Hawaii

On April 3rd, Katelyn, Mom and I flew over and met Dad in Hawaii! It was so much fun! Dad picked us up from the airport looking awesome! He even gave us each a lei.

It was Katelyn's first time touching the ocean, and my first time touching the Pacific Ocean. We all went shopping and played on the beach for almost a whole week :) We stayed in Dad's hotel room that the military was paying for. It was an awesome room at the Hilton right on Waikiki Beach!

We drove around on Sunday and we went to the Hawaii LDS temple. It was so beautiful! Watched a few videos at the visitor's center there and really enjoyed it. We also stopped at the Polynesian Cultural Center, but it was closed :( We drove to the North Shore and found this incredible beach! The sand was perfect and the waves were enormous! It was so much fun watching the surfers. We ended up playing on the beach where the waves were washing onto shore, but we didn't dare go too far in. Dad made that mistake and ended up getting taken down by a wave while he was taking pictures of us. I ran over while he was submerged underwater, all I could see was his hand sticking out of the water with the camera in it. I grabbed the camera and then his hand so I could pull him up. Luckily he saved the camera! :)

<--- This is us pointing to the huge wave behind Dad to warn him that it's about to take him down :) Perfect picture! Yeah, so we got stuck in there! Sounds silly right? Well it's true. Two airlines closed down right as we got there so flying standby back was a little more difficult than we had planned on. Katelyn snuck on the plane with dad's ticket so she could get back to the mainland. Sneaky Forsythses! Now left to fend for ourselves on this deserted island were Mom, Dad and myself. We spend several days in the airport waiting to see if we could get on any flights. Atlanta, Seattle, LA, Salt Lake, ANYWHERE! No luck. We did eat some delicious snacks in the USO there though :) The three of us decided to start looking for cheap places to sleep. We ended up staying in the bachelors quarters at the US Naval Base. Mom and I had to sneak in for obvious reasons :) What a fun place to stay! The next 2 nights we stayed at the US Airforce Base. It was a pretty nice room with two tv's! Wahoo! Dad kept trying to figure out a way to get us on a military plane home. It wasn't working because he's not retired and he's not active duty. More failed attempts at the airport and I needed to be back to work! I finally decided to just buy a very expensive plane ticket to make sure that I'd make it home in time. Now I have no worries :) We decided we needed to get some play time in since the weekend was looking horrible as far as flights go. We went to Pearl Harbor but it was closed, so with dad's military ID they let us drive around Ford Island. It was so much fun driving that rental car all over the tiny island trying to get into places that we probably weren't supposed to. Of course mom wasn't happy about it, but she couldn't deny that we were all having a good time with the darkness being our only cover. :) Dad and I even chased a frog around that we had found. We decided to come back the next day so that we could go on the Arizona Memorial. It was awesome! Dad insisted on getting a couple of pictures of me with some sailors :) It was kind of funny. You know how Dad is! The whole Pearl Harbor experience was incredible though. Everyone should go there at least once.

The last few nights we stayed at the Marine Base. It was very nice cause we were in a cabana right off the water. We basically had a little beach all to ourselves! There were crabs all over our little beach, which gave us (especially ADD Dad) some good entertainment. Of course, Dad had to try to catch them. It was so funny to watch him try to sneak up on these little crabs! He followed one into the water and watched where it buried itself so he could just scoop up some sand and pick it up. We also went snorkeling and that was fun. Mom and I got some battle wounds from the coral. Mom saw a squid and I ended up swimming with two sea turtles! I was so close to one I could almost touch it :) What a neat experience.

We drove to the airport on our last day and Mom and Dad dropped me off. I had my ticket to Seattle and Mom and Dad were waiting standby. After about six hours I was in Seattle. I didn't fit in very well. Lots of black people and everyone was dressed pretty warmly. Then there's me... very blonde, very tan and dressed in Hawaii-type clothing. It was kind of funny. I walked clear across the airport to the very end where my empty terminal was. Kind of nice that no one was there. Luckily there were a few couches at the very end so I didn't need to bust out my pink pool floaty device to sleep on. I came prepared, cause I knew I would be spending the night there. Also, thanks to past experiences, I had decided to steal the little pillow and blanket that they give you on flights. So there I am, bundled up in my hoodie and sweat pants, with my stolen blanket and pillow, dozing off on a couch in the corner of the Seattle airport. I was having a difficult time sleeping, probably because for some strange reason, they feel the need to keep humans refrigerated in airports. Maybe so they don't go bad? I'm not really sure. I guess, you could say, I was sleepless in Seattle. Ha Ha! I had to throw that one in there! Can you blame me? Anyway, I received a text from Mom saying they made it on a plane to LA. Now it was a race to see who'd get home first! Also, at that point, I thought it would be fun to play, Where in the World are Megan, Mom and Dad?

After a sleepless night I woke up early and ate some breakfast before they started boarding my plane. Mmmm, day old, smashed, peanut butter sandwich that mom had made for me in Hawaii and a chocolate/caramel Cadbury Easter egg that Dad had bought several days earlier (in BULK because they were 75% off! Which actually ended up being our food storage that came in very handy.) I ate my healthy breakfast and boarded the plane. After about two hours, and with some extreme airsickness from the turbulence in SLC, I landed. Yay! I turned on my phone and had a text from Mom that said they had made it on a plane to SLC from LA. They would be landing about thirty minutes after I did. Talk about close timing! I still won :) I met Kate Kate outside and then we waited to pick up Mom and Dad. The four of us crammed into the Canyon and stopped by Josh and Amy's house to visit :) It was so good to see them and their two and a half lovely children. Yes Amy, it was good to see your tummy ;)

So that was the end of our trip to Hawaii. Mom and I ended up staying a week longer than we had planned, but it was good times :)