboarders out there catching the wave.  And some other elderly surfers, ha ha.

We spent a lot of time laying on our bellies on our boards, which was nice.  We would paddle hard with our arms, which made the girls pretty tired.  I had ran pretty far that morning so I had a couple muscles bugging me but I could still do it.  After about an hour I said something to Kylee about sunscreen.  She hadn't used any.  Our instructor was like, "it's early and not that hot, you won't burn."  Sure, this coming from a brown man.  Kylee definitely got burned on the back of her legs, which was nice to even it out because she was burned on the front from the boat.  Sadie too, just not as bad.  At least we had the rash guard shirts on so the legs were the only thing.  Kylee and I were using these GIANT boards which are easier to learn on I guess.  In the picture she is holding up the instructor's board, but the one she used is the same as mine.  GIANT!  It was a lot of fun.  Sadie asked if I thought we could rent surfboards and go do it on our own later.  But real waves are much different than the baby wave we were riding.  And the instructor was still pushing us and telling us when to go.  He had been trying to help me learn how to know when to go, so that was fun. But there was still no way we could handle real waves.

Dukes is a cool restaurant.  I love the indoor/outdoor atmosphere.  The views are awesome.  And the food is pretty good too.  Everyone enjoyed the Hula Pie of course.

Turtle Cave and Tunnels Beach Snorkeling

 One of the food truck guys was really chatty.  He gave us this list of his recommended things but the top one was Turtle Cave.  He gave us good directions on where to park and how to get there.  Again, it was quite adventurous.  It's a short little trail but incredibly steep.  There is a rope for the worst of it. But I can imagine on a rainy day it would be nearly impossible to get up it. (Sherri told me her story of finding a few people frantically trying to get out but couldn't because they didn't have the upper body strength.  Her husband helped them and they took off without looking back.)  It was worth it though because it was really cool.

It was also really pretty!!

I guess the turtles are always there.  We wanted to walk past to the other side, the cave had two openings and we wanted to see the other side.  But I was nervous to walk too close to the turtles.  I didn't want to scare them and I didn't want them to snap at us, lol.  So that's when we climbed along the rocks.

 

But this side was really deep and I didn't want to swim with my phone and there wasn't that much to see anyway.  But I loved the blue water with the black rock and the reef and stuff.

We rented snorkeling gear for the day and headed to one of the best snorkeling beaches on the island, Tunnels Beach.  The parking was not good.  We had to wait around for a bit for someone to leave because there's really just this short road you can park on and you can't park on the main road or you would get a ticket (as evidenced by the ticketed cars we saw there).  But we eventually made it and it was worth it because it was a cool beach with the mountains!  And the snorkeling was indeed amazing.  I didn't take pictures in the water because it's not easy and it never shows how cool it is so you'll have to take my word for it.  But it was really fun.  Sadie and spent a lot of time out there.  Dylan decided to go swimming with a boogie board and got pretty far out.  The water was calm by the shore because it's a little bay but he was getting far out.  Some local surfers asked me if he belonged to me and if he could swim.  I was like, I mean yeah... I waved him in and he started making his way but the surfers were nervous and one of them paddled his board out to him.  Dylan felt like he was fine but the guy was like, "can you swim back, show me." So Dylan started swimming with his boogie board and the guys was like, "just hold onto my board..." and he pulled him in.  It didn't seem like he was ever in any danger but the locals know the water and I'm glad they were kind enough to be concerned and offer help.  I think my kids are used to the Florida waves and Florida waves are the wussiest of all the waves.

Both Turtle Cave and Tunnels Beach were way up north so we did those together.  We wanted to do Queen's Bath but heard it was closed and Julie tried to go with her family and couldn't get there.  It's not winter anymore but it's still not summer.  And my kids were ready to head back to chill and get food after those two adventures.