Our Family in Japan: 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.