Hawaii 2013 - The Last 2 days

After another day at the conference, I met up with my family for some cocktails and lunch at the beach at Dukes. A favorite.

You can't beat this view while sipping on some tropical drinks.





Our sweet little girl wanted to wear her Hawaiian dress her daddy bought her again. While walking around and shopping a little, Daddy was asked how long he's been in Hawaii. He told the guy a week. He was surprised because his hapa daughter looked like a local girl and so did her mama. Ever time I  go to Hawaii, people think I am a local. So our family fit in just nicely. The ironic thing is that I have no family connections to Hawaii, but Daddy does. Yup, my white husband has family history in Hawaii. Two generations of his family lived on Oahu. His great, great grandfather and great grandfather were the editors of the Honolulu Advertiser back in the day. His grandmother grew up in Hawaii and left for the mainland for college and stayed on the mainland because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.



Such a ham...









We enjoyed dinner that evening at Benihana's and mama was too cheap to actually buy the photo.



Our final day on the island we decided to head back to the North Shore, right where we started to enjoy the beach and sun. On the way we stopped for Hulu Hulu chicken. This place is only open on the weekends and boy was that some good chicken.



We found a nice quiet spot on Sunset Beach. Our favorite beach on Oahu.











After a beautiful day at the beach, we two rainbows on our drive back to the hotel. What a fitting way to end our beautiful Hawaiian vacation. As lil J observed at the early part of our vacation, "There are pineapple everywhere. Hawaii is all about pineapples and rainbows." Indeed it is.





Aloha!

Hawaii 2013 - Day 5

So I did take a day off from the conference and had some fun. Day 5 started with seeing this beautiful site during my morning run. Gotta love a run along the beach with a rainbow.



We headed to Hanuma Bay for the day.





Some snorkeling and building sand castles. We had an absolute blast.
















Then we headed back for a luau.

Hawaii 2013 - Day 3 and 4

Day 3 was the beginning of the conference for me. So after a workout at the local crossfit affiliate, I headed off to the Convention Center while Daddy and Lil' J went off to meet up with a friend of daddy's who lived in Honolulu and had a big truck.



We met back at the hotel that afternoon and headed to lounge at the pool. Mai tais for mommy.



We had a great relaxing afternoon at the pool, then got cleaned up and head over to Duke's for dinner and drinks. (No Lil J did not have a mai tai, but she did like the glass my mai tai came in)



We enjoyed the evening and dinner with the beautiful Hawaii weather. What Tropical Storm?



Our little Hawaiian girl. Our Hapa girl



Me and my beauty.



On Day 4, I worked. And yes I did attend the conference and worked.



The nice thing about the conference was that it ended by 2pm each day, which left me plenty of time to join my family for the pool or beach in the afternoon. I could not complain about that.

Hawaii 2013 - Day 2: North Shore

Day 2 of our Hawaiian vacay. We were expecting lots of rain and for the tropical storm to take full force. We woke up and it was fairly dry outside. My morning run had this view of the hotel.



While it was dry we decided to head off for breakfast. We found some amazing pancakes, so yummy. I also had my fill of spam and eggs. On the walk back to the hotel, it began to pour. We ran to some shelter and took a taxi back to the hotel.



We decided that we might take a drive in the rain and see the island. Yeah it was raining but it had begun to let up, so headed north. It was raining pretty good, but the island was still beautiful. We stopped at the Polynesian Cultural Center but decided it wasn't worth the money to spend walking around in the rain. So we kept on moving and decided to stop at our favorite shrimp truck, Giovanni's.



Yum... Can't go to Oahu without Giovanni's





After some grub, we kept on driving toward the North Shore. We stumbled upon a stretch of beach that was clear and sunny. Sunset Beach was beautiful and we decided to stop. We figured if it rained on us, we would leave. We saw the rain clouds on either side of us, but it never hit the beach and we enjoyed a beautiful afternoon on the beach.







After some time enjoying the sun and sand, we continue to drive and just took in the beauty of the island.



Then made a stop at Haleiwa for some shave ice. Yummy.



After our yummy treat, we headed back down to Waikiki. We were so glad that we headed up to the North Shore and found our little Sunset Beach to enjoy refuge from the rain. It was a beautiful day the rain and all...

Hawaii 2013 - Day 1 Tropical Storm forecasted

So toward the end of July and into the beginning of August we took a family vacation to Hawaii. I know it is now September and I am finally blogging about it. Coming back from vacation was really busy with work and life; it all got the better of me. I am working to catch up and get back on track now that preschool is starting up tomorrow.

Back to our Hawaiian vacation. I happened to have a conference in Waikiki on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Not a bad place for a conference. So we decided to extend my stay there and make it a vacation.

Lil' J was really excited about going to Hawaii and was all packed an ready to go. Little did I know that she had packed her kid scissors in her little carry-on. I guess TSA lets kid scissors through since we didn't get stopped. We had no clue until she busted them out at the hotel. LOL.



She was a great little traveler on the place. Give her the iPad and she just watched movies the entire time. I don't know how many times she watched Tinkerbell, but it kept her entertained through the entire flight, so I can't complain. I really need to load more movies on the iPad before our next flight.



The weather forecast had a Tropical Storm forecasted to hit the Hawaiian Islands. In fact, our flight was the last flight out of LAX, the flights after us were cancelled. We were very lucky to get out of LA. I heard that some at the conference didn't make it to Hawaii and some went through much trouble to get to Hawaii in time for presentations. We got to Honolulu and it was drizzling a bit. We got our rental car and head off to the Hilton Hawaiian Village, our home for the next week. We got there and it was still relatively dry and the sun was out, so we decided to head to the beach while we had a chance. We were expecting rain the next day.









Day 1 wasn't too bad, a little wet but not pouring. We got to enjoy a little time at the beach before dinner. We prepared for the rain the next day with a stop at the ABC Store. The hotel was also preparing for the storm and advised people that the lounges and some of the hotel restaurants would be closing early. We were ready with whatever day 2 brought us. I was sad about the rain since that would be my main day with no conference activities...