We woke up at 6:45 when my niece came in and said that she was hungry. Rebecca reminded her about the pizza still in the fridge from last night, but we were already awake. She ate her pizza and then went outside to find geckos while we tried to wake up. She came back in covered in bug bites and said the mosquitoes must really like her. I said, “Yeah, they must be deaf”. She didn’t get it right away, buy eventually she caught on. I took her to the store to get bug repellent, sun block, and eggs and then we went back to the apartment. We covered ourselves in sun block and headed to Waikiki. We had to park in a garage and then walk 30 miles to the beach, but we found a nice spot in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
My niece ran and jumped in the waves laughing and screaming with joy. We swam out a little ways, but the water was murky and there weren’t too many fish. She was really only interested in the waves. We had to pry her away from the water to get her to eat a sandwich or reapply sunscreen. She had a huge pile of shells, coral and rocks that she had collected, sadly most of them “floated out of my pocket”.
At 2:15, we had to leave the beach and head home. Rebecca had to change and get ready for work, so I cooked her a quick dinner while she showered and my niece was outside chasing geckos and hitting mangoes with a stick. We made the mistake of telling her that the sap that comes out of the mango when you pull it off the tree is similar to blood, so she went outside to “murder mangoes”.
Rebecca went to work, so my niece and I made a can of soup for dinner and then caught the bus to Waikiki. It was full of smelly strangers and it took too long to get where we needed to go. We ended up on the far end of Waikiki and started walking towards the Hilton. I made the mistake of taking her into an ABC store so I could get a bottle of water. We looked at everything. She didn’t want to buy everything, which surprised me. But she wanted to look. She picked out one item, which is still surprising to me, I would have bought her multiple items had she asked but she only wanted one. I then took her to the farmers market to meet Mark, the gentleman behind Coconut Peanut Butter. She must have sampled everything at least two times. She told Mark that he was a genius and that everything he makes is delicious. She informed him that he is now a part of our family, and then went back to multiple samples. Mark asked her which ones were her favorites and told her to pick three jars on the house. Her eyes widened and she gave him a huge hug, I thanked him profusely.
We walked further down Waikiki and eventually ended up at the Hilton. The penguins weren’t there, but the turtles and ducks were. We got our spot on the beach and my niece ran into the water. She immediately found some boys her age who were playing catch and she joined them. She later told me that they were from Australia. She come out of the water moments before the fireworks started. I am always teary eyed after the fireworks, and I thought it was patriotism, but I realized it is because I don’t blink during the entire show.
After the fireworks, we walked about 1/2 mile to our bus stop only to take the bus 1/2 mile home. I wanted to walk, but her feet were tired. She went to take a shower so I did the dishes and made a loaf of coconut flour banana bread. I was going to teach her how to use the stove, but decided against it. I realized that our microwave is atop the refrigerator, which is ok for us, but not a kid friendly height. I places the microwave on a chair so she could reach it and reheat breakfast. I cooked us some mac-n-cheese for dinner around 9:30 and then Rebecca got home around 10. We continued watching the Avengers which we had started last night and after about 15 minutes, she asked if she could go to bed because she was so tired.