Aloha

Hula
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

Can I just take a moment to say how very depressed I am to be wearing a sweater and wool socks? Even after 15 hours of flying (which included at least two hours of being kicked from behind by a screaming baby during the red-eye flight to LA), I loathed to wash the Hawaii off of me when I took a shower when we got home this evening. (Of course, I did. Seriously, 15 hours of sitting on a plane in the same clothes takes its toll on you.)

If I could speak more Hawaiian than "Aloha" and "Mahalo" and "Waikiki," I might be able to better express how much I love Hawaii. We had an absolutely wonderful week.

We started our trip off just right with a short but fun visit to good friends in the LA area. We spent Friday night and most of Saturday with Telfer and Andrea, meeting Henry and their cute house, feasting on Foodie Friends delights, and making ourselves hungry talking about cheese in downtown Redlands. It was downright terrific. Then we drove about an hour and a half to have dinner with Amanda and Ben, full of good food and good company, before leaving early Sunday morning to head back to LAX (Amanda and I opted NOT to take an early morning photo...). It was a great little trip, and we commented regularly throughout the week how glad we were that we stopped in California.

Sunday was full of arrivals and a little bit of time exploring KoOlina before we all crashed--some of the crew had to be at the dock at 5:45 a.m. on Monday to catch the BoomBoom and, hopefully, some Mahi Mahi for dinner. Jason and I didn't go fishing, but, as we were on Cole-duty, we were up almost as early! We then spent the day moving between beach and pool, beach and pool. Perfection.

We did punctuate the lazying about with a few adventures. On Wednesday, Jason, Chad, Kim, and I went to the North Shore to watch the surfers and find some turtles. We took in some Thai food and famous sno cones at Matsumoto's in Haleiwa on the way and ended up driving around most of the island before heading back to eat the fish that the crew caught on Monday (and hear again the tale about "the one that got away"--a 200 pound marlin!).

We spent most of our time on the KoOlina resort, where we stayed, but on Thursday we headed into Waikiki. My first few trips to Hawaii were Waikiki-centered and involved throwing on a swimsuit and a backpack and heading down to meet my grandparents for breakfast at the Yum Yum Tree, then hitting the beach, International Marketplace, etc. for the whole of the day, and meeting up at the statue of the Duke sometime before dinner. We relived those moments a little on Thursday when we headed down for brunch at Duke's, then the boys went surfing on Waikiki Beach and the girls headed for some serious bartering at the International Marketplace. We ended up back at Duke's for some Hula Pie before heading into the mountains to hike through the jungle to Manoa Falls.

We had a week of sweet-smelling, perfect sunsets, seafood and pineapple, and hours of sitting in loungers, drenched in sunscreen, reading. It was more than delightful, and to spend it with family was wonderful. By the end of the week Cole was saying "Aloha!" in addition to "Mimi" (which is his name for me, much as it was Shaanti's name for me when she was learning how to talk). And now if only it weren't February and forty degrees outside...