Our First Day in Hawaii

The plane ride with the boys went okay. No major meltdowns or crying for extreme amounts of time, but we were all glad when Justin FINALLY fell asleep! Though, the hardest part of the trip was waking Ethan and Matthew when the plane landed in Honolulu so that we could get off the plane and walk through the airport and get our stuff (it was after midnight, our time!)

President Wheelwright picked us up from the airport in one of the universities mini-vans and after he dropped us off at our apartment, he told us to keep the van all the next day so that we could explore the island. We were SO thankful!!

Due to the time change, our boys were up at 5am, so we got an early start on the day, and decided we wanted to go see the USS Arizona Memorial. We brought our GPS, so we were confident we would be able to find it...but we couldn't get it to work. No worries, we'd just follow the signs...we ended up in Waikiki. So, we found an awesome market as we were driving around, and decided to get out and take a look. It was pretty cool. We'll be heading back to load up on souvenirs in the near future!

After our little pit-stop, we realized that we needed to change the zone on our GPS...it magically started working after that, and we were able to get to where we wanted to go...after we mistakenly went to Pearl Harbor (the navy base) and they kindly told us we were actually looking for the USS Arizona Memorial, then stopped traffic so we could make a U-turn.

We finally made it!
Ethan loved the artillery guns.

The boys in front of the USS Bowfish. Justin is camera-shy, I guess.




Justin throwing a HUGE tantrum on the boatride out to the monument. Apparently he didn't get the memo that children are to remain quiet and orderly so as not to disrupt the respectful atmosphere for everyone else.

The little trouble-maker trying to remove the safety signs.

There really is a sobering feeling when you walk into the room with the wall of names.


Wreckage - oil is still seeping to the surface of the water several decades later.


After the memorial, we hit a wal-mart, and headed back to our place where we changed into swimming suits, and walked to the beach. Matthew loved playing in the waves, and Ethan and Justin enjoyed digging in the sand.

It was an exhausting day, but a lot of fun, too.

**A special thanks to our guest photographer, James. Yes, he was allowed to use the "big" camera (while I wrestled with Justin)**