Coming to America: Part 3

Our second day in Hawaii we were feeling a lot more rested and relaxed. We got up and headed out for a nice breakfast overlooking the ocean. Fresh pineapple...leisurely breakfast...beach. Awesome. Matthew got to pick out his own food at the buffet, including a large piece of bacon. He was so happy!

After breakfast we walked to the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which was right next door to our hotel. The resort had a bunch of different animals to see. Here are the kids checking out the penguin display (penguins not shown).

And looking at the flamingos....they are there in the background...tiny.

After checking out the animals, we headed to Lappert's for a treat. Lappert's is an ice cream place based in Kauai and Scott and I got ice cream there just about every day of our honeymoon. They have all Hawaiian inspired flavors. I liked the coconut caramel macadamia nut best. Happy memories!

After checking out the Hilton we drove up to the Dole Pineapple Plantation.
The kids liked seeing the pineapples growing on the ground there.

Matthew thought this red pineapple was pretty cool.

We rode the pineapple express train which gives you a little tour of the plantation. The kids liked that too. We're sitting on the train here...I know it's hard to tell where we are.

We spent some time in the hedge maze at the pineapple plantation. Matthew was our leader and took his job very seriously. We only found 3 of the 8 stations you are supposed to find before we decided to call it quits. It was warm out there and those dole whip ice creams were calling us. We found our way out of the maze and got our ice cream...so tasty!
After seeing the pineapple plantation we decided to drive around the north shore. It was really beautiful.

We stopped at the LDS temple in Laie.

As we were checking out the visitors center there we found out the temple had just finished a remodel and was actually having an open house that day. We had just enough time to go through and see the inside of the temple. It was very cool. They have a lot of Hawaiian inspired details inside, like hibiscus flowers in the stain glass and Hawaiian quilt design shapes on the ceiling tiles. Very beautiful. I'm glad we happened to stop by and got to see it.

We drove to the airport next and got ready for our last two flights: Honolulu to Salt Lake City and then Salt Lake to Portland, our final destination. Those flights went a little better. Honolulu to SLC was about 6 hours, but we had very little turbulence, no one vomited and Anna was much better behaved. Hooray! Our last flight went by quickly since it was short relative to our others and soon enough we were in Portland. It was cold there (40s?) compared with where we'd been and I think it will take the kids and I awhile to get used to the colder weather. Matthew keeps asking why Oregon is so cold and Anna keeps asking me to turn the fan off. Hopefully we get acclimated soon!
I was so glad to get off that last flight and also glad we aren't going to be flying anywhere for a while...we will be driving from Portland to Colorado Springs, which might be it's own kind of "special adventure" but at least I have a few days to mentally prepare for that. :) In any case, we're happy to be back in the states! Next stop: Target!