You Say Aloha & I Say Aloha

JoanMarie, Isaiah, and I recently returned from a place where it's not too difficult to find Spam-flavored macadamia nuts.


Unless you know of another Spam obsessed location, I'm obviously talking about Hawaii! It was the first time there for all three of us. Here's the airplane view of our first stop: Maui.


The five-hour flight from California required distracting Isaiah with lots of toys and plenty of walks down the aisle. Every couple of rows, someone would stick out their hand to tickle his belly and tell him how adorable he is, which made him ask for more and more walks.


The place we stayed had several pools very close to the beach. Something I found interesting were the reading preferences of the people relaxing at both bodies of water. About 80% of the pool crowd preferred ereaders. 100% of the beach crowd preferred books.


While I didn't get much reading done in Hawaii, I did spend much more time in water than I usually do. The ocean water felt nearly as perfect tempurature-wise as the pool water.


The reason we were in Hawaii, the country's 50th state and birthplace of President Obama (oh, please don't start that again), was for the beachside wedding of our good friends, Aaron and Mindy.


Also in attendance, Mindy's brother, Tyson. He loosely inspired one of my favorite characters in the much-anticipated upcoming novel, The Future of Us by What's-his-name and What's-her-name. The character he inspired, in case you've already read the book, is...um...oh, right...Tyson!


After the wedding, we went to a very fun luau.


The food was amazing and the dancing coconuts were stunning.


At the end of our trip to Maui, we took a short hike to Twin Falls. The water here was a little bit colder, and since I'm a water weenie, I held Isaiah while JoanMarie went for a swim out to the falling water. (No, that's not her topless behind me. That's a dude.)


Then we went to the airport and island-hopped over to Kona on the big island to visit some family. Here's my Aunt Ikumi, Uncle Kevin, and cousins Tai and Tomi.


Aunt Ikumi handmade JoanMarie and I a couple of absolutely beautiful leis, which we had to take off when Isaiah mistook them for teething-necklaces.


Uncle Kevin gave me my very first guitar when I was younger, a Fender Stratocaster, and his home is full of guitars and drums. My li'l drummer boy loved it!


When we went out to dinner, Isaiah could be occupied (for a little while) by handing him his latest favorite book, Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes.


We spent several hours at a little cove, either snorkeling or relaxing in the shade of trees. We don't have many trees on our California beaches. And the water here was even warmer than on Maui.



Isaiah even took his first boogie board lesson.


Fully adjusted to the new time zone, on our way back home, Isaiah was still full of energy late at night during our layover in San Francisco.



Aloha!