Hawaii

11 days on the big island - it couldn't have been more perfect. Our friends Chris and Nicole invited us to join them at the beautiful (that's an understatement) vacation home of Nicole's grandparents north of Kona, Hawaii. The pic above was the sunset on our last night on the island. It was a well deserved vacation for D and Little S loved having both parents at her beck and call.

Our gracious hosts Chris and Nicole:

Little S worked on new skills on the surf board at the house pool. This was our view of the ocean every day from the house - on the 4th hole of the golf course.

When she wasn't swimming in the pool at the house, Little S thoroughly enjoyed the kiddie pool at the resort (the house is on the grounds of the Four Seasons). She had this pool nearly to herself all week. It was the nicest kiddie pool I've ever seen - sloped sand into the pool on one end and the entire pool has a sand bottom. It had a huge trunk of water toys for the kids to use and kiddie lounge chairs when they felt like working on their kiddie tans. The turtle got a sand facial from Little S each day.

Little S named this pool the Mommy pool. We spent most late mornings and early afternoons going between the kiddie and mommy pools. Little S was getting pretty comfortable with the resort life - pool attendents brought around little cups of ice cream bonbons, ice water, misters and other treats while we were lounging. You know it's time to get back to real life when the 2 year old is asking when the ice cream is coming.

When she wanted to get out and about, we rode the golf cart down to the beaches to look for sea turtles. This started the first morning we were in Hawaii when Little S woke up for the day at 3:30am (right on schedule if we were in Calif). D took her down to the beaches 4 times that day and it became our daily ritual.

The fellas went fishing on 4 of the mornings. Each day they got better - the spear fishing proved more difficult than anticipated - but the kayak we rented for 2 days really elevated their level of pole fishing success. The best catch was this guy: a yellow-finned surgeon fish (aka pualo). We even grilled it up for dinner!


Sight Seeing:
We drove around the island checking out the diverse landscape.
Akaka Falls:

Waipio Valley:

Place of Refuge: Little S explains to me which is the mommy and which is the daddy


The Food:
Chris and Nicole are our best foodie friends. They love a fine meal at a nice restaurant. They showed us a few of their fave places in the area.
My tomato salad at our last night dinner (this is the reason we went to the Grille):

D loves trying unique fruit - he bought all of this at the farmer's market and arranged a lovely still life :)

Virgin lava flows - the drink of choice on the trip:

Hawaiian shaved ice filled with coconut ice cream (Little S learned about freeze headaches while devouring this):

Brown's Restaurant:
We helped light tiki torches during our beachside dinner. Little S was asking about this guy's belly button as we walked away.

Another highlight of the dinner, besides the food, was the great live music. Little S and another little girl danced the night away to Hawaiian tunes. One of my favorite moments of the trip was when the singer finished with one song and those of us listening began to applause. Little S turned around with a huge, surprised smile of pride - I think she thought everyone was clapping for her dance and she loved that moment. I've never seen that look on her face.