Aloha!

We've been living with Kevin's parents, and it just makes sense that when they go to live in their Hawaii house, we should go along with them.

Penny is a great little traveler. As long as she is getting attention or seeing something new and exciting, she is generally pretty happy. She doesn't have a problem with going up or down in altitude, whether on an airplane or driving up and down the side of Haleakala. Most of the time, she just konks out in the car on our way to or from somewhere.

This is not to say it's not challenging. Her system is still wired to Washington time, which means that 5 AM is her body's 8 AM. The sun's not even up, but she is bright-eyed and ready to go! Then by 7 or 7:30 she's ready for her morning nap. And let's just throw everything about sleeping through the night right out the window! But in general, it's not as challenging as it could be.

What follows is just a bunch of pictures with my explanations. It's kind of long, but it would have been longer if we'd remembered the camera, remembered fresh batteries, or remembered to take the camera out of the car on every expedition. :)

Here is a picture of us after going canoeing. Well, I went canoeing. Penny got a new canoe club tank top and is gracefully modeling it on the canoe.

Canoeing is pretty cool. There are like 6 of us in the boat, paddling around. It's an out-rigger, which means it has a stunted canoe strapped to the side so we don't tip over. I'm grateful for the not tipping over part, because it was COLD! In all my brilliance, I thought Hawaii was supposed to be warm, so I brought one jacket and one pair of long pants. I have been wearing them almost every day, and I plan on continuing in this manner.

While I was on the canoe, Penny played on the beach with A-Ma and Grandpa.

The next day, we went on what I will call the Jurassic Park drive. We didn't see any dinosaurs, but there was a lovely giraffe (sculpture). This drive was along the outside of the northwest part of Maui. It's a single-lane road that winds along the island showing off some amazing views. Generally, I would be scared of riding in a car along a one-lane road along a steep mountain dropping off into the ocean, but for some reason, I loved it! You can't go very fast, and when you see an oncoming vehicle, one of you has to pull to the side. To me it felt more interactive, where all the drivers had to pay rapt attention and actually be aware of the other people on the road.

There was mostly lush green landscape everywhere we went, reminiscent of the helicopter's initial entrance to Jurassic Park (which was filmed on one of the Hawaiian islands), and there were a couple gorgeous houses. This is the water feature by one of my favorite houses: (the picture does no justice)
Then this is what the house looked like from afar:
I wouldn't want to live there, but wow, how beautiful!

We stopped a couple times for photo ops:
Penny's swimming suit and Kevin's scandalous garb has a story behind it, but I'm not supposed to share it because it has to do with poop.
Our goal for the Jurassic Park drive wasn't so much to see dinosaurs but to see the Nakalele blowhole. It's this place where the waves come crashing up against the rocks, and they shoot a geyser up through a hole in the rocks. It was awesome. I never want to get stuck in the waves coming crashing up against the rocks. If they can shoot water up in the air that far, just think of what they could do to my poor, limp, lifeless body.

I may have a small fear of the ocean.

But here is Penny enjoying some cool lava rock formations:
And one thing fun about Hawaii is the food. It's fun to go to local restaurants and get the grilled fish or whatever, and then there's almost always an option to get rice and macaroni salad with it. I'm not usually a fan of macaroni salad, but in Hawaii, it's just part of the experience.

We caught Penny stealing some of our rice:
And finally the beach!

I bought Penny the CUTEST little yellow and white swimming suit with a ruffle around the bum for this trip. We went down to the beach (you can see it's a baby beach with a rock wall to keep the big waves out) to let Penny play in the waves.

And I forgot her suit.

Ugh! But no one notice how scandalous she was as she just went swimming in her diaper and sun hat:
She was having a fun time playing with us, and there were some kids playing in the water, and she liked chasing them. I'm not sure, though, that she even noticed the actual water. She just like the people in it!
Another day, we went to another baby beach, and we did remember the swimming suit, so here is a picture of that:
Oh, how ridiculously cute!
I've been reading a book called Hawaii, by James Michener. It's about a million pages long, and it is a historical novel covering the ENTIRE history of Hawaii. It started out with the lava forming on the bottom of the great deep. About ten pages later, an island finally poked its head out of the water, and ten more pages later, a bird arrived with a seed in its mouth that grew into the beginnings of plant life on the island. Then the volcanoes erupted again, obliterating any life that had started.... and then I skipped a couple hundred pages until it started getting interesting.

I had just finished the section about the first Christian missionaries to come to the island. They set up shop in Lahaina, and below is a picture of me in front of the actual mission:
Nothing is cooler than visiting a place when you know a little bit about it. I was super excited to read the little placards explaining what the old buildings were, and I got to tell Kevin a little bit more about them.