HAH. I had the draft for this Hawaii Recap post started on AUGUST 10th, guys. Today is SEPTEMBER 1st! If you don’t follow me on IG and have no idea why I disappeared for three weeks, it’s because I screwed something up with my blog while trying to update something technical-y and it made everything go haywire. So… I basically had to reinstall the design (theme) of my blog from scratch and even though I purchased a theme that came with all the fancy whistles already coded, I AM NOT HTML SAVVY so installing it took me forever. Also, admittedly I was a little daunted by the task so kept procrastinating.
But that is neither here nor there. Either way, I am back and better than ever! I do hope you take a moment to appreciate how pretty the new blog design is because IT TOOK MY BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS.
Ok so .. rewind with me to JULY. We took our three kids for their first ever trip to THE BIG ISLAND of Hawaii and it was the best, most relaxing way to close out our summer.
We’d never been to the Big Island before and didn’t know what to expect but now having gone there and come back, I can tell you that it’s the most relaxed of the islands I’ve been to (Maui & Oahu). It has a much chiller vibe and way less touristy … the downside is that there aren’t super famous food spots to check out or lots of lush greenery to look at. But it’s Hawaii! And I think for a first trip for our family of 5, it was the perfect island to go to.
We started off by leaving for our flight on Mon Jul 26th … my husband likes to get to the airport HOURS before our flights are ever scheduled so we woke up early and headed out the door with our bags packed.
… Only to get there and find out that our flight had been delayed so we were there even earlier than we’d needed to be. Woop de doop 😂 That’s fine – if you’re en route to Hawaii, there really isn’t much that can sour your mood!
Several hours later, we finally landed!! We were hot & sticky due to Hawaii’s humidity but sooooo excited!
Funny story – we had two connecting rooms at the Mauna Kea resort and they didn’t have any sort of mechanism in between the two connecting doors to keep them from closing. We were propping the doors open with our suitcases when I went into the kids room with the kids and J and accidentally knocked aside the luggage that was holding the doors apart. We found ourselves locked in one room with all our phones, room keys, bags, EVERYTHING in the other. HAHAHHH. Thankfully, we just called the hotel front desk and explained and they came to rescue us 🙂
The next morning, we woke up bright and early (thank you California time!) and made it to the beach. We’d seen these private cabanas that you can rent on the website and decided to try one of those out.
It had a little private walkway form a covered cabana down to the beach but honestly, it wasn’t all that. There were ants in the sand all around and we realized that the “first come first serve” chairs were the ones closest to the water so this was the last day we paid for the cabana rental.
We spent the entire first day playing in the water, building sand castles, and just ENJOYING Hawaii. I read a book, the kids played… we had a GREAT first day.
The beach at the Mauna Kea resort is a private beach so it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I’ve heard some of the other beaches in Hawaii were this summer. My kids LOVED how warm and clear the water was! J didn’t put on enough sunscreen and got a terrible sunburn that lasted for pretty much the remainder of our stay but like I said – it’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’re in FREAKIN HAWAII 🤩
We had lunch at the little tiki restaurant that’s right on the water and I discovered these amazing guava slushies that were a staple part of my diet whilst in Hawaii. I can taste it even as I type this.
After playing basically all day in the water, we headed back to our rooms to shower and rest before dinner. A certain big girl fell asleep sitting up because she was so tired bwahahah. And of course little A was tuckered out too. D played video games the entire time and insisted he wasn’t tired. 👀
Our dinner that night was at another hotel restaurant .. the food was good but not the best food we would have on the trip. You know what WAS good though? These Lava Flow slushies. Someone told me about them before we left on our trip and said that I HAD to get them, they’re like a staple drink in Hawaii. I wasn’t sure so I asked the bartender “uh .. do you know what a Lava Flow is?” and he laughed at me and said, “Lava Flow? YEA! You want one? Coming up!”. I HAD ONE EVERY DAY THAT WE WERE THERE. It was magic in my mouth 🤤
At dinner with my boy.
That was the end of Day 2 (our first full day) in Hawaii!
The next day we … *surprise surprise* hit the beach again LOL. We didn’t really have much on our schedule for this trip other than to just soak up the sun and the time together (which is exactly what we did)!
Lunch again at the little tiki restaurant on the beach (from the POV of the pic of A digging in the sand, the restaurant is DIRECTLY behind me).
J also took the kids to check out the pool for a bit on this day. It was aiiite. This resort is known mainly for the private beach and not for the pool so I get that it wasn’t the coolest/fanciest one around. Still, my kids enjoyed being able to swim without having the water sting their eyes.
Afterwards, we went back to the room for shower and rest…
And then headed off-site for a dinner reservation we had at Tommy Bahama! YES, like the store!! HAHAHA who knew that they had a restaurant too!? I didn’t, and you know what? The food was better than the food we had at both the hotel restaurants 😂 Their sangria was unexpectedly strong so I was waltzing out of the restaurant (I only had one and didn’t realize how strong it was until it was all gone. It was delicious!).
We stopped by a little mart on the way back to our hotel and picked up some local goodies (candies, chocolates, etc) then called it a day. (We typically ended our nights in Hawaii with the kids watching a movie for a bit then sleeping, and J & I reading/doodling on our phones then sleeping shortly after.)
Thursday was Day 4 (and our 3rd full day) in Hawaii and it was also going to be our last beach day because we already had an excursion planned for Friday. Lots of reading and guava slushie (and Lava Flow) drinking happening..
Poor A was SO tired … even though she’d been taking short naps post beach-time everyday, I think by Thursday she was in desperate need of a proper nap. She started off lounging on a beach chair … then slowly curled up into fetal position and then passed out for two hours. She moved over to use daddy as a cushion at one point 🙂
The big kids had wanted to try out the pool again but when J headed over there, he found out that the pool was closed early for cleaning due to an “incident” 💩 …. LOL
That was okay though, I preferred to stay at the beach anyway. For dinner this night we ate at THE BEST FOOD we had the entire trip – Teshimas. It was the best, BEST food .. Japanese comfort food and the portions were HUGE. Big smiles all around for everyone.
Friday was our last full day in Hawaii and we had to get up SUPER early to book it to the other end of the island becaaaauseeeeeeeee
We had a helicopter tour of the island booked!! It wasn’t a private tour technically but ended up being one because helis can only fit 7 people and 5 of them were our family, and then add in the pilot … nobody wanted to be the lone stranger on a packed helicopter 😂. It was BEAUTIFUL! We got to see the volcanoes and some waterfalls. Dried lava. The coastline. It was breathtaking, to be frank.
We didn’t have anything official planned after the helicopter tour so we did what any good tourist would do and stopped by our first and only Hawaiian 7-11 during this trip. We had a little “lunch pre-game” with 7-11 sushi (WHICH WAS BOMB DOT COM) and loaded up on some fun specialty snacks while we were there too.
We ended up eating lunch at the Lava Lava Beach Club which we’d heard a lot of good things about but to be honest, were a little underwhelmed with. The beach and scenery were beautiful but the food was just meh.
After eating lunch, we tried DESPERATELY to find shaved ice but could NOT! FOR! THE! LIFE! OF! US! FIND! ANY! We found one place that got great reviews but went there only to find out that they were closed for 7 days due to a COVID exposure. BOO COVID 😡 . So, we went back to the hotel room, hung out for a bit … tried to figure out where to eat dinner and then finally decided to drive back out and try Big Island Grill for dinner. It was honestly kind of tricky with COVID regulations because a lot of places weren’t open or were only open during certain times/didn’t have dine-in. When we got to Big Island Grill, we realized that they were only doing drive-thru/takeout orders and didn’t know what to do. We left for a minute to try and eat somewhere else… but then decided we REALLY wanted to try Big Island Grill so ended up circling back and just getting the food to-go. The kids were hungry and we didn’t want to drive all the way back to our hotel to eat the food sooooo we pulled into a random Safeway plaza parking lot and ate on the steps LIKE THE CLASSY PEOPLE THAT WE ARE.
The food was really hearty and delicious! I think they saw that we were tourists and the last customers of the day (we got in the drive-thru, like, 5 mins before closing) so they HOOKED IT UP with the portions.
THEN!! After dinner, we decided to take one last opportunity to find shaved ice AND PRAISE JESUS WE FOUND IT!
And that wrapped up our week on the Big Island! I would definitely do the Big Island again, maybe post-COVID? There were lots of cool tours and parks we could have explored but didn’t get to because we didn’t book them. I think part of me was trying to pretend that this trip wasn’t going to happen because the last time we were supposed to go, the world shut down and we had to cancel. Also, J & I are fully vaccinated so we just needed to show proof of vaccination but our kids are too young for the vaccine so they needed negative COVID tests to land in Hawaii and we were literally waiting until the MORNING OF OUR DEPARTURE for E’s test result to come back. Anyway, it was a week filled with R&R and lots of fun, family bonding time which is really all I could ask for. I think my kids made good, core memories…. D even said he liked it better than Mexico! 😂
**I also got a massage on Tuesday at the hotel spa but I don’t have any pictures for it so didn’t blog it. It was good but doesn’t beat the Jasha Spa in Mexico. Swoon… the Jasha Spa has my HEART forever.
Leave a Reply