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Rusty here again 🙂 Friday morning we walked to delicous acai bows full of peanut butter and granola at Little Fish coffee house. It was amazing. Tara had suggested it the night before and Carlie responded with the most enthusiastic “OK!!!” that I’ve ever heard!   The walk and talk was excellent, lots of talk about religion and life on the way back. Car and I talked and Tara talked with Nat and Michael.

We got back and got ready for the beach, we were just going to Poipu beach today. Once again the beach was perfect, we had a blast. This was the hottest day yet and the water felt so good on our warm skin.  On the beach there were now 5 Monk Seals!  They were taking up 1/2 the beach! Hawaiian Monk seals endangered and there are only about 1,000 left.  And we saw like 10 on our trip! There were also a few other Sea Turtles on the beach.  Josh was excited to use his underwater camera today to snap pics of the turtles and the fish while he snorkled.  Halle and Gwen caught a hermit crab and named him Hermie.  They played with him all morning before finally setting him free.

Dan and I went and rented a Stand Up Paddle board for all of us to use.  Tara and Blake had the best time!  Blake loved standing up and pretending to surf and then jumping in and trying to knock Tara off.  Tara and Blake are the only ones who were able to get both people to stand up at the same time on the board.  It’s so different in the ocean! Josh and I also had a great time.  He laid on my back and we paddled around on our stomachs.

Beach Days are the best days.

Then we went to Koloa for food trucks and shave ice. The food trucks were okay, some of us walked and got some pizza. Tara got a Poke bowl, and Blake got some BBQ ribs.

Leo was sitting at the table enjoying his pizza when a super aggressive chicken came up and snatched the pizza right out of his hands.  Then all the other chickens wanted in on the action and it was like the chicken superbowl.  Pizza was snatched from the first chicken.  The second chicken dodged left, dodged right, but was tackled by yet another chicken who stole the pizza and made a breakaway touchdown.  It would have been hilarious if Leo wasn’t so traumatized and if all the kids weren’t completely worried about their food.

We then went souvenir shopping in Koloa. We didn’t find anything spectacular and Josh really wanted to go back to Spouting Horn to get the marble sea turtle he had seen and Blake really wanted a ukulele.  But first, the most important Koloa stop–FUNKY MONKEY SHAVE ICE.  But be sure to get it with the chocolate macadamia nut ice cream.  That’s the very best.


We had finished our shave ice just as Landon and Jhena and my parents got there.  Landon had a big full shave ice and the kids had none.  So, they crowded around him begging for bites. He would catapult it into their mouths which had some very funny results.  He let them try it on him once and he got a face full of shave ice.   There was another cat Blake befriended but then Halle was mad at the cat because they watched it kill a lizard and Blake was defending the cat “circle of life” and it created some real animosity.

So, when we were on the whale watching tour the captain showed us this “secret” beach that you can walk to from a spot beyond spouting horn (it’s called Allerton’s beach or lanai beach). Problem is that you have to cross some private property (the Allerton botanical gardens) briefly to get there. So I did some research and we wanted to do it. Everybody was a little nervous for the brief trespassing but it was quick and seemed to be okay. The beach was AMAZING!

We were the only ones there. And the surf would just roll in forever with super shallow entry and then the waves were the HUGE kind that you had to dive under or get pummeled. We had a blast playing in the waves while the sun set.

Tara came out with me in the waves and I was just so happy to be with her, almost a little bummed when everybody joined us in the water! Nat, Michael, Dan and Car and Tara and I were all out in the ocean, But we were having so much fun – then Tara went out where she couldn’t touch and I was getting nervous and telling her to come in because I was worried about her but she knew she was okay. Landon, Jhena and Ralph and Susan stayed on the beach a little higher up the cliff to take pictures of the sunset. It was so perfect, definitely the highlight of my trip.

We walked back and as we were leaving the gardens a car pulled up and through the private gate, we thought we were busted but he just drove by. Came home and the kids had eaten hot dogs (thanks Halle again!) so we went down to the pool and had chicken and salad while the kids played in the pool.

Perfect pool night. Ralph, Jhena, and Landon couldn’t bear the thought of eating salad for dinner so they ordered from the pool grill. We swam and hot tubbed and crashed.