Hawaii-Day 1...

I don't count our first day in Hawaii as the day we landed.  Why?  We landed at 7:15 PM on Friday, June 6.  That meant it was 12:15 AM, Saturday, June 7 back in Illinois.  After we got our luggage, made it to the Ohana East Hotel, and checked in, it was after 8 PM.  We were exhausted and had been up for over 18 hours, so we literally crashed as soon as we got into the room (well, I had to find my night guard first- I've gotten so used to sleeping with it, I can't fall asleep if I don't have it).

We woke up at 4:30 AM (9:30 AM back home), so I called home while Ryan "washed the airplanes off of himself" and then he talked to the kids while I did the same.  There is something about taking a shower that makes you feel so much better.  Once we were clean again, we set out to see Hawaii and find some breakfast- Ryan gets extremely HANGRY, so I know the importance of keeping him fed.  I had noticed on the drive to the hotel that on Saturday they were having their Pride parade, and it explained all the interesting costumes that we saw as we walked back to the hotel after we had breakfast and had wandered around for an hour.

Isn't that tree cool?!?

Since we had spent most of the day before on an airplane, we hadn't really planned to do much on this day, so we changed into our swimsuits and walked down to the beach.  The first thing we learned was that the ocean was chilly!  It is not like when you go to Florida in the summer and are on the Gulf side.  You have to sit out on the beach and work up a good sweat in the sun and then you can go in the water.  We spent most of the day at the beach, leaving to eat lunch and go to one of the gazillion ABC Stores to buy big bottles of water to drink (the hotel water is gross), but you can get a big old bottle of water for $1, so we kept a couple in the fridge in our room after the first day.

Can you believe how BLUE the water is?!?

He may have been sleeping here, and yes, his swim trunks are Amazing Spiderman

 Then, we cleaned up for dinner, & ate at this Japanese Noodle Buffet place called Marukame Udon (really good) where I learned how to use chopsticks (Ryan is already proficient in this- of course, what isn't he good at?).  Everyone had told us how expensive everything in Hawaii was, and Ryan and I are fairly frugal people anyway, so Ryan used the Yelp search engine to find us fairly cheap places with good reviews to eat at (and he got some recommendations from his boss whose brother lives there as well). Then we walked around some more and crashed at 7:30 PM- I know, party animals.

The pictures just don't do Hawaii justice.  Everywhere we walked it was beautiful!