Our Gaines: Hawaii: First Time at the Beach

Evelyn woke up bright-eyed and ready to face the world at 6am (she normally sleeps about 13 hours at night). We let her explore around the room and took her outside to see the ocean from our balcony. She loved playing with/on the chairs out there.

After breakfast, rather than fighting her to go down for a nap in a new place (she gets so curious - in new places, she won't nap), we decided to go on a drive up the coast. She nearly always falls asleep in the car, especially if it is during nap time. It was gorgeous! We drove for a little over an hour up the western coast of Oahu while Evelyn slept. Dan dreamt of moving here and opening up a pine cone hut (he thinks it would be an untapped business venture because there aren't evergreen trees in Hawaii). I made the point of needing jobs and a home in Hawaii, and his solution was to live in a tent city for a while until we get our feet underneath us. Splendid. Here are some scenery pictures...I was trying to practice shooting in manual mode on my camera - so the lighting is a little off on a couple of them!

This was a monument called the Blowhole. There is a small crevice in the rocks where when the waves crash it - the water blows out. It was pretty cool!

Dan got a video of it

(he's holding Evelyn while videoing, so pardon the shakes!)

After our drive, we went to Hanauma Bay. It is well known for it's snorkeling and it was beautiful. It is a nature preserve, so you have to pay to get in then watch a short movie about preserving the beauty before you can go down to the beach. When we arrived, it was about 10:40. We took our tickets (not knowing there was a time stamped on them) to the security guard who was taking the tickets. He informed us that our tickets weren't for the 10:45 show, but for the 11:00 show. Evelyn was already antsy and ready to eat - and I told Dan (in front of the guard) that I didn't think it was a good idea to wait. The security guard apologized and we told him we understood. Then Evelyn turned on the charm. She grabbed the tickets from my hand and held them out to him with her sweet half smile, half I'm going to cry if you don't do what I want you to do look. He melted and let us in. Way to go Ev!

The beach was beautiful, and bigger than I had remembered. In 2003, my family came down to Hawaii and we had come to Hanauma to snorkel. I remembered there being some good shade on the beach, so I thought it would be a good place to take Evelyn (and my white-boy husband). Here are some pictures from our time on the beach.

Sadly, this is the first time Evelyn has been to the beach.

Yes...we live 20 minutes from the beach, and she had to go to Hawaii for her first time on the beach.

She LOVED the water...until a wave came up and splashed her face pretty good.

The scenery at Hanauma Bay

Our stay on the beach was relatively short by my terms, we only stayed about an hour. I am a go and sit on the beach for 3-4 hours while I read a book kind of girl. I sense that this has changed now that I am a Mom. Evelyn didn't eat well at the beach (she wasn't a fan of the sand), so we fed her when we got back to our room.

This was her set-up...

We put the chair with her booster at the end of her crib that could see into our room (or at least the doorway/bathroom area of our room) so that she couldn't see us moving around in the room. It worked like a charm! We then walked along the beach near our hotel - which was right along Waikiki Beach.

Dan tried to climb this tree...he will tell you he climbed it.

Evelyn chilled in her stroller...

Renting this Bob stroller was one of the best things we did. We have one at home, but didn't want to risk it getting hammered by the luggage guys on the plane. The extended shade was perfect to keep her out of the sun while we were out and about - and made it so we didn't have to put sunscreen on her every time we went somewhere.

And we found a band concert!

After our walk, we went back to the room for a family nap. Evelyn had only been sleeping for about 45 minutes to an hour at a time, so I figured we'd be lucky if she slept for an hour and a half. Dan and I both laid down, too...and when I rolled over to look at the alarm, it felt like only 30 or so minutes had passed. Or 3 hours. Apparently we all needed it.

Note the puddle of drool from Evelyn...poor baby was so tired!

We continued our quest to conquer "The Jumer List" (the list of restaurants and places recommended by our friend who lived here) for dinner on Sunday night and went to a place called Tanaka of Tokyo. It was a hibachi-style grill place that was super yummy! Evelyn mostly liked it, although she wasn't a huge fan of our hibachi chef when he banged the utensils around. She's never been a huge fan of loud noises...can't wait to see how the 4th of July goes! :-)

She wanted to eat with chopsticks, like Mommy