8:00 a.m. - Sunday is a day of rest right? Well, we finally slept in and rested until 8 o'clock in the morning. Problem is church is at 9.
8:50 a.m. - Shannon's sister Danae is next door neighbors with a very nice family that spends six weeks every summer on Maui. It's a tough life I know. She told us that there is no turning lane to the church coming from the direction we were coming from. She said all the tourists miss this and you can tell who they are because they turn when they shouldn't. She encouraged us to drive down until we could turn legally and then not appear to touristy. We failed. As we came up on it, we were running late and I said the heck with it and made an illegal left turn. Again, this state's issues with turning lanes are quite severe.
9:01 a.m. - Church hasn't quite started as more and more people continue to flow in. You can certainly tell the locals from those of us who are not. They are wearing leis and greeting each other with kisses. One little boy who we found out later in the service got baptized that week was wearing a beautiful grass skirt and palm...necklace doesn't even begin to describe it. It was palm lei that was just huge. He looked amazing. I seriously was starting to wonder why we couldn't have a dress code like this in Thatcher 1st ward. Oh yeah, Thatcher 1st ward is in Arizona. Just as the 1st Counselor gets up to start the meeting, I look up and see Jason McDougal and his wife walk in. They say the world gets smaller within the Church, but this is ridiculous.
9:11 a.m. - We are eleven minutes past the hour and still have not had the opening hymn. The counselor giving the announcements appears to be in no hurry whatsoever. If I were ever to conduct and still be on announcements at 11 after the hour, Bishop Nicholas would lasso me with the extra microphone's cord and send in Rhett with specific instructions to get the meeting back on track.
9:26 a.m. - The conducting counselor took his same laid back approach to ward business and so we are just barely getting started with the sacrament. It is fine and no problems on my end, but I can't help comparing it to our ward and chuckling at the visual of Bishop Nicholas sitting on the stand with this particular counselor conducting. That is good entertainment right there.
9:31 a.m. - There is a Hawaiian version of my cousin's son Harvey passing the sacrament. Nothing spectacular about that, it is just weird to see a native Hawaiian boy who looks identical to my cousin who is blond haired and blue eyed.
9:37 a.m. - The great idea I had to put the Lost siren that goes off when they don't push the computer button on my phone as the signal that I have a test message suddenly doesn't seem like such a good idea now. It goes off right as the youth speaker begins and almost sounds like a fire alarm. Fortunately, I get it stopped before it gets out of hand. Jason hadn't seen us very well when he walked in and so he had the thought, "Wow, that guy looked almost just like Ryan Rapier." When he realized it was me, he texted my to say Aloha. They came up and sat by us for the remainder of the meeting.
9:44 a.m. - The youth speaker just gave an amazing adult talk. He went ten minutes strong but his talk was outstanding. I think I have an idea for next year's super activity. We will bring the boys to Maui and have them take speaking lessons from the bishop's son. I'm sure we can get that passed by President Kartchner.
9:58 a.m. - The first adult speaker was also amazing. This Sunday was Mother's Day and her talk was really good. Unfortunately, there is one more speaker and he has exactly no time left. His outfit however is totally worth mentioning. He is wearing a white shirt with a patriotic tie and a dress sarong which is kind of like a skirt only manly. But by dress sarong I mean it is made out of the same fabric as traditional slacks. His was navy blue with a place for a belt. It was totally awesome. Again, wish we could get some of these clothing items approved for church wear in Arizona as we head into June and July. He does a good job of giving his 20 minute talk in 7 and we get out relatively on time.
10:16 a.m. - There is a mass exodus from the church building just prior to Sunday School. A little ashamed to admit we know this because we were part of the exodus.
11:26 a.m. - After getting back to our hotel, changing and relaxing for a moment or two, we head into Lahaina and look for a place to get lunch. We generally try to avoid Sunday purchasing but we have no food. The first place we walk into, they hand us menus and after look for two minutes, we realize: A) We don't like anything on the menu and B) This is way overpriced for food we have no interest in. We got up and left quickly. This was one of those moments where we were extremely grateful that everything is so open air. Our escape was made much easier by the multitude of open doorways.
11:43 a.m. - We decide we like Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. so much and we had had such a hard time deciding what to get the night before, we went again. In a slightly weird twist of events, we were seated at the exact same table as the previous evening. Had the same waitress walked out we would have started an immediate search of the joint for Rod Serling
1:01 p.m. - After lunch and a leisurely stroll back to the car, we drove past our hotel up to the Kapalua resort and golf course. I had a tee time the next day at the Plantation course and I wanted to see what it looked like. The best description I can come up with for my reaction would be imagine Augustus Gloop when he sees the chocolate river. Anybody nodding their heads while saying, "Ryan as Augustus Gloop, yeah I can see that" can kiss my grits. This course is gorgeous. I was excited to play before, but now, I am like a kid on Christmas Eve. No, that is not an exageration in any way.
2:16 p.m. - We were now back at the hotel and had changed into our beach wear. It was time for our first serious block of time on the beach. For a Sunday afternoon with perfect weather, it was unbelievably uncrowded. I sat down my beach chair and brought out the four bottles of Black Sand that I had collected the day before and filled the other half with the cleanest, softest sand on earth. The contrast was amazing.
2:31 p.m. - We head for the water and have the best time just letting the waves pick us up and carry us back into the beach. Not once did our legs or feet come in contact with seaweed, trash or errant hotel keys. The water temperature was very different than Los Angeles or even San Diego. Much warmer without being too warm. We had so much fun, two hours went by before we really even knew what had happened.
3:08 p.m. - During our time in the water, we met a nice older couple from Argentina. They were very friendly, but they couldn't speak much English so after he agreed to take a picture of us with our waterproof camera (which didn't turn out so well) our conversation didn't last long. A little bit later, a young family that ended up being from Brazil showed up and they were very nice too. What was refreshing was she was wearing a one piece bathing suit. A little modesty, I'm impressed. Oh wait, she just turned around and the cut on the back is...high to say the least. Other than what has to be a young Mormon couple a ways down the beach, modesty is still a pretty hard commodity to come by. When we discovered the family was from Brazil, we introduced them to the Argentinians and they were all able to communicate with each other much easier than they had been with us.
3:41 p.m. - Speaking of modesty issues, a man that had to be in 60s walks by with a skin tight pair of swimming briefs on. Our imaginations were completely useless when it came to this guy. Shannon was fascinated that a person would be seen in anything like this so she tries to get a picture of him on the sly. She doesn't do so hot.
4:09 p.m. - Two younger guys start a game that is highly entertaining and something I want to do if I ever come back with some of my male friends before I need a walker. One would throw a football out toward the ocean and the other would run toward it and try and dive to catch it. More often than not, an incoming wave would take out the receiver before he could get close and we saw some awesome spills. I watched them out of enjoyment for 15 minutes.
4:38 p.m. - We head back to the room and clean up so we can walk the length of Ka'anapali Beach on the sidewalk that borders each of the hotels. There were some really nice hotels and some that we were glad we hadn't stayed in. We originally booked in a condo unit called The Whaler, but changed when a deal at the Sheraton opened up. We were glad we had made that change. However, the idea of a time share ownership in the Marriott was admittedly appealing as we walked by their time share only property. It was pretty amazing. Especially if you have family. Finally, at the other end completely from our hotel was the Hyatt. Their grounds were unreal. They had gardens with flamingos and penguins among other animals. It was pretty neat. But in the final evaluation, we preferred our hotel because the beach by the Sheraton was much better than the beach down on this end of Ka'anapali.
6:07 p.m. - We talk to one of the people manning the time share station for the Marriott. Actually just one of the people. They had folks at every possible location so they didn't miss anybody. We asked them how it was going and they said it was really slow. They backed up what we had been hearing all week. May is dead. Great, if we ever come back, May it is.
6:46 p.m. - I go pick up a pizza for dinner and head back to the room so we can watch the season finale of The Amazing Race. We were a little sad as this has become a family favorite to watch together each week. And here we were thousands of miles away from our kids for the final episode of the season. We opened the balcony door and felt the ocean breeze, listened to waves just feet away and got over our sadness pretty quick.
8:21 p.m. - After the Amazing Race, we walked down to the Whaler's Village and got some frozen yogurt at a place like Ocean Blue. It was awesome. Perfect way to finish our relaxed day on the island.
