Hawai'i Nei, Part I

Hooray!  The Farber-Lau and Laus just returned from a fantastic vacation and family visit to wonderful Hawai'i, specifically, the island of Oah'u.

July 10
Departure day!  The household (plus Aunt Sarah, who happily drove us to the airport) awoke at 5:00 to get dressed and throw the rest of the bags in the car.  Aunt Sarah drove us to the MSP airport, for our flight which was to leave at 6:00 am to go to Chicago O'Hare airport (ORD).  When we arrived to check in, we discovered that the airline (United) had canceled our first flight, but were able to get us on an American Airlines flight to ORD, arriving about the same time.  Whew!  We made our way through the airport and boarded.  The flight was a little bumpy, and we arrived on time . . . but we ended up sitting on the tarmac for around 30 minutes, and THEN there was no gate agent to greet the plane.  We made a mad dash off of the plane and RAN from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1!  We missed the next flight by minutes . . . we saw the jet pull away from the gate.  The United agents were apologetic and worked hard to rebook us through.  They ended up putting us on a flight to Los Angeles (LAX) and then to Honolulu (HNL). 
We made all of those flights and even had some cushion time that we could get something to eat and stretch our legs.  The highlight of our travel day was that Rose was given a first class ticket for the LAX - > HNL leg, but alas, as babies are not allowed in first class, Mama was the one who enjoyed it.  We arrived in HNL about 9:00 pm and after finding our bags, we made our way out to Kaneohe on the winward side of Oah'u to our rental condo.  We all collapsed into bed around 11:00 pm HST.  (Hawai'i is five hours behind Minnesota, so, that would be about 4:00 am CST!)

July 11

The best part about the vacation condo rental was the koi pond off of the lanai.  The koi were gorgeous, and throughout the entire trip, we enjoyed sitting out on the lanai.  The other entertaining part were the two ducks, thusly named Larry and Joe.  We fed Larry and Joe some bread and rice which enticed them to return each day to the door, to quack for more.

In addition to checking out the koi pond and entertaining Larry and Joe on this day, we also made a trip to Costco (did you know that the Honolulu Costco is the busiest Costco in the land AND they sell more rotisserie chicken than any other Costco?  Thank you b-school!)  to pick up some supplies.  We visited Ni-Ni and she was incredibly happy to see Rose (and us).  We all had dim sum, oh so delicious.

After dim sum, we did some more shopping, going to Safeway, and then Sam's Club.  At Sam's Club, we ended up buying some seared ahi poke for dinner.  So delicious and only about $4/lb - it was a steal.  We had dinner on the lanai and all went to bed shortly thereafter.

July 12
Up early (thanks time zone change!) and off to Wally world to buy diapers and wipes!  After the store, we picked up Ni-Ni and had early lunch at Kaka'ako Kitchen.  So delicious, if you are in Honolulu, go!  In the afternoon, we went to the Honolulu Zoo to run around and check out our animal friends. 

 

 

 The best part of the Zoo, was, of course, the slide!

 

Hello Hippos!

After the Zoo, we went back to the condo and had some dinner on the lanai and then went to sleep!

I hope you enjoyed this first installment of our trip to Hawai'i!  I promise to post more soon!

PS - "Nei" is Hawaiian for beloved.  So when you say "Hawai'i Nei" you are really talking about your love for your beloved island.