Day 3

We woke up to another beautiful sunrise!  I love having breakfast with the beautiful view and warmth.  What a great way to wake up!   I decided to just keep to Pacific time so I could wake up each day seeing the sun rise. 

My little family unit decided that we would head off to Hanauma Bay today.  I was up and ready but everybody seemed to be on “slow.”    OMG.  We didn’t get to the bus stop until 10ish and we just saw the bus pull away.  So we decided to wait for the next one.  Of course, back home, it’s usually no more than ½ hour.  But after an hour, we finally see the bus…only to see it drive off without picking us up.  It was completely full.  What a waste of time!  And my youngest was so disappointed that she wasn’t going to go snorkeling she started to cry.  Really don’t blame her as we really built this activity up!    Back to the hotel we went and we happened to bump into the other 3 family members.  We told them what happened and they were surprised too.  But in the end, all 7 of us ended up going to the Hilton where they had a public access Lagoon!

The Lagoon rocked.  It was totally calm so you could just bob in the water, go snorkeling (where there was fish!), or try paddle boarding.   Just behind the Lagoon was the actual beach if you wanted the ocean. 

But we thought we’d let the kids romp in the Lagoon to get them used to the idea of snorkeling in calm waters.  My 2 girls were in total awe!  My youngest kept screaming under water because she was so excited, but that would cause her to drink water and choke!  She’d come up, cough all the water out and then go right back into the water to snorkel some more. 

My 2 girls and my nephew had a great time just chasing the birds around and building sand castles too.  I just loved the blue water and the palm trees.  I read my book, chatted with family and just totally chilled.  Felt great!

I was having such a good time just watching the clouds drift by...so zen!

After a lovely afternoon, it was time to head back to the hotel to have some grub and get ready to meet the in-laws who were flying in from New Zealand.  My mother in law still had no clue that we were all there.  The plan was for all of us to meet the two of them in the lobby area.  But the universe had different plans for that night.  The in-laws were delayed by about 4 hours as there was an emergency landing of their plane.  They were an hour into their flight when someone collapsed in the aisleway right next to them.  The plane had to turn back, dump fuel as it was too heavy to land, drop off the guy to emergency personnel, fuel up again and set out to fly again. 

So, it was just my hubby and brother in law that went to go meet them in the lobby area.  My mother in law was very surprised as my husband went up to her and said “Aloha!”  And she thought, “oh, how lovely.  Someone is saying Aloha to me.”  Apparently her face was really surprised when she clued in it was my husband!  Yay!  Surprise achieved.  And she was delighted to hear that all of us were also in Hawaii…though visits with her would have to wait until the next day.