The Sinars Family Escapades: Day 3--Christmas Eve

Since we knew we would be stuck at home on Christmas day, we opted to spend Christmas Eve on a short trip up to the Dole Plantation. We got there at about 10:30 and decided to do their shrubbery maze real quick before lunch. We even decided to use the map so that we wouldn't "waste" any time. Trust me, you don't want to get stuck in a maze with 3 hungry kids. :p

Um...no Samantha I wasn't taking a picture of your backside, why do you ask?

Samantha and Dan were ostensibly leading the group since I'm terrible with little map things. A couple of times Samantha pointed out to Dan where he made a mistake, helps humble him a bit. Even Claudia tried to get in on the map reading.

There were these stations to find so that you could stencil in these little pictures on a card. It's a race they have and if you can get into the top ten times then you get a prize. We of course had the map and so were "disqualified" from the race.

And of course, Kaitlin had to have her own card to scribble on as well!

We finally finished.....with a time of 49 minutes. Good thing too, those kids were getting VERY hungry by that time!

After lunch, we took a trip on the train ride through the plantation. On the way to the train platform I took this photo.

Dan's response? "Only you would take a photo of a person taking a photo," with an equally sarcastic eyeroll. Samantha however pointed out that this picture was very indicative of what everyone did on this trip. Dan was posing for photos. Claudia (and I) were taking photos. Duncan was trying to climb on anything and everything he could reach. And Kaitlin was playing hide and seek, covering her eyes and saying, "Boo!" periodically.

They play some traditional Hawaiian music in the background, which I liked, but Dan did not.

Duncan was rather grumpy as well.

See all these pineapple plants?? And notice the VERY red dirt? Reminds me of home....

Look closely and you can see the pineapples on the top of these.

After the train ride we took a walk through the gardens. They have guided tours of the gardens, but I did not trust the 3 little kids with us to behave for a nice quiet tour of the gardens. So we walked through on our own, and tried to stay far away from the guided group. There are lots of pictures of flowers, so I'll just post a few (and no I wasn't the one with the camera....ahem, Dan....who took pictures of SO MANY flowers....).

I love the bird of paradise flowers. So you get two of these, one with Claudia and one a close up of the flower.

The banana tree....I think Claudia was surprised to see that they grew so tall.

After the walk of the gardens, we told the kids they could have ice cream. So Dan took all 3 kids out to a table while Samantha and I waited in the VERY long line for the ice cream.