After a couple days off from wearing my trunks, Day 6 found us back at the beach once again. We checked out of "Uncle Jake's Beach House" and headed out to Waimea Bay for a morning of swimming, boogie boarding, and snorkeling. Waimea had nice soft sand and a really steep slope up from the water to the beach, which made for some fun boogie board riding. Just from the shore we were able to see a turtle and eventually some of us got in the water and went over to check out the rocks on the east end of the bay.
Unlike Hanauma, the water was much deeper here and more of a rocky bottom than coral. The wave action made it a little trickier to stay in place and take photos and I was also a little leery of getting thrown against a rock or something, so I didn't get in too close to the bigger rocks at the edge of the bay. Not nearly as stressful as my trip to Shark Cove in October, but a step up from Hanauma.
Natalie snorkeling
Looking down on some paletail unicornfish and convict tangs
There was a big school of whitebar surgeonfish swimming around through the rocks, but this was about as close as I wanted to get to the rocks while trying to take a photo
A small group of trumpetfish
After a nice morning at Hanauma, we drove over to Hale'iwa, historic surfing town, to get some shave ice (snow cone if you will) from Matsumoto's. Oh, but first we ate our lunches. Then dessert. :) Among the interesting things at Matsumoto's is that they put sweetened condensed milk on top of the snowcone. And if you want, they also put some red japanese beans down in the bottom. I was unsure of why you would want beans in the bottom of a snowcone, but I figured I might as well give it a shot. Having done that, I'm still a little uncertain of why you would want beans down there. I mean, they tasted ok. Like beans. And there were a lot of them. So many that I didn't want to finish them. Beans to wash down a snowcone seems like an odd idea. But I'm glad I tried it out to see what it was like.
Little surfer girl
Eating our shave ice
After leaving Hale'iwa, it was time to head back to Kaneohe. We drove past the Dole plantation again and back through Honolulu and back over the mountains to Kaneohe.
My younger brother Ben had been waiting for his mission call to arrive for a couple weeks before we came to Hawaii and it had been decided that it came to Grantsville on the Wednesday we were in Hawaii, that we'd have some friends at the post office overnight it to Hawaii so he could open ASAP, and also to open while we were all there together. It did arrive in Grantsville on Wednesday (Day 5) and overnight mail was guaranteed to be in Hawaii in 2 days. My dad was increasingly nervous that overnight mail from Utah to Hawaii would take more than the 2 days we had. So when we arrived back in Kaneohe, Kimi called the post office just to find out what she would need to do the next day (Friday) to pick it up. While on the phone, she just asked to see if there was any way it would have already arrived. And amazingly, it had! So Ben and Lucy loaded up in the car with Kimi and they went to pick it up.
While they were gone the rest of us made guesses as to where he might go. I guessed Maine or Honduras. They returned in short order, we shared our guesses with Ben and he got down to the business of opening it up:
Ben, ready to open his call
The moment of truth...
I'll let Ben tell you himself:
How crazy is that? Opening a mission call to Hawaii while being in Hawaii? Part of the reason we went to Hawaii was so that we could all go there as a family before Ben left this summer on a mission. In 2 years when he's done George's family will be finishing up their time in Hawaii as well, so we thought this would probably be our (and especially Ben's) only chance to go. Well apparently he'll be getting as much Hawaii as any of us. I'm excited for him to go and it will definitely be strange to not have him around for a couple years. Looking back on my own mission, though, I'm very excited for him to have some great experiences learning about the gospel and about hard work and dedication. Way to go Elder Tripp! :)
Ben and I were in charge of dinner that night, and thought english muffin pizzas might be a fun idea and would let people customize their toppings. It was, understandably, a little hard to keep him on task as he was busy sharing his exciting news with friends and family, but eventually we had dinner ready.
I don't recall too much specifically from the rest of that night, other than just playing with the kids and enjoying some time together. Here's a video I took that night of Austin showing off his number skills. (He doesn't quite understand the concept of counting, though he's pretty good at reciting numbers up through about 11 or 12. Not bad for a 2 year old).
More photos from Day 6.
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