Mahalo

Posted by kara

We went to Maui for Thanksgiving with my family. The trip out was long (almost 20 hours total), but the girls were as good as they could be.

Our warm morning walk with the Marfster. She touched the water and wanted her pic with the lady figurehead.

The house was a block or two from the beach. Keiki beach was small with plenty of shallow water. I liked that I never saw any creatures. My favorite beach to date [although I still only went a couple times (I enjoyed some shopping instead)]. Even Martha liked the water and sand. I forgot how much I like digging trenches in the sand to protect sand castles (or batcaves as the case may be). Paul practiced his sand sculpting skills.

We saw the banyan tree at night. I guess it’s one tree that is about a block big and has roots coming down from branches. So it actually looks like a bunch of trees. And there were a million birds living in it… so loud!

We took the kids to do bumper boats and mini golf with a beautiful backdrop. No one liked getting squirted, but kept on squirting others. Gus was spinning in circles for a bit. Mini golf was hot so Toshi and I took a water/M&M break in a cave.

We all went to Iao, a lush valley with some paths. Afterwards, we ate noodles at Sam Sato’s. It was delicious!

Of course we had to go to a luau. It was pretty neat! We learned a dance, ate tons of good food, drank lots of sweet drinks, and watched a bunch of dancing/storytelling. We had good seats on the ground, right up front. Penny seemed to like the dancing.

On Thanksgiving, we went to the aquarium. It was small, but informative. We got to experience what it would be like to be eaten by a humpback whale. Martha was a little obsessed with it and was glad to figure out a way to set off the simulation and then pull me out of the room to save me before we were eaten.

The kids just loved hanging out with each other. They did a lot of drawing, hiding out under the piano, pushing each other in a box, and reading books. We took our girls to try shaved ice. I was disappointed they didn’t have the mochi balls, but my mango/guava/passion fruit was still very delicious. However, even the smallest size was way too big. The girls only liked the ice cream at the bottom of theirs.

If you haven’t noticed, it was just unbelievably beautiful. I would take a picture and be amazed at the colors and scenery. The weather was warm without being too hot. The last two days, it was a little dark/rainy/humid, but still nice enough.