Hawaii: Starting off in Waikiki

Back in April we planned a family trip to Hawaii. We convinced some friends to come along and we ended up renting a beach house to share with everyone. We flew to Oahu a few days before the first day of our beach house rental so we stayed in Waikiki. We had a red eye flight with a layover in Portland, Oregon. The layover was just long enough for my grandparents to meet us at the airport for about 40 minutes. It was so good to see them! After the short stop in Portland we flew directly to Oahu. In total we were flying for about 9-9.5 hours and Aubree only slept for 30 minutes! Needless to say-she was one TIRED girl once we landed and were in the airport. We grabbed a cab and hurried to the hotel so we could let Aubree take a nap. We were itching with anticipation to get out and see our surroundings so once Aubree was up we headed out. We had so much fun those first three days in Waikiki.

I'm giving you a forewarning: there are a LOT of pictures :)

 This little girl loves necklaces and purses and all things girly. She found the handle on her bucket and immediately put it on her arm like a purse. 

 So excited to be outside-so many people to watch, and so many birds (or as aubree called them "quack quacks")

 Not so sure of the sand. It took her a few days to get used to it. 

 And here you have Waikiki Beach.

 Pushing the stroller-because that is way more fun than riding in the stroller.

A rare moment when Aubree let Eric hold her-it only lasted a minute though. As you can see in the picture below she is down and walking by herself. 

 Eric showed Aubree how to smell flowers. She would make the face that something was stinky after she would smell it. It was so funny.

 This little girl was very independent on this trip. No more begging to be held. She went wherever her little mind wanted to go. 

 Eric got tiiiirrrreeeddd of having to hold her on his shoulders (I'm telling you-she is miss independent lately. She did not want anything to do with her stroller and did not want to hold you hand. She would walk off by herself, turn around and look at us and would say "Bye") so we let him take a little nap on this couch while we rode the escalators up and down a billion times. 

 These next few pictures are my favorite. You can really see her silly personality. And her gap tooth. :)

 We taught her how to do the fish face before we left. Everytime we showed her the fish in the water she would make her fishy face. 

Aubree looks more than thrilled to be here. :) I promise she had a good time. 

 We rented a surf board on our last day in Waikiki and we took turns trying to figure it out. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of work (paddling in the water is a lot of work) :) 

And to end our time in Waikiki...a limo. We asked the front desk to call us a cab-we asked for the cheapest option-and when we came down and saw a limo we were a little worried. It turned out to be the same price as a regular yellow cab. We had the limo take us to our rental car and then we headed to the North Shore to our beach house. More about our week on the north shore to come.

Congratulations for making it through that LONG post of pictures!