This past Christmas we gave the kids all Delta gift cards in hopes that we would be able to go on a family vacation sometime this year. This was before we knew Haden and Kaiti were expecting, So as soon as we found that out we knew we had better get our last family vacation without little ones in before our little guy comes. We always like to do beach vacations but with flights and gas being so expensive lately we weren’t even sure we could swing it. The kids kept their eyes on flights and one day Flights to Kona were pretty cheap so we all jumped on them!
We had never been to the Big Island before (well I think Doug went when he was like 11, but that doesn’t count) so this was all new to us.
We booked two, two bedroom/ 2bath condos at The Club Wyndham Kona Hawaiian Resort. We were pleasantly surprised with this place and It was so nice for each couple and Tyler to all have our own bedrooms and bathrooms and each condo had it’s own kitchen, the only way to do Hawaii! While it was more of an old school Hawaiian vibe, it had everything we needed and the grounds were beautiful and lush, they even had turtles in their little pond! We were lucky to have our condo’s on top of each other so we were all very close. The only thing that was a little bit of a bummer is that the ocean was across the street from our place, but there was no beach there, you had to walk or drive a ways to a beach, but we were totally ok with that. We were pretty close to all the action in Kona too.
Thursday Night we found us a place to eat because we were all starving, that is when we found out that things don’t stay open very late in Kona!! We were lucky to get into a place to eat and it was only like 8:30 at night! I would say If I had one complaint about the Big Island, and I don’t know if it’s worse because of the pandemic or what, but nothing was open, or they would open for random hours, or we would drive all the way to a place and they would be closed.
The next morning we woke up pretty early because it’s a 4 hour time difference. We sure got a lot done waking up at 7am every morning! We went to Walmart to stock up our kitchen so we could cook a few meals and have snacks and things to try to help with costs.
Once we got all situated we of course wanted to get to a beach! We wanted to stay kind of close to our place because I had booked a sunset ceremony for all of us for that evening and we had to meet at 4 pm that day.
The nearest beach we could find was pretty crowded it was called Magic Sands beach Park. While it was very pretty, and not a far drive away, I would say it was my least favorite beach we went to. There were SOO many people there, lots of rocks in the ocean and not very much sand.
After the beach we went back and cleaned up and headed over to Pahoehoe Beach for our Ho’oponopono Bowl of light ceremony. I really had no clue what this entailed. When I was looking for things for us to do while we were there I looked up Airbnb experiences, I had never heard of that before, did you know you could book excursions along with renting houses on Airbnb? You probably did, but I just barely learned that, (I guess You learn something new everyday!) When I was looking this one caught my eye, it had 5 star ratings and sounded very interesting so I figured we should check it out! It was pretty cool and I am really glad we did it. It was totally out of our comfort zones. The ceremony is an ancient Hawaiian practice of making things right. We did chants, one of them was a laughing chant, we had to laugh for a minute straight… oh how I wish I had taken pictures of my kids faces, that was worth the price alone! It was hilarious!! He taught us a lot about the old Hawaiian cultures, we made traveling lei’s and Ki leaf anklets which was very cool but The bowl of light ceremony was super cool! He gave us each a little wooden bowl, he described the bowl as us, and in all of us is light, but sometimes we carry so much crap around it’s really hard for us to see our true light, so he had us go out onto the beach and collect rocks that represents things that we are holding onto that we want to release. Once you loaded your bowls up you are to chuck those rocks into the ocean and be done with it once and for all! It’s such a simple concept, but I think we all felt a little lighter after doing that. After We went around the circle and said three things we are thankful for and how if we focus on the positive things in life we will be positive and happy, If we focus on the negative things, things will be crappy and not so great. Again it’s all so simple, but It was a good reminder, sometimes it’s so easy to forget! In fact the rest of the trip when someone would start to get upset, I would say, “just throw it in the ocean” lol We also Used our Chants the entire time we were there. It really was a great way to start our vacation, I highly suggest it, if your into that sort of thing.
After the ceremony we went and found us a place to eat dinner. We got lucky because we found the perfect spot ( Humpy’s) that had live music and a really good view of the sunset. I would say our first day in Kona was a success!
Janna's Journey 