Our oldest kid arrived this week. She’d elected to stay back with her grandparents to finish her 5th grade year, partake in the Girl Scout goodies she’d earned through her cookie sales, and eat two bowls of ice cream a day with the grandparents. She did perfectly fine without us and when she got here, after some squealing among all the kids, settled back into her slightly grumpy, very bossy Big Sister role. The other kids were glad to fall back in line and all became right with the world.
One of the first things we did was eat at Panda Express, located in the Costco mall (Hawaii Kai Towne Center). Behind the strip mall, there are tables overlooking the marina, and boat docks. People dock their boats here and go to Costco and Ross Dress for Less.
We took the grandparents to the Bishop Museum, which houses a very cool multi-story volcano. At the bottom there’s a glow in the dark tunnel, lit with kid-drawn illustrations of sea life and the story of Hawaii. It descends and comes out into the volcano’s center. At top, the volcano bubbles and erupts occasionally. The other big draw for now was the bug exhibit, which we already saw in San Diego but which Ethan was really happy about. No, no pics of the volcano…we were too busy looking at it.
And we took a family picture.
My FIL always takes a single pic, even though it’s digital. He probably figures with three kids, someone’s always going to be goofing off, so what the hell’s the use in trying to get a good one.
MARGARET DILLOWAY 