Day 8: Gazebo, Aquarium, Flowers, & Fireworks

We used an alarm today. And I'm not talking about the tsunami practice warning alarm that went off yesterday at 11:45am because it was the first Monday of the month. Like a real alarm clock to wake you up before you're actually ready to wake up. Felt pretty sacrilegious during a vacation but we had to be the first in line at The Gazebo for breakfast. They open at 7:30am and we got there at 6:37am.

First in line baby. Waiting an hour for breakfast sounds a bit crazy I understand, but for The Gazebo...nope. Totally normal and totally worth it. 1,943 Yelpers agree with us. Breakfast was great and we will have leftovers for the next two days. Our last two days 😥 The birds were out in full force today. I caught a few peering over my shoulder attempting to gather piece of pancake from Papa's plate.

Jessica's signature breakfast 👍 It isn't what the rest of us get. We get their macadamia nut pancakes and their amazing fried rice that'll last you days. But we didn't get photos of our meals...again. I'm beginning to see a theme here.

We packed up after breakfast and hit the road early for the Maui Ocean Center aka the aquarium. The kids were pretty excited about going, and although I wasn't thrilled about it at first, it was a pleasant way to spend 2.5 hours. We haven't been since the twins were 5 so it wasn't something the remembered seeing. Funny how vacations are like that. I wonder if my kids will repeat all of these vacations with their own kids because they don't remember going as a kid. If so, I hope they invite me to tag along. I don't remember that much from family vacations as a kid, but that could also be because we didn't do it that often. Anyway, enjoy the aquarium photos!

Found this game the twins were playing oddly amusing.

Oh yeah, and check out this cool orange fish - he disguises himself to look like coral! So super cool. We also saw the turtles and sharks eat so those were some great photo ops.

Sadly we had to take T to the airport. She has grand babies to get back to but we sure enjoyed having her while we could sneak away. 😥 No pictures of the sad departure but she's home safe and that's good.

We may have stopped at a sunflower field on the way home. We may have gotten out of the car against the advice of the sign that said not to. We may evidence of said expedition.

So that alarm from this morning, well that thing kinda threw some of us off and forced a few of us to nap in the afternoon. It kinda seemed like we were all fading out and the afternoon was spent watching Ellen and maybe some other talk show with a lady named Wanda. That girl has some sass. We aren't used to watching TV as today was the first day we turned it on in our condo. We became entranced by the news and all the coverage of the fireworks. So....we dragged our butts out around 6pm and planned to watch fireworks at 8pm in Lahaina. A quick 30 minute stop at Longs...and we were there. Note sarcasm. Longs, maybe since you are right on Front Street and it's the 4th of July, maybe it would have been wise to have more than 2 cashiers. There were seriously, no exaggeration, 15 people in EACH line. Mama needed a drink after that visit. But alas, we found only toothpicks and a Tide pen. Yup - we are living it up.

I forgot to mention that some peeps got Panda today. Loved this fortune. I'll just leave it here for anyone to ponder.

So we found this little beach called Lahaina Baby Beach and quickly discovered that we were having super good luck. We stumbled upon a Buddhist temple (enter super excited Todd and Gina). We LOVE this kind of stuff. It was called the Lahaina Jodo Mission. There was also a beach cemetery right there as well. That was kinda weird but I thought, "well that seems easier to dig in than dirt."

It was busy but the perfect spot for watching the fireworks over the ocean. So glad we made it out.

We not only watched amazing fireworks, we shared our sparklers with some other kids and paid it forward. Then this guy came over and showed us how to take "long exposure" pictures on our new camera (Canon Rebel T6). Oh now we had a game changer. We were enthralled by trying to create pictures with this timed setting. It was pretty cool. Pictures below show Emily making a Mickey Mouse, Katie spelling, well her name Katie, and Jess creating a super cool star.

Then the kids thought about a cool wedding picture they'd seen where the couple stands together and you run sparklers around them. Todd and I obliged and stood awkwardly staring at each other while the camera did its thing and Jessica ran around us. Here's the final product. We are blurry, but we think that's because we don't have a tripod. So, Amazon cart will be getting a tripod! Very cool learning experience for us. And a fun family activity to create cool photos with this exposure.

Back home at the condo there was Snickers again. Snickers is a cat that Jess wants to adopt. It's pretty skinny but doesn't eat when we give her food. Oddly, the condo we are staying in has a lot of cat decor. And since this cat just walks right into our condo we are beginning to wonder if the owners feed her too. So she kinda walked in and then crawled around the vaulted ceiling window panes. She didn't stop for the photo so it's a bit blurry. Jess loves it but it's staying in Maui.

So overall I kinda felt like we didn't do anything today and now after writing this I realize that while we did take a 3-4 hour siesta/downtime, we actually did a lot today. And tomorrow, well that's the last full day - so who knows what's in store for us!