Two trips to Hawaii in less than a year?! Yes, we must be spoiled, but we went to Hawaii again in April. Whenever Erik would talk with his parents over FaceTime, Rick would ask if we could go to Hawaii again. Erik said that he wanted to put as much money as possible toward paying off his student loans. I guess Rick wanted to go so badly that he offered to pay for all of us to go. Erik found some cheap flights out of Phoenix at the end of April ($497 per person), and arranged to take a week off work. The kids had a couple days off from school, so they wouldn't miss too much. In fact, the teachers in Arizona decided to walk out during our Hawaiian Vacation, so the kids hardly missed any school at all.
We were really excited to go back to Hawaii. There were so many fun things we did last time that we wanted to do again. We also had a list of things we didn't get to do last time that we wanted to do this time. Our flight left at 7:30am, so we had to wake up at 4am, leave at 5am, and get to the airport at 5:30am. Oh well. It's a small price to pay to visit such a wonderful place!
Hawaiian Airlines' breakfast. The kids didn't eat the coconut cake bar.
After we arrived and got our rental car, we went straight to one of our favorite restaurants: the Haleiwa Beach House. The views here are amazing. The restaurant has huge open-air windows that overlook the beach and dock at Haleiwa. The food is also some of the best on the island. We love their twisty fries. We ate some of our old favorites as well as some new favorites.
The kids were deliriously tired and goofy.
We tried the sweet corn for the first time. Erik got the tuna club again, this time medium rare instead of medium. He said it was tender and tasty.
The dessert of choice is homemade donuts with fruity pebbles on top. Yum!
We were still pretty tired after lunch because we woke up so early, so we went to our beach house. For this trip, we rented the downstairs portion of a house near Sunset beach. It was a nice place with 3 bedrooms, a large lanai (porch), and an outdoor shower for washing off when coming back from the beach. The views here weren't as nice as our condo from last year on the golf course, but we definitely enjoyed the extra space.
A queen bed for Erik and me.
The kids got their own room with a twin bed and a full bed.
The kids wanted to go right to the beach, so we drove down to Waimea Bay. Last year the parking lot was always overflowing, but we didn't have a hard time parking this time. We were able to borrow some things from our house to use at the beach: snorkels, an umbrella, body boards, beach toys, beach mats. The water was fairly warm, but the waves were pretty rough. We all got knocked over more than once by the strong Waimea Bay tide. Even poor Ian got ripped out of Erik's arms when they both were pummeled by a huge wave. Erik and the kids tried to use the body boards, but they mostly got tossed around in the sand. Luckily we were all able to wash off the sand at the outdoor shower back at the beach house.
At Haleiwa Beach House the corn on the cob and donuts with fruity pebbles were different, but interesting. That was a nice beach house! I wish we would have found the entrance to the nearby beach earlier. It seemed like a nice one.
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