Tropic Lightning Museum and The Wahiawa Botanical Gardens

Yesterday, Orion wanted to go to the beach. I wasn't in the mood for endless sand granules EVERYWHERE. That's something I need to be in the mood to tolerate. I'm not quite sure when I became a spazzing control freak about little things like this..but it must have happened somewhere between being a go with the flow party girl and bringing Calix home from the hospital.

So my horoscope suggested I do museum-y stuff instead. That sounded great to me so I started looking places up and then decided that hey, the Tropic Lightning museum is on Schofield Barracks and there's a huge botanical garden in Wahiawa right outside of Schofield. Cool..two places at once practically. And they're both free!

It was pretty dark in there and I used the museum setting on my camera..which means no flash, basically and unless I held it super still, things blurred. Ugh. These are the best of the group:






















It's a shame that a lot of the pictures are so dark and blurry. That place was pretty awesome and super informative. The sort of thing I needed yesterday.


Then we headed down the street to the Wahiawa Botanical Gardens. I don't think I've ever in my life been to a botanical garden. I guess I was expecting way more flowers than were actually there..I knew to expect plants and trees..but maybe just a sprinkling more of flowers would have made the whole place perfect. They say it's wheelchair friendly..but unless you're into wheelchairs flying down super steep hills and then not being able to get back up without someone grunting and pushing from behind..I'd suggest the wheelchair bound stay on the top level. Thank goodness I have man or I would not have ventured as far down with the kids as we went (the bottom). SUPER GORGEOUS place though and even cooler was that we were literally the only people there so we got to appreciate it more.






I haven't claimed to be thin in a very long time.
















I LOVE this picture! Orion was running while pushing them uphill and the boys were just having such a great time! Awww my babies!





awkward smooshy kiss. O likes to kiss me everywhere we go and sometimes it's inappropriate..but this one was nice because it felt like we were in a rain forest and no one was around. Smooshy kiss time!







Look! Flowers!


I know it's a kind of gum tree..but I call them painted trees because they totally look like someone took a paintbrush to them.


It was good times. I swear I think Hawaii has the most gorgeously awesome trees I've ever seen anywhere. Such a variety!


Today, we're heading out to the Makakilo military resort. They have 5 lagoons (huge from what we can tell on Google Earth) for the boys to play in. I will not be getting into the water this time. It'll save some aggravation on my part. I'll bring a book and take some pictures. But because they were all so game for what I wanted to do yesterday..I'm game for what they've picked.