I totally just swam with a sea turtle!
It was amazing and I can’t wait to do it again! One off the life list!
Category Archives: Life in hawaii
Guess who got a new underwater camera???
This girl!
My WONDERFUL husband bought me one last night and we couldn’t WAIT to take it for a spin!
So today started out a bit of a disaster. We planned on going to Hanauma Bay for the morning after dropping the kids off at school (do you even know how awesome that is?!) but guess what? It’s closed on Tuesdays! This is something that we didn’t realize until driving there, so we decide to hit up our other favorite, Shark’s Cove on the North Shore.
Couple things about me:
I have a pretty good memory when it comes to maps.
I am stubborn as hell and don’t like to admit being wrong.
I actually LIKE getting lost/figuring how roads connect etc.
And one thing about my husband:
he highly dislikes being lost and my constant assurance that I ‘totally know where we are.’
Unfortunately I had left my Oahu book in the other car and we didn’t bring the GPS because we knew where we were going. So I suggest we follow the highway around the island instead of backtracking and taking our usual central island route. I knew you could drive around the entire island but I think I may have misremembered (totally a word) quite how large the eastern half of the island is. So while the drive was beautiful, I don’t recommend doing it when you have plans and kids to pick up at 2!
Anyways, a couple snaps from our scenic drive:
Thank GOD we had an awesome snorkeling day, trust me we needed it!
Shark’s Cove was great, we saw a TON of stuff and I put my new camera to use.
I put all of my fish photos here to try and track everything we’ve seen and to help anyone who needs a hand with fish identification!
Love this place!
Finally! A REAL Dog Park!
So, we have one happy puppy after finally getting him to the dog park on base.
Our yard is pretty tiny and there isn’t much room for him to run. So we try to get him up to the park at least every other day to run and get some energy out.
Always on the bottom of the dog pile. What a baby. Don’t worry, he loves every minute of it!
I wish I had taken a better picture of the dog park itself, it’s nice and big and has a separate fenced in area for smaller dogs. Bowser is just happy he can run and run and run.
Even happy to share his water bottle with a friend!
And at the end of an hour he is tired and ready to nap for hours. Perfect!
(Dog Park is located on Radford Drive near Doris Miller subdivision, next to the golf course.)
Back to School!
(Please ignore Omar’s pained expression, he’s going through that I-can’t-smile-like-a-normal-person phase)
School starts early here, ridiculously early in my opinion. Mckenna went back to school on July 30th, Omar had an orientation on Friday and started for realz this Monday. So this week I officially have two school age kids.
(This is Mckenna’s for real first day pic, but it was when we were still in the hotel room of doom…)
Since we are done (really I mean it, DONE!) having more babies, I feel like a chapter in our lives is over. I’ve had a kid in tow for the last 10 years, and now they are both in school! Now I am child-less for 6 hours a day and it feels SO bizarre.
Part of it was a realization at just how quickly time has flown. When Mckenna started kindergarten 5 years ago, I was hugely pregnant with Omar and ended up having him 3 weeks later. Now that baby is going into school, too. I wish I had my hard drive so I could pull up some photos of Mckenna’s first day.
Oh here is one I dug up from my facebook page of the month Mckenna started kindergarten and Omar was born:
Look at her! She is a baby! (and Omar REALLY is a baby) It still stuns me just how quickly the past 5 years have flown by. We moved to Spain, then to Hawaii. It’s just crazy how much your life can change in a few years.
One thing that is great about having two kids in school is the fact that my husband is on leave right now! While we are still running around like crazy with all of the errands we are still having to get done, we are also hanging out together. Just us! It’s been really nice, even though he has been dragging me to the gym most days after we drop off the kids. Today we actually went and saw a movie while the kids were at school. (The Watch, stupid funny, but then again I love all the cast members).
So bittersweet. There is my adjective for school starting. Both my kids love it so far. I miss my babies but am also enjoying these free hours I have.
Eating Our Way Through the North Shore
This weekend we headed back up to the North Shore. I am falling in love with this view as we crest over the hill and head down to the shore… When you actually see it in person you can hardly tell where the sky ends and the water begins. Also if you go earlyish in the morning you won’t sit in hideous traffic like we had to last time!
We made a quick detour to Turtle Beach since we had such good luck last time we were there. Gorgeous water, beautiful coastline. I can’t wait to do more exploring up here. It’s just so, so different than Honolulu.
No luck this time. I don’t know if we were just too early or what. Not a turtle in sight. Insert sad trombone… Mckenna was really bummed, so was I. We had actually brought our snorkeling gear with us so we could snorkel with the turtles. Omar on the other hand was thrilled because he was NOT in the mood to be at the beach. Weirdo.
Onward! We made our way over to Hale’iwa to poke around town and find something to eat. Please note Mckenna doing her best to look like my little Hawaiian girl by throwing a shaka! I may have made my poor husband pull over at both signs on the road (actually I made him pull over for the first one, he pulled over for me before I even had a chance to ask for the second!)
First stop on the agenda: Masumoto’s Shave Ice. A Hawaiian must do. Everyone and there mother will tell you that you have to go to this place so there is usually a huge line. I grabbed this shot as we were leaving. When we got there we only had a few people in front of us, almost zero wait. Also it gave us time to look at the CRAZY menu!
Below is the menu. It was VERY hard to narrow it down to 3 flavors! You can also get ice cream on the bottom of your snow cone sorry, shave ice, and/or condensed milk drizzled over the top. So far I have been a purist and haven’t tried it but I am going to have to start experimenting! Oh and they have a specific way they want you to order… how many, size, cup or bowl, etc…
This machine is an ice shaving beast. And the girl was crazy fast scooping and making the perfect scoop shape (and also clearly thrilled I am taking her picture.)
Yummy shave ice! What is not shown is that Omar dropped his shave ice about 30 seconds after sitting on a bench outside. There were tears. But he then got to share with all of us, and pose with my cherry/watermelon shave ice.
Verdict: All shave ice pretty much tastes the same to me. Stop by if you are there, otherwise go to one of the other million stands on the island.
After our shave ice we decided to get dessert. What? This day had no rhyme or reason to our eating schedule!
Just ended up grabbing a photo op and some cookies. We were a little disappointed by the baked goods selection for a bakery, but they do also bake their own bread and have a nice little lunch menu. Service, hmmm. Our order taker was friendly but literally stopped us 3-4 times in the middle of our order to deliver food/talk to other people. Super cute little place though. $1 cookies!
$1 cookie display. My walnut chocolate chip was really good. And Omar didn’t drop his!
Right across the parking lot is this trailer with dozens of chickens on it. You cannot miss the smell, it is divine. We had other plans for lunch so we decided to pick up a chicken for dinner. $9 for a chicken ($9.50 if you want it cut up). We also picked up some pineapple cole slaw. Yes I know, I was dubious too. But it is really good.
Grab a 1/2 or whole chicken and sit at a table and eat it. When we ate it for dinner there was only a backbone left in the serving dish, my kids picked the chicken clean. Great sauce or rub or whatever it is that they put on it. And when you are done you can wash your hands in the cutest sink ever. I love beach towns.
Next stop: Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck another must do according to every guide book, friend and tv show.
Super simple menu makes it easy to order.
While you wait grab a Sharpie and sign your name. Good luck finding a spot!
Omar got the spicy shrimp which weren’t that spicy to him because he has a ridiculous scale of spiciness from eating habaneros every single day. They were wicked spicy, I couldn’t handle them.
I got the scampi which were good. Both of our shrimp may have been a smidge overcooked. Good but we are also lazy and don’t like peeling our shrimp. (first world problems I know…)
So great day eating and trying lots of must try things. If you haven’t gotten up there yet, DO IT!
We have a house!
So we moved into our house this week, it has been WONDERFUL to get out of a hotel room. Everyone needed a door to close to get away from everyone else. I love my children but I am really, really glad that I can send them upstairs to play, or to the park right behind our house.
We have some hideous awesome temporary furniture that we get to use until our stuff gets delivered. But really, it’s nice to have beds, a couch and a table and chairs. The same day we moved in we had our temp furniture delivered, our express shipment delivered and had satellite tv hooked up. So we at least have enough stuff to cook and get through the next month. It’s been great to be able to cook dinner again. It’s going to be a long time until we eat fast food!
There is a LOT that I want to do to this house. I really want to paint some walls but we have to get approval first… Also our (tiny) yard is pretty much just red dirt. So I am really looking forward to getting some grass seed in there and doing some gardening. I have a little papaya tree in my front yard and I am hoping I can actually get it to produce some big ol’ papaya.
Oh, and one of the perks of living in Hawaii? I found a roach today in my kitchen. Since we have hardly any food it must have already been here. Needless to say I was throwing up in my mouth, I have NEVER had to deal with roaches before! First thing tomorrow I am calling maintenance to have them come spray the crap outta my house. I can deal with ants and spiders but roaches are a deal breaker.
Need to take some pictures to show, but we’ve been so crazy running around getting errands done. Really looking forward to relaxing and settling in!
Sink Or Swim 