Our first visitors, Evie's second birthday, plus Diamond Head hike

A couple weeks ago, we had our first visitors to Hawaii. My good friends, Tara and Linda, made the journey all the way from the east coast to enjoy paradise for a few days while also celebrating Evie's second birthday.

Speaking of Evie- I apologize for the lateness of this post but we have been going through some crazy times lately. I can count on one hand the number of nights we've been able to sleep more than 3 hours at a time without an interruption from Evie. I think it's a combiination of a cold, teething, and some sort of fear of me leaving her; I can't get her off me some days! She's sleeping-in this morning and we have nowhere to be until this afternoon, so I'm going to take the chance to write while I have it. This post is late and may take me some time to get posted, but I will get it done.

My friends arrived on Wed afternoon, and although they were extremely jet-lagged, we pushed on and had dinner on the North Shore. We missed sunset, but after dinner we took a few minutes to go to the beach and stick our toes in the sand (much to Evie's dismay). Once we got home, we all crashed so we could have some energy for the next day.

Haliewa Beach at night

Thursday morning, Evie went to daycare while Linda, Tara, and I went to the USS Arizona Memorial. It's a free memorial but we paid the $7.50 for earphones that give additional information while you walk through an outdoor area and two small displays. When you arrive, you get your free ticket to take a boat out to the USS Arizona Memorial, which occurs every 15 minutes. Getting there earlier in the morning ensures you're not waiting hours for your boat ride. 

The memorial was so touching and it's something I would recommend to anyone visiting Oahu. Once you're out at the actual site, you can see parts of the sunken ship just below the water and just above it. The most interesting part to me was that to this day, oil is released from the tanks of the ship, up to two quarts daily. I saw some of that oil float to the water's surface and wouldn't have known what it was if I hadn't been listening to the audio tour.

After the tour, we had time to stop by the Leonard's truck in Waikele for some delicious malasadas. Then we picked-up Evie from daycare and headed home. Evie LOVED having visitors because it meant unending attention from lots of people. I think she had someone to read to her or play with her at any given moment, and she definitely took advantage of that. That evening we went to the Dole Plantation, where we rode the Pineapple Express train and tried the World's Largest Maze. Evie enjoyed most of the train ride and about half of the maze before she'd had enough.

Friday was Evie's second birthday and we celebrated several times!

At lunchtime, I had a couple friends and their kids over for cupcakes and cocktails. The kids enjoyed some very colorful Sesame street cupcakes while the moms enjoyed some Sangria. We were able to sing Happy Birthday with Grandma and Aunt Emmy via Skype, and Daddy surprised us all by popping in for a few minutes over his lunch.

Cupcakes

Lady Bug Caprese

Enjoying her Elmo cupcake

After having fun with her friends, we called Grandma and then napped to prepare for the party that night. After her favorite dinner of mac & cheese and grilled mushrooms, we had birthday cake with mommy, daddy, Aunt Linda, and Aunt Tara. And no airplane birthday cake would be complete without an airplane high chair!

That cake was dangerously good! There was no problem finishing it over the next few days. Evie opened some presents before and after dinner, including her kitchen from mommy and daddy, and LOTS of kitchen accessories (thanks a lot, Aunt Amy!). We held off on giving her everything that day because we could tell all of the excitement and visitors had been a little much for her. We ended the day with cartoons and playing with colored bubbles in the bath tub. It's hard to believe my little baby is two!

The next day was girl's night out- wahoo! We went to downtown Honolulu in the afternoon and started our fun night with a tiki bar bike ride! This tiki bar bike goes around downtown Honolulu, delivering it's occupants to several bars where the tour guide offers advice on what drinks to try and where to order food. Music plays while you pedal and you meet people from all over the world. Our bike consisted of people from Oahu and Virginia, but we had all lived in the DC area at one time or another. Very cool!

Bike Bar

We stopped at a bar that served very... different cocktails. They were good but not something you see often. For example, I had a drink that had chamomile syrup (I should have written down what it was, I can't remember now). The second place was a Korean bar called "Duck Butt" which served a drink called "Watermelon Soju", aka Soju served in a halved watermelon. This was sooooo delicious! It tasted like straight watermelon but it definitely had a kick.

Watermelon Soju

We ordered food here and had some delicious kalbi tacos and a kimchi quesadilla. The last bar we went to was called The Brewseum. It was a micro-brewery that made a delicious ginger beer and was full of WWII memorabilia. It had a jeep you could sit in, phones on the wall where you could listen to authentic audio clips from that era, and replica planes circling overhead. It was definitely my favorite stop and I can't wait to go back sometime!

After our bike tour was over, we walked back to the hotel, showered, and got ready for our night on the town. We had dinner at Duke's in Waikiki, where we split a couple appetizers and entrees and were serenaded by a ukulele trio. The food was delicious and the setting (oceanfront patio) was perfect. After dinner, we took a few minutes to walk on the beach and watch people (i.e. idiots) swimming in the dark ocean far from shore. Our waiter had given us a few suggestions on where to go for some drinks afterward, so we started our journey to the bars.

Well, we should have just cut our losses then. We tried the waiter's first suggestion, Rum Fire. It's a nightclub located inside the Sheraton hotel and it's beachfront. He told us there were fire pits outside and good music. Well, the music sounded great and there were indeed fire pits, but you had to enter front inside the hotel, which took us four tries to find. Then we saw there was a $10 cover plus people were dressed in heels and tight dresses (while we were in beach casual). We passed on the $10 cover club since we only had the intention of having a drink or two before heading home.

Next, we walked to Sky Lounge, which had good reviews and the waiter said it had aerial views of the ocean. While I'm sure the views were nice, we quickly realized upon our approach that this club wasn't going to work either. There was a long line to get in and the dress code was even more formal (read: slutty). We were at least 10 years older than the people waiting in line and we did not feel like dealing with all that, so we kept walking. It was ar this point that we wondered, "Did the waiter not see we were not dressed for these places? Did he not hear us when we said we just wanted a drink or two?"

We came upon Jimmy Buffett's Waikiki in the Holiday Inn, and decided to just go in and get a drink. Luckily we got there when we did because it was last call (at 10:45pm on a Saturday??!!). We had one drink and eventually decided we would try the waiter's last suggestion, an Irish bar, before calling it a night. I forget the name of the Irish bar but it was definitely more along the lines of what we wanted. We had two drinks here, cut our losses, and headed back to the hotel. Our "night on the town" ended sober at 12:30am, but that's ok, We had a big hike in the morning that we were all anxious to do.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at Goofy's, a small diner, and it was so incredibly delicious that I ate way too much and almost got sick. It was just that good! Then we made our way to Diamond Head. Diamond Head State Monument is an amazing park that is located in the crater of a volcano formed over 300,000 years ago. It has a long history, both ancient and military. It's called Le'ahi by the Hawaiians and was formed from a single explosion. It was used as a fire control station in the early 1900s and as an artillery station in the world wars (although no shots were ever fired). The hike is 0.8 miles long and 560 feet up to the summit, which is the old fire control station. At the top are awesome views of South and West Oahu. There were a lot of switchbacks and some crazy stairs/tunnels, but the payoff was worth it.

Waikiki from Diamond Head

After our hike, we came home, showered, and relaxed until we went to a Luau that night. The Luau at Paradise Cove was nice but Evie was uninterested and we had to leave early. The next day, me, Tara, and Linda headed to windward Oahu for some beach time. We camped out on Lanikai Beach in Kailua and enjoyed some beer and waves. It was so relaxing and we all wished we had more time to spend there. At lunch time, we dropped Tara off at her parent's hotel in Waikiki, and after a quick bite to eat, Linda and I drove home. We picked up Evie from daycare and decided to have pizza on the beach at sunset to close-out Linda's time here. Evie liked the pizza but not the beach, big surprise. But we were treated to someone's private sunset wedding at the beach.

Waimea Bay Beach at sunset

Couple getting married at sunset

And that's it! Whew! It was a whirlwind few days and we were very sad to see our guests leave. Evie woke up for several days saying "Bye, Tara" and she very obviously missed her friends. So now we're settling back into life as just the three of us, but we're looking forward to seeing a Baltimore friend in a few weeks. She'll be here for a friend's wedding and shes pregnant, so I get to see her and her adorable little bump.