Hawaii - Wednesday (Day 4)............

We had been enjoying beautiful weather while we were in Hawaii. It sprinkled a couple of times (or rather, misted). We weren't exactly jumping for joy when the day we planned to go the Polynesian Cultural Center, they were predicting flash floods and major rain. The tickets were already purchased, so we had no choice but to brave the weather and make the best of it. It was a very nice, scenic drive going up the eastern coast of Oahu. Extremely gray clouds, and just downright blustery weather. We even saw a couple of houses with sandbags in front of their driveways! When we got to Laie, however, it was no longer raining. We were early, so we went to the Laie Temple. It is closed for renovation for the next year or so, but we were still able to tour the temple grounds and even the visitors center. This temple, along with two others, do not have a statue of the Angel Moroni on top. At the top of the temple, there are carvings, and Moroni is part of the carvings! There are 24 palm trees in front, 12 on each side. Those on the left represent the original 12 apostles, and the 12 on the right represent the 12 modern day apostles (interesting tidbits that I thought I would share)!

On our way to the Polynesian Cultural Center, we drove through the campus of BYU Hawaii, and then went to McDonald's for a quick lunch! McDonald's is right next to the cultural center, so it was rather convenient. And one of the perks to arriving early - front row parking! The cultural center was very interesting. There definitely is not enough time in one day to do everything. The pictures below show a couple of the things that we did..........

Ukelele lessons

Tribal Tattoos

Learning how to climb a palm tree, and I swear these Polynesians can climb these trees faster than monkeys!

There was a luau for dinner! They had entertainment throughout dinner. The food was really good, particularly the pork. And there was A LOT of food!

Dinner!

After dinner, we went to the big show - Ha, A Breath of Life. The kids all enjoyed this. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it weren't for the man sitting next to me taking up half of my seat, and also for the guy in front of me that kept showing me his camera! Okay, maybe he wasn't exactly showing it to me, he kept holding it up in front of me while recording the show! Lucky for him, I was on my best behavior and was able to refrain from slapping him silly, and from taking his camera away from him. Both were certainly tempting.

It was a great day. And the best part is, we didn't have any flash floods! We had some rain as we were leaving McDonald's and driving to the cultural center. By the time we got out of the car, the rain had stopped, and we had great weather for the rest of the day!