Chillaxin' at the Beach + Pineapple Willy's

We were eager to get to the beach so we ate breakfast at the hotel. It was a good buffet, but not very economical. Oh well... we learned. After breakfast we grabbed our beach buckets and bag from the hotel room and headed to the beach. I decided to "rent" a set of chairs/umbrella and was shocked at the price! Since I assumed we'd be on the beach most of the day and would appreciate the umbrella and didn't have one with us, I charged it to the room and told the girls we'd go shopping for chairs/umbrella later. I'm guessing we could by a couple of chairs to last us through the week for the same cost as what they were charging to rent. Yikes! I had planned to pack chairs to take with us, but by the time I got all our stuff in the car, there just wasn't any extra room. I guess in this case an SUV instead of a Prius would have been better.

Although yesterday Kyra was nervous about getting in the ocean, afraid of jellyfish (she had a bad sting last year when she went to the beach with her dad), this morning she seemed more at ease. I guess easing her into it while holding her hand yesterday afternoon helped, plus having fearless Colleen with us had to help as well. We alternated between playing in the ocean and playing on the beach all morning. In the first photo, Colleen is behind Kyra in the ocean. The second photo is of Kyra in the submerged lounge chair that she made by digging a pit in the sand.


Around noon we went up to the hotel pool. There was a DJ playing dance music on the deck and they were encouraging children to dance along. Kyra and Colleen weren't interested at first since the early songs were a bit baby-ish and little kids were dancing. But when they played "Cupid Shuffle", they couldn't resist. Kyra's a pro at dancing to this song! And then they continued dancing to a few more songs afterwards. In the third photo, Kyra is in the light blue bathing suit and Colleen is right behind her.

We spent most of the afternoon at the pool, with a few distractions to the beach. We have a short attention span. We went back up to the room at 4 p.m. to shower and get ready for dinner. When we were driving to the hotel yesterday, Kyra saw a billboard for Pineapple Willy's and wrote me a note asking if we could go there while we were here. Yesterday and today we saw a lot of people wearing Pineapple Willy's t-shirts so I promised them that we could go there for dinner tonight. Since it is Friday night, I thought it would be best to go early. We arrived shortly after 5 p.m. and there was already a 30 minute wait. We weren't starving and wanted to check out the gift shop, so we didn't mind. The gift shop had lots of different shirts and a few other souveniers. We first went to the kids section and the girls selected shirts. I thought Kyra had settled on a brown shirt and I wandered over to the area where adult-sized shirts were located. I finally decided on a blue shirt. As I was heading back towards where I left the girls, Kyra approached me beaming, with a shocked look on her face. She had changed her mind while I was away and picked the exact same shirt that I had! I told her that I had thought she had chosen brown, so I wasn't trying to copy her. I asked if she minded if we bought the same shirts and she said it was okay as long as we didn't wear them on the same day. Okay... The food was good, but not exceptional. I guess the attraction is in the historical value of the place and their cool t-shirts. We left with t-shirts, souveniers for Colleen's family, souvenier cups, and a beach bucket that my ribs came in.

We returned to the hotel and the girls immediatly changed into their new shirts. I looked out from the balcony and noticed the Polynesian dancing show that was held on the pool deck. We quickly went downstairs to catch the end of the show. Afterwards, they gave lei's to the children. Although Kyra was mopie during dinner, she perked up after receiving a lei.

At 8 p.m. the pool-side movie began. The movie tonight was Marley & Me. Kyra didn't want to watch it, but Colleen did. We've all seen it before and although Colleen liked the movie, Kyra and I thought it was very sad. As a compromise, Colleen sat and watched the movie while Kyra swam. I was cold in the pool last night so I read for a while and then spent some time tossing a ball back and forth with Kyra (she was in the pool, I stood on the edge). After a while, Kyra got cold and wanted to go up to the room. I convinced her to go sit in the hot-tub, with me dangling my legs in, for a while. Thankfully, Colleen came over just before the saddest part of the movie and said she didn't want to watch anymore. So Kyra happily got out, wrapped in a towel and we headed to bed. Ahhhhh vacation!!!!