Hawaii Day 5: Hilo: Part 2

To see the rest of our Hawaii trip to this point, click here.

After the park, we headed down into downtown Hilo. And I do mean down.
Note the ship, that white blob on the water... it's about 3 miles by line of flight...

We'd seen the ice cream place on our walk up, and thought we'd earned it by now. Eamon got his first cone...

Hawaii Day 5: Hilo: Part 1

To see the rest of our Hawaii trip to this point, click here.

I haven't really mentioned this, but Eamon had insane jet lag. He woke up about 5 AM for most of the trip. Ray is better at mornings than I am, so he generally got up with the kid and went and made nice in the still-closed buffet to get coffee and food. In return, I generally took the morning nap shift in the cabin so he got to hang out with his family. This arrangement, however, means that there are pictures like this, for which I have no explanation:

Anyway...

Steve had a fantastic photo tour in Maui, and now I was really interested in seeing some waterfalls, so after Eamon's nap, Ray let me plan a brutalizing 8-mile day to walk from the boat, into Hilo, and up to Rainbow Falls park. He does love me. Fortunately, I'm not really that crazy, and before we left the dock I spent some time negotiating with the various bus drivers. Unfortunately, none of them could get us there (as with much on this trip, we'd missed our bus, literally, due to Eamon's nap).

Fortunately, the taxi driver I had started off with saw us start walking away and apparently realized that nobody else was coming off the boat anytime soon, so he negotiated with me for a cheap ride to town - we figured we could handle the short walk up from there and 4 miles DOWN, no problem. (For the record, I think Ray still considers himself to have incredibly bad luck with taxis- I negotiated, therefore it's my good luck/persistence?). Anyway, we got a ride to downtown and then hiked up to this place:

Hawaii, Day 4

To see the rest of our Hawaii trip to this point, click here.

Everyone had a pretty full day on Day 3 (the rest of the group checked out a lavender farm), so we all stayed pretty near the boat on Day 4 and skipped seeing much more of Maui.

Eamon hung out with his great-grandfather and his father. Aunt Laura got a lot of great pictures.

Hello, peasants!

Here is the pose I use as an Abercrombie model.

Laura also got this shot of her husband, Brad, which invariably causes Ray or I to start into "I don't smoke often, but when I do..." or some variation of the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man..." ads.

After our relative failure convincing Eamon that beaches were fun, we spent some time dialing it back a bit- all the way back to the kiddie pool on the boat, which was kept at about 70 degrees, but at least stayed put. Ray's Minnesota blood came in handy here, as did his patience. Eventually, he got Eamon to splash about a bit.

After that and a nap, Eamon was pretty much content to work on his walking skills on the windy upper decks. Ray and the boys did run down to check out the beach that we could see from dock. Apparently, they got to see sea turtles, but no one got a picture for me to share (this would happen again!). They did get to play around a bit, though.

If you want to see the whole Picasa album to this point, click the picture below:

hawaii2010

Hawaii, Day 3

Day 3 of our Hawaii trip was spent on Maui. I've already posted a good overview of Eamon's view of our trip to Kam 3. Whomever wasn't babysitting was (attempting to) bodysurf. I think Steve had the best luck.

Steve did also succeed in getting a picture of the three of us (which has been the blog pic for a bit).

We came home to find a classic cruise ship item:

The nice woman cleaning our room really didn't understand Eamon's cave, and it took us a couple of days to locate our bathmat (turns out it was part of the elephant). But the elephant was fun!

There are a lot more pictures, particularly of us bodysurfing Kam 3. Some of them are even uploaded (yes, I edited and pruned a lot). If you want to see the whole Picasa album to this point, this link should do it:

hawaii2010

Hawaii, Day 2

Day 1 here.
Day 2, May 8, 2010 started off mellowly - well, for me. Ray got a jetlagged baby wake up at some ridiculous hour and kindly left me to sleep. Ray and Eamon went out and harasses various shops until they got someone to sell them coffee and donuts, probably after Ray had been up for two hours. And he still brought me donuts, the saint.

I started my morning (post donuts) with a good chunk of the family at Waikiki beach. We thought Eamon would enjoy having the sea nip his toes. The sea was angry, apparently, and decided to eat his shorts instead. It was cold, and surprising, and WAAAAH. So... Eamon wasn't so into the whole ocean thing. Too bad we didn't get a shot of that. But Ray's mom did figure out his iphone, so we bring you these instead:

Hawaii, Day 1

Yes, it is, in fact, beginning. For those of you about to log into grunzilla's fileburst, I haven't uploaded there. I have stolen your pictures, integrated them (resistance was futile), and am ready to start here. What I haven't done is sort through our pictures for what you will want to see... hopefully within the week. Or whenever Steve or Laura harasses me (you could harass Ray, but that would be about useless in this case...just easier on me!).

Okay, so, way back in May, we went on this totally awesome trip to Hawaii and stuff?
(my parents are rolling their eyes... that was for Ray).

Anyway - you already heard about the Portland part of the trip out. The flight to Hawaii itself was exactly as glorious as flying for way too many hours with a toddler sounds, so lets skip that part. We did, eventually make it to Hawaii without being jettisoned out an airlock or emergency exit or whatever. Ray's brother Steve was there to greet us (and share a car) when we got there.
The brain trusts in this crowd quickly decided that since we couldn't take luggage on the buses (What? I know! Ridiculous. No one wanted to hear how you can take bikes, snowboards, alpacas on Boulder buses.), we needed a rental car. So we got one.

Pile O' Cute

I'm still digging my way out of the pile o' pics, so I bring you a collection of random cuteness for Friday.
Eamon likes wind. Okay. Eamon loves wind. The upper decks of very large boat are WINDY. Eamon is happy.
Leaving Kauai.
The murphy bed tent that kept Eamon in his required darkness. And the way that we were greeted after naps.

Cold... Wet.. Loud..

That pretty much sums up Eamon's view of the ocean. He like pools, so I was optimistic but forewarned that kids this age take a bit to warm up to waves. He did not warm up.

We built a seawall, which was acceptable.

A first glimpse

(still working on the rest.. artistry here by Ray)