Oahu

After months of planning and anticipation and after a VERY long plane ride, we finally made it to our amazing Hawaiian vacation!  We spent the first 2 days on Oahu before heading over to Maui, or paradise, as I like to refer to it.  

The first night we walked around Waikiki Beach and just let the beauty of Hawaii sink in.  We were a bit surprised at how much we all would be affected by jet lag.  Tom and I grew up dealing with jet lag, but forgot just how much it screws up your body.  This is the first picture of us in Hawaii: 

    

This picture was taken about 6pm, or 12am Philly time.  Since we had all been up since 4am, we were all asleep within about an hour of this picture.  I'm just happy they still had enough energy for smiles!  

To help us remember our 10 days in paradise, I have decided to break our vacation down into days.  (I hope to be able to add more pictures and stories this way.) So here's a busy Day 1:

1. Pearl Harbor: Remember, Understand, Honor 

My parents told me I visited Pearl Harbor when I was a kid, but I don't remember it.  So I was really excited to see it again and hopefully give the kids a little history lesson.  Pearl Harbor is beautiful, as you can tell from the following pictures.  

Before we headed over to the USS Arizona, Allie had a fun time on her scavenger hunt.  She had to find several landmarks around the park, including this:

the anchor recovered from the USS Arizona.  One really cool thing about the anchor is that it was cast in Chester, Pennsylvania, only about 30 minutes from where we live.

We boarded a boat that took us to the memorial and along the way we passed this:

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a Marine Amphibious Assault Ship.  This big sucker, or officially the USS Essex, is the ship that takes Marines to where ever they need to go.  Military helicopters take off and land on top while huge landing crafts come out from the end that transport Marines from the ship to land.  Pretty cool!

The USS Arizona memorial was amazing.  The boys even thought so too!  Behind the kids is 1 of the 4 (and 1 of the 2 above water) turrets (where the anti-aircraft guns spun around on) on board the ship.  

The USS Arizona still leaks about 1 drop of oil a minute.  Matt thought this was "cool" and said, "Mom, take a picture of the oil!".  Survivors of the USS Arizona believe it's black tears from the victims and that it will stop after the last survivor dies.  As of now, there are still 13 remaining survivors.

2. North Shore and Polynesian Cultural Center

The second half of our first day was spent on the North Shore.  While driving along the only road that leads you the North shore, we came across this Catholic Church and HAD to stop!  I knew we belong in Hawaii!

Tom spent his freshman year of college at BYU-Hawaii and his favorite place to eat was at the Huki-Lau Cafe.    He was so excited to go back and eat the Loco-Moco for lunch.  We arrived for lunch at 11:45 only to find out they close on Saturdays at 11:30.  So we drove around "town" and found this awesome hole-in-the-wall Korean restaurant.  How could we ever go wrong with Korean food?

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  We learned about all the different Polynesian islands, saw lots of hula dancing, learned how to toss the fire-knife dancing rods, saw an amazing show with fire dancing, practiced throwing spears:

and participated in a few dance demonstrations:

Allie's now an expert at hula dancing!  Every time she hears Hawaiian music you will she her start shaking those hips and waving those arms!