On Monday, we were all up bright and early again. We took the opportunity to have all the boys work on their homework. We had asked all the teachers beforehand to send the necessary stuff home with the boys, and it worked perfectly to spend those early morning hours doing it. Nothing was open, and it was still dark, so we weren't missing out on anything. They worked hard for a little over an hour, and then Jonathon and I went to the grocery store to grab stuff for the rest of the trip. Groceries in Hawaii were so expensive. We spent quite a lot of money to get enough for the next 3 days. Luckily, I knew that food was expensive there, so I had filled one of our suitcases with snacks and food. That helped a lot. After breakfast, we headed out to the Dole Plantation. It was about a 45 minute drive from our hotel.
The first thing we did when we arrived was walk through the gift shop. That was a genius idea on their part to make sure you had to go there first to get to the rest of the venue. Hyrum fell in love with the strangest stuffed animal... a shark carrying a pineapple. He had to have it. Lucky for him, he had his own money from his BOB grant, so he got to buy it. Haha! Next we went and bought pineapple Dole whips. That was one of the things the kids were most looking forward to. They were as delicious as I remembered. Everyone loved them! At the end of our trip, Hyrum said,"I wish I had never had a Dole whip." Surprised, I asked "why?" He said, "Because now my tongue just wants one all the time!" It was so funny and true!
Then we gave them an option to either ride the train around the plantation or do the maze. They really wanted to do the maze. We decided to make it a little more fun, so we divided up into teams and did a competition... the winner got a treat of their choosing. Jonathon, Hyrum, and me versus Christian and Andrew. We ran through the pineapple maze, looking for all the stations to mark off on our card. Hyrum was particularly adept at finding the markers and would scurry through the little holes in the shrubs. I though we were doing really great, but at the end we found out that Christian and Andrew had beat us by 6 minutes. They must have been really booking. They were so proud of themselves and got a box of chocolate covered pineapple candies that we all shared for their prize. Our visit was short, sweet, and fun.
On the way home, we went snorkeling at Shark's Cove. I had never been there before and didn't really know anything about it, so I was a bit nervous. When we had been before (17 years ago), our family went to the really famous snorkeling area called Hanauma Bay. Unfortunately, it was closed on Mondays, so that wasn't an option. Thankfully, Shark's Cove actually ended up being perfect! None of our boys have snorkeled much, so they were beginners. Shark's Cove was a small area surrounded by rocks that formed a perfect barrier from the big ocean waves. And the best part was that it was fairly shallow and the boys could stand up almost anywhere in the cove. That gave them a lot of confidence and made me feel much less nervous. And even though it wasn't very deep, there were tons of cool fish swimming around. Even Hyrum was able to successfully snorkel, and we had the best afternoon. Either Jonathon or I would sit on the beach with our belongings while the other one would go out with the kids. I loved laying in the shade with the cool breeze blowing over me. It was so relaxing.
Jonathon had a zoom meeting with his patent lawyer that he had to do, but he just sat in the car for the last 30 minutes while we finished up. It worked out great for everyone.
We headed back to the hotel around 3 pm. Jonathon held a recruiting meeting at the university from 4-7 pm, so I took the kids swimming in the hotel pool. It was such a pretty pool with gorgeous views, and the boys spent hours out there. I thought it was a bit chilly, so I spent most of my time in the hot tub. Jonathon brought home the leftover pizza from the recruiting event, so our dinner was taken care of that night. We watched a little bit of a new Disney Plus show before bed and were asleep by 8.
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