Dad comes to town!

Dad’s been traveling into hawaii about once a month for the last year and a half or so for work he does in Laie and I was super excited that he’d have a trip out while I was here. I got to pick him up from the airport at about midnight and drove up to Turtle Bay Resort in Laie where he stays for meetings at BYU-Hawaii.

For two days I stayed with him at Turtle Bay and went with him to some meeting. First of all, Turtle Bay resort is the COOLEST! The main floor where you check in and eat is open air. No walls. It's so awesome.

It's set up on the North shore in a place where it can see both the sunrise and the sunset and was designed in a unique triangle type shape so each room has a view of the ocean. Pretty Cool. Our room looked out onto the pools, and the ocean side where the surf school is. (west side) This picture shows our room window there in the wing on the left.

Here's a couple shots I took the night we got there. It was about 1 or 2 AM.

Another cool feature is the parrots that sit out on their perch, no cages, but don't fly away. They sit there all day and acknowledge passerby's with a friendly, "Aloha."

A small bay on the east side is known for visits from a wild seal. He'll come lay on the beach for hours. The staff marks off a good amount of space around him so people don't try and get too close since monk seals aren't the friendliest of creatures. Unfortunately he didn't pay me a visit.

I was really excited to go with Dad to some meetings and meet more locals. Just like everyone else I've met here so far, they all were really nice. I met some great people; the presidents of both BYU-H and the PCC, and several other wonderful people, one that lives in Kanoehe, around the corner from Kailua, even offered her place and kayaks anytime. Have I mentioned how stinking nice these people are?

One crazy thing she told me is that Kaneohe(right next to Kailua) is where hammerheads go to have their babies!! Can you imagine my panic at this information. Naturally I raced home, did some research and found that 5-8 thousand hammerhead pups are born each year in kaneohe!!!

The adult Hammerheads spend most of their lives in deep water and swim at depths of 600 feet but come into the shallow waters of the bay to have their babies. This usually happens in the summer and early fall months, have their babies and swim back out into the deep leaving their pups in the shallows where they stay for the first few months of their lives feeding in the reefs. They eventually swin out into the deeper waters and grow up to 13 feet in length like their Ma's and Pa's. OH GOL!!! I'm sweating.

Ok...on to more positive things...I learned something else that I immediately added to my "Reasons why Hawaii is the greatest place to live" list, is that Thanksgiving and Christmas are so huge here that several places pretty much close their offices for December!!

The last meeting of his trip was pretty interesting too. It was about both the History of Hawaii and Etiquette for doing business here. How to NOT offend the natives.

It was great to meet the people Dad works with out here and great to have him meet the people I hang out with up here. He finally got to meet Brooklyn even though he felt like he'd already met her thanks to all the crazy videos I'd sent home while she and I served together. I was excited our schedules worked out so that Tanner was able to come out too.

And now, the moment Sister Greer's been waiting for...drum roll please...

A PICTURE OF TANNER!!!! YAY!

The Greer's were one of the many amazing families in Minnesota that had us over for dinner, drove us all over town, came joint teaching, gave investigators rides, meals, basically helped us with EVERYTHING! Her son Tanner is out here at BYU Hawaii and I promised we'd get together and her request was a picture. I'm so happy to have delivered and I'm sure there will be plenty more.

The President of the PCC gave Dad tickets for us all to see the PCC night show, "HA," which means Breath of Life. It has an huge killer set with waterfalls, vines, bands, sand, trees, all the bells and whistles including a cast of over 60!!

They tell a story of the generations carrying culture, traditions & values to their posterity and do so through song and dance from various countries including Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand, and of Course Hawaii. The one that's my favorite and has been since the first time I came to the PCC as a little girl is the Tahitian dancers with their Poi Poi balls. It's pretty incredible. I remember getting a set a long time ago determined to master it but quickly realized it's either in your blood or it's not and for me it was NOT. Although this has got me wondering if I need to give it another go. Maybe I'll give it another go or maybe I'll leave that to Connie & Sandy. : )

Here are some highlights including the Poi Poi & Fire dancers. The fire dancers always steal the show.