Hawaii (again!)

 

Leo, Archie and I headed back to Hawaii for two weeks in early September. Leo had a few routine appointments with the specialists at Tripler Hospital and Archie and I got to tag along. I was nervous to do the nine hour flights with two kids, but minus a pretty rough trek from the plane to the rental car to the hotel when we first landed, the boys proved to be wonderful travelers.

Here's Archie celebrating his first trip to the United States. Hawaii - not a bad choice, Archie! I told him the entire U.S. is this fabulous :)

It was nice being in Oahu again because it is so small that it was so easy to get around this time. I didn't pull out a map while driving once! We did a few of our favorite things from last winter when we were here and also did some new stuff. One of the most fun things this time around was that we stayed at the Hale Koa Hotel.  The Hale Koa is a five star military hotel on Waikiki beach. It had restaurants, a NEX for shopping, the beach, kiddie pool...everything. Here's Leo and his jazz hands with the Hale Koa in the background.

Leo loved this large banyon tree in the courtyard.

The Hale Koa is right next to the Hilton Hawaiin Village hotel which offered some fun things to do. Every night before sunset, this guy with the torch would run around lighting all the tikis at the hotel. Leo loved watching him run with the fire. 

We drove around the island a few times just to make sure we covered it all. Here we are where the road ends in the Northwest corner. It isn't the most beautiful part of the island, but it was neat to see the leeward side of the island where the locals stay.

Best picnic location in the world? We thought so. We stopped on the north shore for a picnic on one of our road trips. The north shore is beyond beautiful with the big waves that we like to watch and we stayed for a few hours enjoying our picnic.

We had a great walk through Waimea Valley to get to this waterfall.

We were at the beach almost every day and discovered the best time for us to go was sunset. The sunsets were of course beautiful, but I also didn't have to hide Archie from the hot sun or lather us all with sunscreen like if we went in the middle of the day. There was also a fireworks show a few nights a week that Leo liked to stay up for.

One of our favorite days was spent at the Honolulu Art Museum. My sister's friend, Amber, works there and gave us her special toddler art tour. It was fabulous and so was she! Thanks for not kicking us out after Leo touched the fine art, Amber :) Here they are discussing the toddler she saw taking an accidental swim in this pond - no joke!

We played in the hotel room. I think this is the first time I've seen Archie upright.

Here's Leo in front of his beloved P.F. Chang's. I am also a huge fan since they have a half page menu devoted to gluten free meals! In Japan, Leo never goes out to eat anymore since we've gone gluten free. It's just too tough. So, P.F. Chang's was a great treat for him. We may have eaten there more than once (okay, it was 6 times - yes, 6!).

Hawaii was great. I was happy Leo was getting checked out by his doctors. I was also really ready to come home after two weeks. I've never had a meal paid for by a stranger before, but after a particularly rough doctors appointment, a shopping trip to whole foods in search of gluten free snacks for the plane ride home and yet another meal out at a restaurant a stranger did just that. I was at the same time so touched by their kindness and also a little mortified at how tired I must have looked. It was definitely time to go home. 

Thanks Hawaii for once again making a trip to the doctor something a little special for me, Leo, and Archie. 

Amy & Wally visit!

My sister, Amy, and her cutie pie son, Wally, came to visit at the end of August. It was an awesome visit and such good timing for me since I had been dreading the month of August for a while.  In August, the weather here is terribly hot and humid and Wilson has his summer break for the whole month. This idea of being home for a month with three boys and not being able to let them run wild at parks all day due to the temps was pretty nerve wracking. My saint of a sister offered to come for the last week of August to help out with the boys and give us something to look forward to while we were surviving the first part of the month. The boys and I spent the month counting down the days till their visit.

The boys had SO much fun together!

They were inseparable! 

And, they played so nicely! 

It was like they fell back into their old ways from our DC days where they were together every day. Not pictured here are my sister and I with our feet up in the next room while having a glass of wine :)

Even outnumbered, we managed to leave the house every day. We fell into a routine of a fun, outdoor activity in the morning and nice, relaxing afternoons at home.

We made it to Tsugane Falls and tried our hardest to let the boys run around carefree. Amy was the brave one of the two of us and took turns swimming with the boys in the cool water. It was a great place to be on a hot day!

We took a ride on the beautiful Pearl Queen.

Amy took the boys up to the crows nest.

They had a ball in the dress up corner and were well loved by the other boat passengers. There were probably about 15 Japanese people behind me also photographing the boys in their captain outfits!

We visited the lovely Hirado Castle.

Our tour guides were about as cute as they were unhelpful!

We went to the Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine. The boys wore their jinbei outfits to keep cool.

We made it to a lot of parks. Can you spot Amy in this one?

I kept catching these two snuggling!

I loved seeing Wally again. He is a real sweetie. Even though he can say Lisa now, he still calls me Sasa :)

Thanks to Nathan having some guy time with the boys, Amy and I got to go out to eat a few times. Here we are at her favorite restaurant of the trip, Kurinto, after we spent the morning at China on the Park in Arita. We weren't sad to leave the boys at home while we spent a few hours browsing through some fine china!

It was a great week that, of course, went by too fast. It was so nice seeing my sister and we were both thrilled to see the boys play and laugh together. We've already made plans to do next summer at their place near Philly!

Thanks for flying around the world to play with us, Amy and Wally.

We love you!!