Goodness, Grace, and Giggles: April 2014

I'm still attempting to play catch up here, so here is a blog recap of my trip I took to Hawaii in March to see my family! I promised my family when we moved that I would try to see them about every 6 months, and February marked our 6th month on Kwaj! So at the end of February/beginning of March I traveled to Hono to meet up with my mom, dad, and sister! Unfortunately, Johnathon needed to save his time off work for our big trip back in August, so I flew by myself to meet up with my family. As most of you probably know I was not too excited about the idea of flying by myself. I have a big fear of flying, and I prefer to jump in Johnathon's lap at every little turbulence bump, as opposed to a total stranger's. However, since Johnathon couldn't make the trip, I befriended the very large Marshallese woman sitting next to me who didn't seem thrown by my tendency to grab her hand at every bump during the flight.

The other downside of flying from Kwaj to anywhere is that you have to fly to Honolulu first and you land in Hono at about 3am. Needless to say I was exhausted and ready to get to the hotel and crash, but the shuttle driver that picked me up had other plans! He dropped me off at a very nice hotel in Ko Olina, and informed me that this was my stop. I got out and proceeded to the check in desk where they informed me that they had no record of my reservation at all. Upon further digging I discovered that the shuttle bus driver had dropped me off at the wrong hotel, and that mine was, in fact, the one next door. The ~~charming helpful friendly~~ crabby lady at the front desk told me they couldn't possibly find someone to take me next door at this hour, so I would have to walk. So me, and my 3 bags made our way down the ridiculously long sidewalk to the right hotel. I finally got checked in and caught up on some sleep and was very ready for my family to get in the next day. It was so, so good to see my family! We spent a week in Ko Olina, which is on the Southwest side of Oahu. Ko Olina is a really small town, and has great sunny weather most of the time. We spent several days lounging at the beach/pool, then going to dinner in town at night. We drove to the North Shore one day, and ate lunch at the Turtle Bay resort. It was rainy and cool that day, and the waves on the North Shore were huge!! I'm so used to the little to no waves on Kwaj that I found them particularly impressive. My family was nice enough to indulge in a shopping trip with me. Since there are no malls or really any shopping on Kwaj I had to take full advantage of a trip to the Ala Moana mall. I may or may not have done some serious damage there! We finished our shopping day with a happy hour at the Sheraton at Waikiki which had amazing views of Diamond Head.

The week in Ko Olina went by way too fast, and before I knew it, we were all heading to the airport to head home. While my whole family made it home without a hitch, my flight to Kwaj got cancelled. Apparently this happens quite often. They announced at first that our flight was having "mechanical problems" (always reassuring) and that we would be delayed an hour. Everyone on my flight started laughing and I couldn't figure out why. Well, after an hour of waiting they announced that the flight was cancelled and we would all have to wait for a flight the next day. Evidently I was the only one caught off guard by this announcement, and our flight has mechanical issues all the time. Awesome. So we all had to go to baggage claim and get our stuff. Lots of people travel to and from Kwaj with coolers full of fish and meat. Of course, in true Kwaj form, one of the coolers came open, so there were fish and raw chicken all over the bags and baggage claim. I really just had to laugh at that point because this would only happen on a Kwaj flight. So after one more unexpected day in Hono, I finally made it back to Kwaj. It was so great to see my family! It was really great to be back in civilization (California Pizza Kitchen and Starbucks in 1 week!!!!), and it felt like old times hanging out with my family!! I may be biased, but I really think I have the best family ever! Even though the trip was far too short, in a few short months it will be time to go visit everyone back in the states!! Here are some pics of our trip!