Hawaii Days 5,6 & Coming Home

On day 5 was kind of a sick day. Devree and Dane really weren't feeling well so I stayed with them and we snuggled and watched tv. Todd, Noble and Shay had a scuba day. The Marriott offered a free dive lesson in the pool and for a little more you get taken out on a boat all day and go for a real dive! Todd has his Padi certification from when we lived in Hawaii before. Shay and Noble were so excited. They bought an awesome CD with all of their underwater adventures. Sea Turtles swam right up to them, beautiful tropical fish and a moray eel looked too close! Beautiful pictures.
They came back starving and we had a most awesome dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. I took Dane to lunch at a little Italian Cafe and Dane didn't want to eat and I spent $31 for a calzone and some pineapple juice. Food was really expensive but boy did we have exquisite food just about everytime we ate. I had the best lobster I have ever eaten one night. We had macadamia nut encrusted mahi mahi, guava infused ribs, steak, fish and oh so many wonderful things to eat. We went to Sandy beach above and it is the beach with the most neck and back injuries of any beach. It was a bit frightening.

This is a little place to buy Hawaiian plate lunch. We wanted the kids to sample local fare. We ate Shoyu chicken, Beef Curry, Mahi Mahi, coconut shrimp with lots of rice and of course Hawaiian shaved ice again. Oh we had mango everytime we found it in smoothies, ice cream, sorbet, fresh etc. We had mango crepes one morning for breakfast. Oh we had lots of taro items. Purple tortillas, bread made from taro were all very tasty.

In this same place we had plate lunch, the place is covered in bible scriptures...BUT Devree discovered this sign (Team Jacob) and we had Shay point it out for the camera.

You can't see it well but this is a beautiful turquise water on a white sand beach peeking through the trees.

Can you see how pretty it is? Oh what a beautiful day. I wanted the kids to see how green and clear the ocean can be in Hawaii. This beach was much better about being safer. But a great boogie board or body surfing beach. The waves were not as scary as at Sandy beach.

Here we are acting crazy to finally sit and eat dinner at the Cheesecake Factory after waiting for 1 hour. The place is so huge and there is always a huge line waiting to get in.

Our last day we had to check out of our hotel at 7am so we could have a final breakfast at Dukes and be at Pearl Harbor at 9am. Here we are riding to the Arizona Memorial. After waking up at 6am, everyone is not as chipper as we could be.

Shay is on the water side of the boat.

The Arizona Memorial. We did not find any Hamblin's or Mackley's. We did find a Rice and Rogers. The Pearl Harbor survivor that was supposed to be our personal tour guide, was ill. But we were very awed by the film before we went to the Memorial.

The remains of the ship with oil still coming to the surface.

We took everyone to the swap meet. It was so hot and muggy but the deals were always there. Devree stayed in the car we parked in the shade. Shay and Noble were always trying to buy things in Waikik and they each bought 1 thing. We tried to get them to wait until the swap meet. When they finally saw the deals, they wished they had waited. But they still bought some wonderful momentos. The cutest story is about stopping and buying some fresh mango. Dane asked if he could have 2 of the left over coconut shells. He made the sound of clopping horses MANY TIMES and was happy with his FREE entertainment. Dane didn't need to buy anything. He was so adorable about wanting to hold my hand or anybody's hand when we needed to go to crowded places.

Noble had been looking and looking for an ukelele. He made a good deal with this one and including a case to hold it in.

We went to Hanauma Bay. It has changed tooo much. There is no more feeding the fish and the toilet bowl is all blocked up. They now charge $7.50 per person to go down and there are not as many fish. But the snorkeling was still fun and the boys did see some fish.

This is the mandatory waiting to see the video before they let anyone go down. It was hot, muggy and then we they let us in, there was no seating. You had to stand and watch the video.

We had gotten too much sun the day before but we had to go back to the scuba people to pick up the CD with all of the pictures before 5pm. Traffic is always bad and we knew we were not going to make it before they closed so we called first and they put the CD between the doors so we could still get it.

We decided to find Chinatown and have chinese food. Chinatown is scary after 6pm. We had to drive around until we finally found a place that we thought that we could safely park and safely have dinner. We had a wonderful chinese dinner and by the time we got done, it was time to turn in our car and get to the airport. Our flight did not leave until 10pm. The flight home was horrible. We flew to San Francisco and there was a very STINKY man sat close to Noble and I. Then the arrangment to get home was fly to Phoenix then switch airlines to fly to Reno. In Phoenix we had to go to a different terminal on a bus and then we had to go through security again. That was a MESS! Anyway we finally got home at 2pm. That means that the family was up for about 30 hours! We can't complain though. This vacation was absolutley the vacation of a lifetime and THANK YOU Make A Wish! You made Devree's wishes come true and the families. It is hard to imagine we were in sunny, warm, sweet smelling Hawaii just yesterday. But now back to life and what a wonderful life it is.