family of four: Honey mochi is freshing

The last few days have had a little too much fun and excitement. Which is tiring. We left Kona yesterday for a weekend trip to Hilo, on the other side of the island. We drove for an hour and a half, past the snowy peak of Mauna Kea, to the rainy side of the island where it rains hard just about every day. 15 inches per month. And yesterday and today. We are staying in an airbnb house that is very spacious and the kids are happy to each have their own rooms and there's a backyard with a bunny hutch and coconut trees.

This morning we went to the farmers' market and saw a lot of interesting fruit. I regret not taking pictures. We asked the names of a lot of them, which I had never seen before. We tried some sweets that were really yummy. Don't know what they were or what was in them except one had rice and one was wrapped in a banana leaf. One was called honey mochi.

Then we went to Pahoa, a nearby town, to a coffee shop called the Tin Shack, where it could have been mistaken for Berkeley. Things on the menu said if they were gluten-free or dairy-free and plant-based and they served kombucha. Some patrons were barefoot and others wore tie dye and looked hippy-ish. Then we drove to the beach and stopped along the way, in a little forest. Aviva collected little baby coconuts and made a fairy house in a tree trunk and Noah played on the lava and looked at the water. It was a really really beautiful place. Then we drove to Isaac Hale Beach Park where all the rocks and "sand" is black, the beach waves are super-rough and crashy-y onto rocks and not sand, and inland 100 feet or so there are pools of warm water. The sand is really course and rough. The warm water was even hot in places. It's heated by magma under the surface. The beachside had tons of black rocks and they've been made into little statues and mazes. Noah loved working on a little palace thing, making the walls and passageways and also a rock toilet. See how practical he is?

Black sand and rocks on a beach

Where we're generally staying, in Kona, we can walk along the beach to a little collection of bars and restaurants and there is also a shaved ice place. The kids LOVE shaved ice. Aviva says it's "so freshing!" She means refreshing but that's how she says it. Something else that is freshing is our pool, which we can see over our porch balcony. Something else that is NOT freshing is the kids' conversations lately which include a lot of saying jinx. They try to say words at the same time and then they quickly say "jinx!" and then according to their game, they can't talk again until someone says their names. They're constantly doing it and then they signal to us that we should say their names (which we do eventually but also really enjoy the silence) but sometimes they call "time out!" and start talking about something unrelated.

Noah's taking a chess class once a week online and also a math class that goes with a math game he plays online. Both kids like to play chess and Noah is getting really good.

We toured a coffee plantation which also had avocado trees and pepper vines and citrus.

Waterfalls in the background