Day One- Good Morning, Sunshine!

Read about the previous day here.

"Are we allowed to be up yet?" 

No parent wants to hear that at 4am, but if you've ever taken an East Coast kid to Hawaii, you probably have.  We ignored the kids as long as we could, but at 4:30 we had to admit defeat.  No one was going back to sleep.  The kids were starting to get rowdy and they were collecting garbage loudly outside our window.  Note to self, when there is a sound machine on the nightstand, go ahead and change rooms.

We were all hungry and luckily I had spied an IHOP across the street on our way in.  

This little man asked the waiter for a pancake, with strawberry eyes, a banana smile, whipped cream and just a few chocolate chips.

Breakfast was over by 6am, so we decided to watch the sunrise from the beach.  It was a quick walk two blocks to the Outrigger Reef where we would be staying for the next three nights.  We thought we might watch the sun rise then see if they would let us check in early.  This hotel is FANTASTIC and let us check in at 6:20am, plus our room was ready.  Not only that, they gave us each a cool towel scented with coconut water and a glass of papaya, orange, guava juice, with a little sparkling water in it.  It was amazing.

Cheers!

Fully juiced, we headed to the beach.  We started out saying "stay out of the water" because we weren't in swim suits.  That lasted about 5 minutes.  The kids were in heaven!  Rob volunteered to walk back to the other resort and get our stuff and the car.  

Look kids! Its Diamond Head!

Sunrise.

View from our room.

The robes helped until daddy came back with the clothes.

Once we were properly attired, we headed down to the beach for real.

What is it about the beach that turns kids into tiny construction workers?

Sharing some tinned fish with Daddy.

When everyone was getting hungry for lunch, we thought we would walk down to the Hale Koa for lunch and a dip in their pool.  The Hale Koa is the military resort on Waikiki (like Shades of Green in Orlando) and anyone with a military id can swim in their pool.  Or so we thought.  When we arrived at the Hale Koa we found the pool closed and completely demolished.  What!  No where on their website did they mention pool construction, and I know because I had been looking for available rooms when we added the two extra days on Wednesday.

The adults only pool is now the only pool at the Hale Koa, so only registered guests are allowed to swim there.  Boo!  We did grab an affordable lunch and I took a spin around the BX while we were there.  Then we walked back down the beach to the Outrigger to check out their pool.  It is a nice size and there are plenty of chairs.  However, the pool is blocked on all sides by high rise hotel buildings so the water never sees the sun and is freezing.

Mai Tai? Yes.

The cold never bothers her anyway.

Blue Hawaiian drink and toes.

He claims he never fell asleep, but he was in this position for about 40 minutes.

For dinner we walked to Moose McGillycuddy's.  Rob has a lot of good memories from going there when he was an Air Force crew dog.  I started to feel really sick on our walk over and dinner was not a pleasant experience for me.  Nor was the "let's just check in a beer across the street at Kelly O'Neils" that came after dinner.  I'm not sure if it was delayed air sickness, some bizarre travel stomach bug, or just fatigue.  But I felt awful and was ready for bed.

Read about the next day.