Hawaii Day 4

It's kind of silly but I wanted to remember our condo that we left the morning of our 4th day.

It was so colorful and fun.  We really enjoyed all the paintings!

After checking out of our cute condo we drove to the temple grounds.

Ideally we wanted to go on Sunday but that would have required a lot of driving since we would be staying on the west side of the island at that point so we stopped as we headed south for the rest of the trip.

The sun was super bright for them here as I tried to get these pics...

We tried getting a few with the whole family by putting Andy's phone on a stand but then a nice grounds keeper came by and offered to take some for us...

Ben wasn't thrilled with any of it and this man noticed so he offered to take us to a hidden spot on the grounds that he thought Ben would like...

He wasn't too happy there either :)

Matt got him to smile though :)

Andy loves these kinds of trees so we got some pics for him...

Our friend gave me and Abby flowers for our hair...

And then it was time to leave...

These pics are some of my favorite of the whole trip...

My sweet boys helping their little brother down the steps at the temple

Our plan for the rest of the day was snorkeling at Hanama Bay (possibly trying to fit in some boogie boarding at Lanikai beach first) and then traveling west to our new home base of Ko Olina.

We had a little mix up on our way to Lanikai and I was kind of in a grumpy mood feeling like it was my fault as the navigator.  It turned out to be crazy crowded anyway and we decided to forge on to Hanama instead.

I was still in a bad mood for our picnic lunch at Hanama so I didn't get any pics except for a couple of these birds that we had seen all over the island and Matt had dubbed TiMs because he said they looked like Toasted Marshmallows.  (I told him they should be TOMs then instead of TiMs so he called them Tim-Toms from then on.)  This one hovered over us as we ate...it was a little disconcerting!

Andy had a frustrating moment when we actually went into Hanama...it's kind of a long story but basically, we had rearranged our whole itinerary for the first few days of our trip surrounding the fact that we were told we needed to schedule a time online to go to Hanama because of COVID.  We dutifully scheduled and then found out when we checked in that we could have just walked in any day/any time.  It was kind of maddening because we would have loved to have spent more time there (we only ended up having a couple of hours) but there were no earlier times in the day available on the website.

We also were not happy with a couple members of the staff...not friendly or helpful, almost to the point of being rude.  They were not accommodating when it came to making things easier with Ben which was frustrating.  

Anyway, all that aside, it was a lovely beach and the kids really did enjoy the snorkeling.

This is Ben's other bug bite that we noticed after his seizure in the ocean...

His ankle was enormous and red!

After Ben took a short nap on the beach towel and I got over my foul mood, we joined them in the water...

Ben just loved being in the water and throwing the ball (and wet sand)...

The sun was in and out of the clouds so we did get a bit chilly at some points but when they started closing the beach we were sad we had to leave...hadn't gotten as much sun and play time as we were hoping for.

After carrying Ben up the steep, long hill to our car because we had missed the last tram because they had closed the bathroom and wouldn't let us change Ben inside we were on our way across the south end of the island.  Big city Hawaii is not my jam so it was a relief when we made it over to the west where it was much less populated and slower going traffic.

The Marriott resort at Ko Olina was beautiful.  We were very happy with our suite.  After we checked in and got everything up to our rooms and everyone settled, Andy and I went to nearby Kapolei for groceries and then an ABC store just down the road from our resort with a deli kind of restaurant inside for our dinner.  I did some more souvenir shopping while we waited for our food.  I could not pick up enough chocolate covered Macadamia nuts...I bought multiple packages of all the kinds :)  I also bought more t-shirts than I should have...  On our trip to Kauai a few years ago, I bought a few t-shirts but many of them ended up not working out for one reason or another so this time I wanted to be sure I got enough of a supply :)