Submarines! - Day 5

Luke checking out our awesome boat!

This was a crazy cool day because we got to go on a SUMBARINE RIDE!  Yup, we're that cool!  We decided to opt out of a snorkling trip because those things can last 5-6 hours, while this trip only was 2 hours long.  Yeah, with a toddlering you don't mess with nap time if you can help it.

We had been preping Luke since yesterday, talking it up and trying to help him understand what was going to happen today.  Then Marinda remembered a certain Daniel Tiger episoid and decided to draw pictures of what was going to happen with Luke and turn it into a book.  It actually worked really well and Luke was able to remember the steps when they happened.  Gold Star Mommy!

Can you guess what the different pictures are?

On the boat going to the submarine!

There it is!

Once we got inside the submarine a few things happened.  We realized how completely awesome this was going to be, Luke plastered himself to the window (unfortunatly he licked it too - like everything else in the world), and Marinda's anxiety flared up.

This was really strange because Marinda has only gotten clostrophobic about twice before in her life.  She has never had problems with elevators, caves or small planes.  It was pretty instantainious as soon as they got in, so she was able to go and talk to the captain while people were still boarding.  All the signed of a panic attack were there: the light head, the racing heart, the muscle's hurting like someone had injected poision into her system.  She had learned back when she had PPD that why panic attacks are so painful is because your body is litereally simulating the physical sensations of dying.  The Capitan said she should probably go back up and that they would refund us, but looking at Amit and Luke made her reconsider.

The crazy thing about all this is that Marinda was able to look at what was happening to her objectivly.  She could see that this attack was an illusion, that there wasn't actually any danger and it was all in her mind.  Don't get us wrong, the physical sensations her body was making were very real, but they were being caused by something in her mind and not by an actual outter physical impact.  We know that most of the world hated Will Smith's movie After Earth, but Marinda actually loved it and silly as it might sound, remembering it right then really helped her.  She also kept thinking "I survived PPD - I can take this on.  It is all from my mind, that means I can use mental tricks to conqure this."  She also really didn't want to ruin this for Amit and Luke by dragging them up.

So she decided to stay.  They sat on the edge by where the captine was because there was a little more room, and if Marinda didn't look out the window she could almost imagine that she was on a bus.  Once we saw our first fish and reef, things got a lot better for her.  The ride was so smooth she could almost feel like she was watching a movie, and whenever she started feeling bad again she would look away from the window until the sensations passed.

Enough about Marinda - what about the fact that they were over 100 feet under water!  What did we see?!  The answer: EVERYTHING!  We got some amazing views of two different reefs, a bazzillion fish, some eles, sea urchins, a sting ray and a SHIP WRECK!  It turns out the submarine company had bought the ship and sunk it themselves, but it was still rediculously cool to see!

Bubbles!

The stripped fish in the middle is a puffer fish!

This anchore is 150 years old from an old Russian ship!
Once upon a time, all ships coming to Hawaii had to use this harbor.

The Ship Wreck!

Cute little family under the sea!

Good-bye Submarine!

The rest of our day was spent napping and beaching.  We went to Baby Beach again and it was so warm and nice that we couldn't think of anything better.  After that we tried a pizza place in the strip mall across the street from out hotel and it was easily some of the best pizza we've had in a really long time.  We got a large so we would have left overs, but we ate the whole thing!  Luke even ate ALL of his two slices!  Ok, not all - he picked off the bell pepers, olives and mushrooms, but he ate the crust along with sausages, pepperoni and cheese!  That's huge for him!  It was actually kind of funny - he would start by picking off everything, then eating the toppings he liked, then eating the bread (with some crushed red pepper on it of course.)

Beach Babe's!

Amit loves all these pictures Marinda keeps taking of him :P

Look at that stretchy cheese!
Soooooo goooooooood!

Now we're just hanging out, going to bed rediculously early (Hey!  Don't judge!  We're tired!) and looking forward to another day in paridise.

Enjoy the beautiful bird song we get to hear every morning and night!