Skip to main content

Girls Only

Last month, Emily and I had a "Girls Only" weekend in Waikiki. This was basically a "birds and the bees" discussion time. Emily already knew where babies come from but this weekend we focused on details, emotions, and repercussions of baby making.

I had ordered Passport2Purity as our curriculum for the weekend and I can not recommend it highly enough! It was fabulous! There were five lessons to listen to on DVD as well as a workbook for Emily to fill out as we listened. There was discussion time after each subject and little projects we had to do together to enforce the messages being taught. Although I knew a lot of things I wanted to discuss with her on this subject, the DVD lessons had useful information I wouldn't have thought to include. I was very thankful to have had this program as a guide to make certain all aspects were covered. I do wish I had done this with Emily when she was a little younger. At 13, she already knew a lot of the basic information which was presented. This program can be used for boys or girls; most of the information is applicable to everyone, but there are some areas which are specifically for boys and some areas which are specifically for girls. You just listen to the section indicated.

For our weekend, we stayed at the Hale Koa hotel. I had made our reservations on-line because they were offering a 20% discount for kama'aina (people who live on the island). When I checked in, I handed the clerk my driver's license to prove my residency. He handed it back to me and told me he didn't need to see it, just my military ID. I responded that I thought he needed to see it as proof of residency for the kama'aina 20% discount. He told me, "Oh, I thought you were getting the hotel's thirty-fifth anniversary 35% discount."

"Oh, yeah," I smiled, "that's the one we were getting - the 35% off discount." He then proceeded to upgrade our room from garden view to ocean view for no extra charge!

I then purchased tickets to their magic show which also turned out to have a special discount. Our weekend was starting out fabulously!

I took pictures of Emily on the balcony of our ocean view room.

We could also see the mountains from our balcony. I had my coffee out on the balcony one morning while Emily was still sleeping and it was glorious.

We tried to take a picture of ourselves together on the balcony.

Then we tried again.


After our first P2P session, we strolled down the streets and enjoyed the sights. There are always vendors, performers, and entertaining people in the area.

We looked in the windows of the really ritzy stores that we don't dare step into for fear of a sneer. The salespeople are intimidating. I taught Emily how to pronounce "Hermes".

On a side note, I just learned how to pronounce "haute couture" this week.

We ate at "The Yard House" and I told Emily she could order anything she wanted as long as it was dairy free. I ate the tomato and the slab of mushroom on her plate as she refused to.

After dinner we browsed a bookstore, because any place filled with books thrills Emily.

On the second day, we had the fabulous breakfast buffet in the hotel, swam in the pool, and strolled down the beach in between P2P sessions.

For dinner we went to the Magic In Paradise show which was wonderful! They had a great buffet and we got to see a comedy magic show. We shared a table with a couple who were visiting Hawaii for their 50th anniversary and we had a fabulous time talking with them.

The last event on our agenda was to go on the Atlantis Submarine. Kerry and I went on our anniversary, but none of the kids have been and I knew this would be a lot of fun for Emily.

Having been on this before, I made sure we were positioned near the door leading to the submarine, hoping to be seated near the front of the vessel where we would be able to see out the front window as well. Unfortunately, a large Russian man near me had the same idea. He elbowed his way to the front of the line and pretended not to speak English when the staff were instructing him to move out of the way and sit down.

When we were finally boarding, it turned out we were at the very back of the submarine and Mr. Big Russian Elbow Thrower was in the very last seat where he suddenly became fluent in English for the rest of the trip.

This is what Emily looks like deep under the ocean in a submarine.

We saw an amazing amount of fish and turtles!

We really enjoyed this time together! This was a great weekend and I would recommend that everyone take a chance to spend time with each of your children individually. I hadn't realize how different it can be with just one child rather than all three. We were able to get in a lot of private talks and really have some fabulous girl time.

Go do it!

Comments

  1. grateful that you were able to have this special moment with your daughter. May there be many more like them before she grows all up!!!
    Trina

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Amy,
    I did P2P with Michaela a few years ago. We didn't have Hawaii and all it's grandeur at our disposal so we did an outlet mall for our excursion..LOL Your trip looked better, but we were able to both pass on some highly valuable information with our daughters.

    Michaela has lost her purity ring two different times but she always managed to find it. I think she had some providential help from above. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o

A Week After Surgery

Katie went back to the surgeon yesterday to have her foot checked.  It was the first time we saw the stitches.  When we saw her after surgery, her foot was already wrapped up in three inches of gauze and it's been wrapped like that ever since. The doctor decided that the sutures were not quite ready to be removed. There are stitches in the side of her foot where they inserted one of the screws.  The surgeon told us that she has to be very, very, very careful not to put her foot on the ground.  Any pressure at all could cause the screws to shift or break and that would be very, very, very bad. They knew we were going out of town for the wedding this weekend.  In order to protect her foot as much as possible, she was put in a hard cast.  It will come back off on Monday so they can check the sutures again.  This cast has a very limited time to be signed! Katie may not get to have a lot of people sign her cast  but she currently still has the initials of the sur