My Hawaiian Vacation - Day Two: Christmas Day

Check out the video, and the pictures.

We woke up early Sunday morning to watch the kids open their presents. For some ungodly reason Church was at 8:00 in the morning and was followed by a baptism that the family needed to attend. So, the plan was for the kids to open and play with their gifts from "Santa" before Church and then wait to open everything else up after Church... sometime around noon. Talk about cruel and unusual treatment of children :) Jaron and Kayla seemed to be so excited that they were bursting at the seams as they came downstairs to the living room where all of the presents were. It's always fun to watch kids on Christmas morning.

While Mom and the Muh's went to church, I decided to check things out a little. Jenni was letting me use her car while she was visiting in Utah. It was actually a pretty sweet deal considering that she drives a BMW. It's not brand new but it was still pretty nice and was a lot of fun to drive. It kind of made me think about trading in my Cavalier.

My first order of business was to find a) an internet connection and b) coffee. I figured that I could satisfy both of those needs at a Starbucks. I don't know why I'm so nuts about having an internet connection. On any given day it's not like I expect to have something really important arrive via email that couldn't wait a couple of days. But being connected has just become such an integral part of my life that I feel really uncomfortable when it's not there. I think of it kind of like indoor plumbing. You don't spend a lot of time thinking about how great it is to have indoor plumbing until you stay at a place where you have to take a shit in an outhouse.

The other reason that I wanted to find an internet connection was that my laptop had recently been re-imaged and I forgot to put my mapping software back on it. I use the mapping software pretty regularly when I travel to plan out all of my trips. I wasn't sure if it was going to be as necessary when I was travelling on an island as opposed to riding through the western United States, but I still felt uncomfortable without it.

It didn't take long to figure out that there was a flaw in my plan. It was early on Christmas morning. Nothing was open, not even Starbucks. Still I parked in their parking lot and managed to pick up an open wireless network from a nearby residential area. I've said it before and I'll say it again: God bless unprotected wireless networks :)

I wasn't able to download very much of my program before it was time to pick Mom up from Church. She didn't want to stay for the baptism, so I ran her home. I was going to head back to the Starbucks to resume my download when it occurred to me: I'm in Hawaii... what the hell am I doing sitting in the parking lot of a Starbucks? With my newfound clarity, I pointed the car in the direction of the beach and other tourists in Waikiki and started to drive.

I didn't actually make it all the way to Waikiki before I started to worry about the Muh's getting home from Church and making the kids wait even longer to open their presents. It was still a nice ride. It felt incredible to just be driving down the freeway with the windows rolled down and my arm hanging out of the window. I love the feel of the sun beating down on me. It was a gorgeous day.

When I got back to Mililani, Tina and the kids were home, but Ernest was still wrapping up some things at church. After Ernest got home, we finished opening all of the presents. I didn't think that I was going to have many presents considering that most of my presents had already been mailed or otherwise delivered to Utah, but there were still a few presents for me under the tree. Mom gave me an international cookbook and Tina gave me a copy of the "Tao Te Ching". The copy of the Tao Te Ching that Tina gave me actually has the original chinese text opposite the english translation. Even though I don't read Chinese, I still thought that was pretty cool :)

My luggage finally showed up at around four in the afternoon. I hadn't showered or changed clothes in the last 24 hours, so I was pretty glad when things arrived. Of course, rather than shower at that point, I thought it would be an even better idea for me to go to the beach and jump in the ocean. Earlier in the day when I was drving around, I had the brilliant idea of going to the beach at least once every day that I was in Hawaii. I mean, that is why you come to Hawaii after all, isn't it? To soak up the sun and salt water?


Despite the fact that the beach is normally not a Sunday activity, Mom accompanied me to Ko'Olina, which is one of her favorites beaches. Ko'Olina is a collection of manmade lagoons. They are very pretty but feel kind of artifical (since they are). She just walked around the beach while I jumped in the water. It felt great to submerse myself in the sea. I had forgotten how much I love swimming and floating in the ocean.