Seven Glorious Days in Hawaii...

DAY ONE...

Dean and I spent the night at his cousin's house in Gresham, so we could get up early to take the Max Train to the airport for our 8 a.m. flight to Hawaii. We always have a nice stay with Lorraine. She is 80+ years old and a wonderful hostess. She always welcomes us at her "Motel Miller!"

We arrived at the airport on time, settled ourselves into our seats and got ready for our 5 hour flight across a very big "pond!" In-flight, we watched the movie, "Night At The Museum II: The Smithsonian." It was a really funny movie and helped pass the time on this very long flight. They served us a nice lunch and we rested the rest of the time. We arrived in Honolulu about 10 a.m. (gaining 3 hours in the flight west) and waited for about an hour and a half to connect to our flight to Kona.

We arrived in Kona about 1 p.m., rented a "big" car. I kept trying to tell Dean that we didn't need an upgrade to a bigger car, because there were only two of us and if the trunk wasn't big enough, the rest of our luggage would fit in the back seat. He kept saying he wanted a car with power to climb the long drive up to the volcano. MEN! OK, so we got the bigger car!

We drove straight to Kona, following the directions to our World Mark Time Share close to the beach. We only got lost once, having to turn around and make the "right" turn onto Polani Drive. (For the life of me, I will never keep these Hawaiian names straight!) We checked in and parked and started packing our luggage up to the third floor to room 313. Dean opened the door and said something about, "I wonder if they got my flower delivery OK" -- he always gets me flowers! -- and as we were walking down the hall, I could see not only some lovely Oriental Lillies in a beautiful orange hue, but a Chocolate/Peanut Butter Birthday Cake, as well. I started to say, "Oh, Dean," but got interupted by a big "Surprise!" There standing in the middle of the room was my son, Billy! And then, Anna jumped up from the corner and also said, "Surprise!" I just stood there in unbelief and started to cry! I said, "You're going to give this mother a heart attack with all of these surprises!" What a wonderful birthday! What a wonderful gift to have my son here with me in Hawaii. (I've been trying to get him here for years!)




Now, I understood the REAL reason for the upgrade of the car. There would now be 4 of us being tourists on the Big Island! After coming down from my fog of disbelief, we decided we needed to go get some groceries for this place and then to out for dinner. There is a very nice Safeway store not far from where we were staying, so we did our shopping there. On the way there, I noticed the spire of the Temple to our right with the Angel Moroni on top and said, "Oh, Dean, look how close we are to the Temple! We do need to go there and get pictures while we are here!"

And so, the end of a perfect day came in the beautiful little village of Kona/Kailua. We watched our first sunset over our western shore. It is beautiful here. Nothing like I remember the Big Island that I visited with Gerry way back in 1971, before I was pregnant with Heather! Much has changed since then.