Oahu With Chelsea

Chelsea is the second grandkid to get her one-on-one CoCo adventure.   I told her when I took her brother to start thinking about where she wanted to go.  When I brought Zach home, her mom told me she already knew.  When I was able to ask her, she said "Hawaii".  So, I took her hands into my hands and said, "Hawaii is really, really tricky.  I am going to do everything I can to get you there.  You need to have a backup plan in case it doesn't work.  And if we get there, hopefully we can make it home".   I never did hear where her backup plan was.

Lei!!

I asked on Facebook to one of the non-rev groups when the best time would be to get a buddy pass into and out of Honolulu.  The response I got was Super Bowl.  Well, it really was a pretty awesome time to go.  We probably could have made it on the direct flight Sunday morning, but it was a bit tight and I saw that the Seattle flight first thing in the morning had about 130 open seats - so I decided we would fly to Seattle Saturday night and then head back in the morning to get on the Honolulu flight.  Papa decided to fly with us to Seattle and spend the night and then fly back to Salt Lake the
next morning after we got on the flight to Honolulu.  We got a nice row all to ourselves.  Chelsea napped.  I read my book the entire way.  And we snacked on everything available. We were in Honolulu by 1:30 and at the hotel by 2:30.  I paid for a lei greeting.  The flowers were beautiful.  The greeting, not so exciting.  The burly surfer dude like guy put these leis on us, without much fanfare, and they were soaking wet.  We both had water dripping down our backs from them.  But, they were beautiful and we spent a lot of time smelling our beautiful flowers.

We spent the afternoon setting up tours, walking a round, looking for any type of food for CoCo, getting a shaved ice and walking on the beach.  It started to sprinkle on our way back from the beach and we headed back to the hotel, climbed in our jammies, watched Disney Channel and went to sleep.

Monday morning, we had an early tour to go snorkel booked, so we had bought some cereal and milk at the ABC Store so we didn't have to go out looking for food that early in the morning.  Now snorkeling was something I had never really attempted.  Chelsea had done a little bit in lakes, but not the ocean.  So we were beginners.  We were in Hanauma Bay, it is the location of a large volcanic explosion that has since filled with water, making a beautiful lava bed bay.  There is a lot of marine life in the bay.  But, there is lots of rocks, too.  It's a big attraction for snorkeling.  We started out not doing too well, and decided to sit on the beach and make sand castles for a while.  Then we went in the water.  Chelsea decided to try again.  She got the hang of it and talked me into doing it again, too.  I wasn't nearly as good as Chelsea at it, especially since my breathing tube was rather limp and sad.  It didn't stand up well, and kept falling into the water.  Chelsea noticed some fish and that's when we got really excited and saw lots of beautiful tropical fish.  On our way to

the shuttle, it started to pour rain.  We were soaked by the time we got in the van and Chelsea was freezing.  When we got to the hotel, she jumped in her cozy jammies, jumped in her bed and watched Disney Channel.  I showered off all the sand and salt from my body and left a whole bunch of sand in different places in the bathroom.

That night we had a luau booked.  It  was a fun time.  I don't  know that it was worth all the money we spent.  I enjoyed the sunset sail that Ted and I did more, but the show on the luau was  much better and was a lot of fun.  We learned a little hula, ate some tasty food and watch hula and fire dancers.

I asked Chelsea if she wanted to do anything special the next day, she said, "no, just wander around and shop and go to the beach".  We  walked to breakfast and hit every ABC Store that we could and any other little shop that was around.  We had a banana split at a 50's diner in Kings Village and Chelsea played pinball and a couple of other arcade games.  We ended up on the beach and there was a catamaran there getting ready to sail.  She was hesitant, but we did it.  It was just an hour tour.  In that hour we saw a bunch of whales.  It was amazing.  Chelsea finally got up on the net and watched the water flow under the boat.  She wished she would have  seen a sea turtle, but she was ok with the whales.  When that was done, we headed to Cheeseburger In Paradise for a traditional meal.  After a couple more ABC Stores, Chelsea asked if we could head to the hotel and change into our swimming suits and go hang out at the beach.  We spent enough time for me to get completely sunburned and get a big old scratch on my butt - no idea how, other than the sand.  We built sand castles and sat in the water and she just ran around on the beach.

From there, we headed to the hotel to change into our traveling wear and wait for the shuttle to the airport.  We ended up getting on the plane and sitting together.  Chelsea slept most the way and I watched movies.

We had a wonderful time.  I love these bonding experiences.  Sadly, Chelsea is the only one that gets to do Hawaii.  Logistically, it's too much for this old granny to get us there.  But, there are definitely more adventures in the future with some other wonderful grandkiddos.

PICTURES:  Not in any specific order, since they came from a camera and my phone

Making a canal system to the moat.

A castle!!

Dancing in the ocean

Waiting to Luau

Me:  "Ready to go to Hawaii".  Chelsea:  "Yeah"

See - she was ready to go.  Zonked out about twenty minutes later.

After snorkeling, the rain started to pour.  We were drowned.  And Chelsea refused to not make a silly face.   

Snorkelin'

Koko Mountain.  Hawaii just has K's - no C's.  So that's how KoKo is in Hawaiian.

First glimpse at the Hawaiian Ocean.  "I have to take my shoes off,
I love sand on my feet"

Shaved ice.  She did it three times.  Always strawberry.  

I loves her!!!

Hakas, Hulas, Fire dancing.  Was awesome to watch.  

You can't get this kid to eat really.  So she wanted this waffle, but at night they don't serve it with ice cream, so here you see:
a waffle with strawberries, whipped cream, butter, macadamia nuts and ice cream on the side - - - and a hot chocolate.
She is hard to get to eat and she did really great eating this!!!  Made me happy.

Queen Keiki

Catamaran ride

I was excited when she would get down on the net

Cuz it's tradition.

This kid.  Love her to pieces.  I am so glad we had these days
together in paradise.  I hope you had the most amazing time.  I love
you to the moon and back.