One Crazy Summer, Oahu

 On the heels of spending a week at the beach with the Godsey Family, earlier this month we jumped a plane to spend a week at our timeshare at Ko Olina on Oahu in Hawaii.

I make it all sound so easy. Like we are literally just galavanting around from one beach to another when, in fact, this has been one of the strangest summers on record.

Earlier this summer, Sammy broke his nose. Well, someone else's elbow broke it, but still. Having it "broken back" into place looked pretty painful for Sammy, but all in all it was a week of wondering if Sammy was going to have a nose with "character" or not. Sammy's nose is fine. What is kind of nutty is, that very same week Joey was diagnosed with Mononucleosis. After spending the better part of his Freshman year at college sick, he was finally diagnosed with Mono in July. This created a frenzy of worry for Michael and I since he was not really well enough to jump on a plane to come home, so what do you do? Jump on a plane and go to him? And do what? Sit around in a house in rural Ohio with 5 young men and watch over your 19-year old son making sure he rests. Did I mention said house has no A/C and we are talking Ohio in the summer? And that the only "cure" for Mono is rest, fluids and food. We did not go to Ohio. We trusted that in the 19 years raising our kid, we taught him how to eat and drink. The Mono was forcing the rest part--resting is not something you can teach or force upon a kid like Joey. The remainder of July went along fairly uneventfully (at least for our family) and Joey promised us over and over that he was resting and eating and drinking.

Superstitiously speaking, don't they say things come in three's?

(1) Broken Nose

(2) Mononucleosis

and

(3) Broken Clavicle

(for my own sanity, I am bulking the boys together here and saying our three things are done)

With his much improved Mono, by the beginning of August, Joey was back to his Oberlin Farmer's Market job and also his Oberlin radio show. He was scheduled to fly home on August 2nd to spend a few days in Portland before accompanying us to Oahu. On his way home, on his bike, from his radio show, a car ran a red light and entered an intersection. Joey was also heading into that intersection with the complete right of way, but there was a car... straight ahead... and he could not stop fast enough. He crashed into the side of the car, flew off his bike and his backpack with all his belongings ended up scattered around the street. The driver of the car was very apologetic and even drove him back to his house. Apparently he contemplated not going to the ER so that he could make his flight. We are very glad he went to the ER.

A few X-Rays, numerous Vicodin pills and hundreds of dollars later, Joey made it home to Portland.

Our trip to Hawaii was filled with much rest, many episodes of Star Trek Voyager and Twin Peaks streamed from Netflix, lots of ice cream, beach cabanas, warm Hawaiian sand and surf, gorgeous sunsets, dinners with friends, shave ice and maybe a couple too many Malasadas.

Above: Sunset from our room.

Above: Our timeshare freezer.

Above: The view of our little beach cove from the cabana.

Above: Joey has removed his sling, but he is still pretty droopy to that left side.

Ko Olina now has a little ice cream shop. It is pretty mediocre and I cannot remember the name of it.

Below: It made Michael very sleepy.

Below: Sunset on the beach.

Below: With all the gorgeous places to take a family picture, somehow we choose one of the ugliest spots, the lobby of Roy's at Ko Olina. I am not sure what Joey is doing with that hand at Sammy's neck. I think Sammy is wondering the same thing.

Above: we were so happy to spend some time with Tracey and John Dombroski. They were great travel partners and if it wasn't for Tracey, we would not have tried Leonard Jr's Malasadas.

We enjoyed our trip, but as always, it was way too short.