Vacation!!!!

Three weeks ago Nathan and I dropped Derek off with my parents for "Camp Grandparents" and ran away to Hawaii for a week! It was fantastic to reconnect with each other, and to not have to be parents for a week. We spent a lot of time at the beach, went to Pearl Harbor, climbed up Diamond Head, and visited the Dole Plantation! The best part about being there (besides it being a tropical island of course) was the hustle and bustle of Waikiki. Nathan would not agree with me on that, but I LOVE places like that. There were interesting people to watch, high end retail stores to look at (only pretending to be actually serious about buying that $500 belt), and plenty of restaurants to eat at! Every night everyone gets dressed up to go out to dinner. The nights are warm and dark, but Waikiki is brightly lit. There’s a soft glow of torchlight amongst the brightness of the lights in the stores. Every restaurant has live music and a gorgeous patio to sit on. Everything is open air. The malls, hotel lobbies and even the airport have a gorgeous tropical breeze blowing through them. There are palm trees everywhere and the Pacific Ocean is a beautiful opal blue. Everything about Hawaii is perfect.

The day we got there we FINALLY landed (after a grueling 8 hour flight) and we had thought we would be able to do so much stuff that day! We landed at 3:30pm Hawaii time which is 8:30pm our body time. Then we waited forever for our luggage, and waited for a shuttle bus. Then spent an hour and a half on the shuttle bus. We checked into our hotel and finally got to our room and discovered we were exhausted. We were undeterred. We were determined to stay up until 9pm Hawaii time so that we could get acclimated. We took showers and got dressed up a little to go out for dinner. By the time dinner came I was so tired that I was sick to my stomach. The food looked fantastic, but I just couldn’t eat it. I couldn’t even muster the energy to pick up a fork! I made it until 8:30 that night before I crashed. Then we were up at 4:30 in the morning (which was of course 9:30am central time). Since we were up so early we decided to go to Pearl Harbor that day. So we got dressed ate breakfast and hopped a city bus. I love Pearl Harbor. There’s so much history there. It’s like discovering that this place really exists and these things really happened. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been there (3 now) the feeling is the same each time. (Ok, the last two times because the first time all I remember is getting my picture taken in front of the Arizona’s anchor. I was 4 years old.) The Arizona Memorial is such a powerful place. Knowing you are standing in the very spot, over the very ship where over 1700 men died is a very sobering thing. Seeing their names on a wall is even more sobering. This visit I took the time to really read each of the names. Two stand out to me. W.H. Hurd (Hurd is my mother’s maiden name) and A.F. Power (Power is my maiden name). It’s crazy to see your own last name up on that wall, even if the person had no close relation to you, somewhere down the line they are your kin. It’s a bit freakish to see that. There was even a Metcalf on the survivors list. I guess he got lucky. We also made our way over to see the battleship Missouri. That was pretty cool! We spent our second day on the beach. The whole day. It was great! Our third day we hiked up Diamond Head and went out to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. We did the big pineapple maze and saw some of the pineapple plants. We shopped a lot there. They have everything pineapple you can imagine! Of course we had some straight from the source Dole Whip (pineapple ice cream). I was sooooooooooo good! As a matter of fact, I can’t wait to have more when we go back to Minnesota next week for the State Fair! We spent all day the next day shopping, and then hit the beach, and out last day we literally rented a cabana and sat on the beach from breakfast until dinner! I have seriously never relaxed so much on a vacation! It was great!!!!!

Since we got back I’ve been going stir crazy. Life has just been too slow in our little town. I’m really not used to the slow paced life of small town America yet. Coming from a relatively large metropolitan area and moving here was a bit of a culture shock. Not welcome culture shock. Going on vacation reminded me of how much I liked my old hustle and bustle life, and coming back to the slow life has been difficult. I miss being able to run out and do things. I used to think, gee I really need to run over to Old Navy. I’ll go, it’ll only take 20 minutes. Now it’s a whole day trip to go because I’m not going to drive an hour to Old Navy for a 20 minute errand, so I have to be planning to do multiple things while I’m “in the city”. I know that eventually I will get used to the pace of life here, but I also battle with not wanting to slow down. I like a fast paced daily life. Fortunately, I have an 18 month old, so life won’t slow down for a while!