We may have been exhausted yesterday but this is pretty great view to wake up to…

One the requests that the boys had on this trip was beach days… just some days to sit on the beach with nothing to do and no agenda. (Yea, becuase that’s what I excel at on vacation 🤦🏻‍♀️) But it was an honest request so here we go, a vacation day with literally nothing planned UGH!

As someone who is not a natural early riser, I love the first few days in new time zone. Today, we woke up at 12pm to our bodies but 6am Hawaii Time🍍. Mike and I went in search of coffee and felt like we had to resort all to ourselves at first.

Well all to ourselves, except for the “influencer” who was on the beach at 6am with her camera and equipment decked out in a red bikini and captain’s hat. We weren’t sure what she was supposed to be “influencing” but she spent 20 minutes posing and doing a captain’s salute over and over and over… which of course led to my “inluencer” photo shoot on the beach 🤣

After our photoshoot 😉 we headed over to Starbucks and couldn’t understand why everyone was in workout gear, until we remembered that it was 6:45am on a Saturday and only the crazy workout people were awake this early… normal time adjusted people were asleep!

Coffee in hand, we got the boys stirring and headed to breakfast, with some photo ops on the way.

Finally we headed out to the pool, which presented its own issues. In 2021, Hawaii passed the Hawaii Act 104 which now requires that people only use reef-safe sunscreen. Normal sunscreens effect the coral reef causing coral bleaching, which then effects the millions of fish who depend on the reef. So non-aerosol reef safe sunscreen it is. But here’s the fun part, these two have been raised on spray sunscreen. It seems like a small thing, but watching them rub the old fashioned white suncreen in and cracking themselves up made me giggle 🤣

Then it was time to break in the snorkel equipment that we all got in our Easter Baskets… they’ll be experts by the end of the day! 🐠

Mike and I kept everything held down on shore

The sand here is so different. It feels like extremely soft modeling clay. Thankfully, some child left their sand buckets on the beach and these two spent 45 minutes on a sand castle… cue the flashback 🥹

From the beach we could see folks jumping off Black Rock Point and cliff jumping was HIGH on the boys’ list of Maui Must Do’s. So we grabbed lunch at the hotel and off we went…

Michael and Leo climbed these lava rocks like spider monkeys. I tried to use an old camera in a waterproof pouch to grab some underwater pictures… while fight the current, without flippers and without my googles… so the pictures turned out exactly as you would expect🤣

Unlike like my spider childen, I climbed like a 52 year old with a bum hip and leg 🤪 BUT I jumped off a cliff in Couer d’Alene, Idaho, and I was going to do it in Ka’anapali Beach in Maui too.

Slighting different jumping styles🤣

We posted back up in our little spot for a little more beach time before we headed to the pool for fruity drinks and even more downtime… (seriously getting a Clark Griswold twitch)

We decided we really wanted to have fresh fish for dinner and what’s fresher than sushi 😉. Online one of the best restaurants nearby was MISO PHAT (pause to laugh at the name… and even funnier… their boat is called the SHISO PHAT 🤣🤣). Without mentioning the name of the restaurant, we asked our waitress at lunch where is the best sushi? She said “Miso Phat”. Gotta be a sign, because that is coolest name ever! So off we went.

In our travels, we have learned to never judge a restaurant until you have had the food… so didn’t bother me that it was in a strip mall that was the bottom floor of some apartments… so people aren’t coming for the location. It didn’t bother me when the lady up front didn’t say hello or welcome, just a terse “if you’re eating in, put your name in the iPad”… so people aren’t coming here for her sparkling personality. And it didn’t bother me when the sign on the door said “BYOB Liquor Store next door”… I mean that’s just saving on a liquor license 🤣

What did catch my eye was that Guy Fieri visited here with Dine In Diners and Dives! So it has to be good… and it was! 2 out of 4 said it was best sushi of their life, 1 said great sushi and one said I like Kabuto better 🤦🏻‍♀️

Between the snorkeling, cliff jumping, the sun, and the jet lag, the Browns are back in their room and in PJs by 9:30. Thankfully, tomorrow has a few agenda items!