Hawaii- Day Two

The next morning I woke Rose up and took her out to take some sunrise birthday photos. Listen, her birthday is the end of November and it’s often a struggle to find a nice place to take them so I took the chance to take them in a nice change of scenery! It was really beautiful and we even found a beach swing for some of the photos and it was cute to spend some quite morning time with my Rosie. But I do feel bad 

because she was so tired the rest of the day! Oops… 

Haha Buck took some photos of behind the scenes ;)

So I took one of him ;)

Back at the house... June really has a talent of catching things! 

That morning it was Erin's birthday! My mom figured out a sneaky way to have a beautiful cake made for her. After that we stopped by a small local café, Hukilau café, to have the famous banana pancakes. We took them and ate them on the grass by Hukilau beach. We also got to go see temple beach! Both of those beaches are the main ones I always went to when I lived there! They hadn’t changed at all either! It was magical. We also stopped by the temple and went to the visitor center. 

2006 Anna

2024 Anna 

Told the kids not to get wet. It did not work haha (rookie mistake)

Then we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center for the rest of the day. The PCC is right next to BYU Hawaii campus and most of the employees of the PCC are students at BYU. And it’s owned by the church. They set it up decades ago to help connect the students to their culture and heritage and teach visitors about the islands of Polynesia. So there are villages around for each main island like Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, and New Zealand. You can do different things at each village like learn dances, taste food, listen to stories, weave with grass, learn native games, and so on. There isn’t enough time to do it all in one day. The kids enjoyed what we were able to do. 

But then a really exciting thing was that the Iosepa was actually there! (see my post about Day One for more history and explanation on why this was special) It is currently housed there on their grounds. So I got to see it again! It was amazing. They had a whole area too with photos of Uncle Bill and his friends as they were first building it. There was a place to learn to tie sailor knots. Things like that and I felt that Uncle Bill would have been so happy to see that it was pretty much just like being in his class. 

2006 Anna

Uncle Bill!

2024 :)

Had the shirt on and saw a map and had to recreate it haha

We also got to go to a luau there and the kids were so excited, especially Hazel. She got so pumped to learn more about the culture and she just jumped up and down with excitement and kept hugging Buck and me and thanking us for the “most perfect amazing trip ever!” It was so sweet! The kids were all stoked to get their own drink in a real pineapple too! Haha It was pretty great. The luau was fun. They even roasted a pig. But then they also do a lovely job with the hula show teaching us the history of the last queen of Hawaii, Queen Lili’uoklani. I love how much care went into their luau show. It wasn’t just about entertainment but about authenticity and education.  

Birthday cupcake!

Kids got to go on stage

After the luau we got to go to their night show. The kids loved this and Hazel was again especially excited. It’s quite the show too! They do dances from all the islands and weave a story throughout the whole thing. The dancers are all from BYU-Hawaii and they are AMAZING. All sorts of dancing and then even the fire spinning, it was quite the show. But poor tired Rose fell asleep….