En Route - July 26

Church today was at 9am but we got up at 6am to make sure that we were all packed and ready before heading off to church. We were all cleaned up by 7am and then we just sat around. Okay, we read scriptures and good Sunday activities like that, but for real- when I’m in Provo and I have church at 9am, I wake up at 7:50am. There is NO sleeping on this trip apparently.

It was Ward Conference at the ward we went to and so we heard the Bishop and the Stake President speak. They were pretty good, but the best part was that there were two families moving out of the ward and so they came up to the front and everyone stood up and sang Aloha-oe and then people filed up to the front and gave them hugs, said good-byes, and gave them leis. The sad part was that one of the families got bombarded with leis and the other family got like three. We stayed for Sunday school, but because we had to check out at noon, there wasn’t time to stay for Relief Society/Priesthood. But in Sunday School they had the visitors announce themselves and there were as many visitors as regular members. I’m not even joking.

We did the last bit of cleaning up and packed up the car. Took one last look out the balcony and headed off to Kaanapali to check into the resort. We pull up around 12:30pm and they tell us that they’ll give us a call as soon as our room is ready, but that it wasn’t ready yet. Apparently check-in is normally at like 3pm. We waited in the lobby area for about an hour and a half before Dad suggested that we go somewhere. Holy freaking moley it was so boring. I mean, the lobby has a really nice view, but I don’t do down time well. We got in the car and headed North. We drove past the Ritz Carlton and checked out a couple of bays then headed back. It was 3pm when we got back, but there was “a discrepancy” in our room and so we still couldn’t get in. Finally, around 3:40pm they told us they would just give us a different room. Thanks. Now, we already got an upgrade to a Junior Suite (we don’t know why) but I’m thinking that after making us wait 3 ½ hours for a room, they should have upgraded us all the way to a beach side villa. Yeah, that would have been nice. Not that our Junior Suite isn’t nice. Mom and Dad get a king size bed, I get a queen (a real bed!!!!) and of course our balcony has an amazing view of the lawn where they have nightly performances, beach covered in palm trees (well, the palms are more on the lawn), and then the sparkling blue water with boats floating by so serenely. Yeah, the Sheraton’s not too shabby of a place to be staying.

Once we finally got in and unpacked and everything, there were 2 hours before it was time to go to the opening social dinner. I took my book out onto the balcony and tried to get rid of a few tan lines by pulling down the straps of my dress. Unfortunately it was super hot out there and I sweated a little bit. I got over the being sweaty part, but then when I came in to get ready for dinner, I realized that I had sweated more than I thought and that it was visible on my back. Sick! I just kept twirling around in the room in the air conditioning trying to make it less visible and then just headed out the door hoping no one was checking out my back side that closely. Dinner was nice. Usually when I come to these, I have at least one sibling to keep me entertained while all the adults talk about stuff that I don’t comprehend. Not this time :o( Cindy Haun is one lady that Mom was talking to. She’s really nice and involved me in the conversation, so that was super nice. But then she had to go and socialize with other people. But, I’ve got to say that I help my own pretty well. Not that I was the center of conversations by any means, but I didn’t just sit there staring at my plate of my napkin the whole time. And, even when I was a silent member of the conversation, I apparently faked attentiveness pretty well. I add that part because toward the end of the night Dad started talking to this one real-estate guy and I was in between them. I was listening to what he had to say because there was nowhere else I could turn, but I almost always had no idea what he was talking about and sometimes the band would be so loud that I wouldn’t even be able to hear what he was saying. But, at the end of the night that guy asked me if I was in the financial planning business. I told him no and Dad told him I was a teacher, and he said, “Oh, because you seemed really attentive to the conversation.” Luckily he turned away before I could admit that I had no idea what he was talking about when he was talking 1980s Texas real-estate. Hehehe.

After dinner Dad and I changed into our suits to try a little night snorkeling. We got down to the water and saw that there was a group of night divers just getting out of the water. We geared up and got in (nice and warm :o) We saw nothing! At first Dad wouldn’t get close to the reefs (which is where the fish normally are) and we were just looking at empty sand on the bottom of the ocean. Eventually we made our way over to the reefs, but then Dad got scared that we were too close and we’d get hit against the side so we went back into the middle of nothing. It didn’t really matter though because I saw a total of one fish along the reef wall anyway. I have to admit that just being out there in the water at night was pretty cool and worth experiencing. Plus, it wasn’t a total flop. At times, there would be these weird little red things that would swarm around Dad’s flashlight (yeah, we only had one, that’s why Mom didn’t come this time). At one point Dad turned off his light to see something and I noticed that there was something glowing in the water. It turns out that the swarming red things glow in the dark. And, they glow brighter based on movement. So as I moved my hands out in front of me, my hands would glow, and the best was when I would swim backward and watch my feet kick, there would be lots of glowing going on there. I was ahead of Dad because he told me I had to swim hard because the tide was taking us out. He said that he was watching me swim and that they were all over me, so I was glowing. Yep, yep, there wasn’t too much to see out there, but I can’t lie that I thought those glowing things were pretty cool- pretty gross too, but pretty cool.