The greatest adventure ever!

We sat around the house late this afternoon, and we weren't sure still what we were going to do for our family fun day. Somehow the topic veered toward flying a plane, and how young you could be to get a pilots license. So we started googling. Then we found information about gliders. David thought they were pretty cool, and there was a place not too far away were you could take lessons at. We decided to head over there and look at the gliders and talk to the people there and see what the cost and time commitment was to getting a gliding license.

We headed down and met with Mr. Bill. Right after we got there, there was a glider that was landing. So cool! I wandered down the field with the boys to look at some more of the gliders. When we got back, David let us know he talked to Mr. Bill, and we were all going to go up for a ride!

First up was Kyron and David.

Woo-hoo! Getting ready to take off.

We fly though the air with the greatest of ease!

View out the canopy of the runway and ocean

Look at that long wing!

 When they got off the glider, they both had big grins on their face. Kyron said it was, "Awesome!".

The next flight caused a bit of contention, as both Porter and Donovan wanted to go next. In the end, I went up with Donovan next.

It's a very tight fit, even with just me and little Donovan.

Getting ready to take off

Look how high we are Mommy!

Donovan was convinced that we could control the glider. There were my two controllerss. One for over the ocean, and one for over the land.

This was Donovan's controller. He flew the glider almost the whole flight.

Yay!!! This is so much fun!

View of the ocean and Haleiwa.

 Donovan talked the entire time we were in the glider. He just wouldn't stop. He thought it was a lot of fun, but as you can see, he couldn't see out of the canopy very well, so most of his focus was all on what was on the inside of the glider. He said his favorite part was  flying the plane and talking to the other pilot, Captain Mike. I thought it was cute that he thought the pilot was a Captain.

It was a little different than I expected. I was expecting a lot of calm floating and silence. It was louder than I expected. We did do a lot of floating, and a few little dips and raises. We circled around the area where they get lift, and we were able to go up a lot higher. This was an experience I would never forget!

Next up was Porter. Because David has flown in an F-16 before, he told me that I could take the last flight with Porter. But, when we got to their turn, the pilot said he could take "both boys". David and I agreed, and Kyron got to take a second flight with Porter.

Tipping the glider back towards the ground in preparation to being towed in the air.

Look at us go!!

View of the mountains and farms.

I was a little worried that Porter would freak out. But he had a great time! Kyron said that it was the best thing that he's ever done! Porter thought it was "cool". When we were all done, we were given "Survival cards" (essentially business cards), and "we did it" buttons.

Overprotective Mom holding onto all the kids while they're sitting 2 feet up off the ground. Ha!

Hang loose!!!

Catch up

Time to play catch up.

We were supposed to go to the zoo, but we just ran out of time. Instead, we went back to the Dole Plantation and did the maze. I forgot to take any pictures, though. It was a lot of fun. At first we just wandered through the maze allowing each boy to take a turn picking with way to go as we came to a junction. It was fun, but I could see that we all were feeling quite warm. So I took over. I had the map, and knew which way to go. We continued through the maze and completed it in 1 hour and 1 minute. We were certainly hot by them! We went inside the store and bought some fresh cut pineapple and two Dole Whips to share. Still just as wonderful as the last time!

It wasn't a family outing, but earlier this week, me and the kids had a little adventure. The boys all needed new slippers (what they call flip flops in Hawaii), so we stopped by Payless. I was also looking for Jocelyn's first pair of "starting to walk" shoes. Instead of slippers, I found some good sandals for each boy (they ended up picking out the same ones). For Jocelyn, we found some great first walker shoes that were black with pink accents. However, they didn't have her size. They called some other stores and found one that had them in the size we needed. Payless has this great program, that if they don't have the size you need, they give you a coupon for $4 off your next purchase. The shoes were on sale for $7, so they were only going to cost $3. Good deal! But even better, when we bought the shoes at the other store, I was given a 10% military discount on top of it. $2.41 for her new shoes. Yay!!

When we got to the mall, we discovered there was a sky tram between two parts of the mall. We found the way to get on, as Payless was in the other section. They were very excited! It cost $1 per person, but keiki (children) 8 and under were free, so I just had to pay for me and Kyron. It wasn't a big exciting thing to do, but the boys thought it was great fun.

To continue the adventure a little, we went to Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor and had lunch then shared a banana split.

Kukaniloko Birthing Stones and much more

Todays' adventure started with a very local and close historic site. It was actually the first recognized historical landmark in Oahu, and it was right down the road from us. The Kukaniloko Birthing Stones are a very sacred location to the Hawaiian people. This is where the royalties would come to give birth to the future kings.

I printed out a report on the location and read it to the boys while we were there. It was a very neat experience.

After this, David decided that Jocelyn needed a baby doll, so we headed to Toys R Us. While we were walking around, David made the realization that with all the money we had made during our hotel stay, we hadn't gotten the boys anything. He concluded that they could each have $50 to buy whatever they wanted. What fun! A Toys R Us shopping spree!!!! So many things to chose from! In the end, Jocelyn got two baby dolls, and a ring stacker toy. Donovan got a new set of wooden train tracks, some new trains, and a little kid version of beyblades. Porter and Kyron went together to buy a beyblade stadium, then they each got a two pack of beyblades. Porter also got a three pack of little transformers. David told Kyron that if he didn't use all his money, that he could have it to save it for something else. After a few days, he decided that he needed to earn $3 to put it together to buy a computer game. The chore he did for that $3 was to clean the car. I'd say that was a good deal for me!

We were right by a Sears, so we stopped in so that I could look for some new workout clothes. I found some great stuff on clearance. Yay! David looked at the tools, but didn't find what he was looking for.

Next we headed to a running store to get David a new GPS watch. As we were looking for the store, we noticed a road that lead to a bridge over the ocean. Intrigued, we turned back around after getting the watch to go explore it. Turns out it was the bridge to Ford Island, a Naval base. Yay for being military and getting to go there to explore! We drove around and took in the sights, and then saw a sign saying the Utah Memorial was up ahead. We decided to stop and take a look.

The boys found it fascinating to see the sunken ship, and realize that people had died there and were, in fact, still in the ship.

It was getting late, and dinner time, so we stopped by the shoppette to get a little something for our drive home. It was a long day, as we kept discovering more things to do. But it was a lot of fun!