Hawaii report

Hawaii!  Yes!  Particularly Maui!  I highly recommend it!
I would specifically recommend:
1) Going when the humpback whales are calving (Dec-Feb) and
  1a) Taking a boat cruise out to watch
  1b) The dinner sunset cruise is nice, but you might still be hungry after.
2)  Renting a house instead of a hotel room
3)  Getting a rental car - everything is a 20-50 minute drive away
4)  Renting Snorkel gear and a boogie board from a dive shop ($) and not from the hotel related shop ($$$)
  4a)  Each member of your party should have their own snorkel and fins
   4b)  The boogie board is fun but optional
5)  Bringing or buying a big beach towel
  5a) Then you don't have to steal a bath towel from the hotel
  5b)  You don't need one for each member of the party, just for the whiny members 
  5c)  They double as blankets, seat covers, shade umbrellas, and anything else you need
6)  Plan lots of time - everything takes longer than you think
7)  Either take an iPad with you to plan what you're going to do each day, or do more planning ahead than we did.  
8)  Shave Ice.  Not to be confused with shaved ice.
9)  Texting updates to your home email if you forget a travel diary, so you can remember what you did each day.
10) Aloe Vera gel

I would NOT recommend

1) Leaving all your underwear at home by accident (Specifically, packing everyone else's but your own.)
2) Taking all the wrong clothes (No one in Hawaii is wearing capris.  They're all wearing Daisy Duke shorts if they're women, and board shorts if they're men.  And Kmart in Maui doesn't sell shorts in January in the women's department.  They're all selling LONG PANTS.  To people wearing SHORTS.)
3)  Trying to change hotels from the one you were in to a rental house once you're there.  The hotel will charge you whether you stay or not.
4)  Buying breakfast coupons as part of the hotel deal.  (Turns out you can't double up, you can only use 2 coupons per room per day.   So all that money you're saving by buying the breakfast coupons will be wasted when you get tired of the same food every morning and want to go somewhere else for breakfast.   We came home with forty dollars worth of unused breakfast coupons, which outweighed the amount we saved by buying the coupons instead of just paying for breakfast when we wanted it.)
5)  Forgetting to sunscreen yourself after you've sunscreened the kids.
6)  Don't expect your experience on an excursion to be as magical and amazing as the person who wrote up the review on TripAdvisor.com.  You'll probably have a good time, but don't go expecting magic.


I do advise taking lots of pictures, from the time you get there until you go.  So  you can post them on your blog!.

Here we go!
This was taken while we were waiting for Hubby to return with the rental car (a red mustang convertible, the car of choice for Hawaii tourists).  It was 10:30 at night Hawaii time, which makes it 1:30 am for the girls.  They're a little punchy, but surprisingly good natured.

 

The first day we drove to Mile Marker 16 on the road to Hana, a twisty gorgeous drive along the North East coast of Maui.  Hana is dead-ended at Mile Marker 35.  We never made it that far.   There are too many beautiful things to stop and see or hike to on the way.

The convertible was a big hit with the girls.

The next day (Friday) we rented snorkel equipment and while trying it out right by our hotel we saw a sea turtle! It was a beautiful lovely day. 

On New Year's Day (Saturday) we took the sunset whale watching cruise and saw a whole lot of spoutings, partial breachings, flukes, tails, and humps. Of course I got absolutely no good pictures of whales. These are some of the pictures I did get.

The whales were pretty close, one was a baby!  Of course you'll have to take my word for it as they disappeared the minute I brought up my camera.

On Sunday we drove to the top of the volcano, Haleakala (say Hal-E-ah-call-ah).  The tricky thing was it was 80 degrees at the bottom, and about 40 degrees on top, with a gale force wind blowing on you taking it down to closer to 30 degrees.  The girls huddled in the visitor center with Hubby, I was on my own for pictures.

They worked on their Junior Ranger badge qualifications while sporting their souvenir towel skirts.  It was bitter cold up there!

 Can you see how hard the wind is blowing?  Probably not. VERY HARD!!!

On Monday we set out to find a less popular rock formation known as the Dragon's Teeth.  It's not marked, we had to ask when we got lost a the Ritz Carlton, and  hike across a golf course to find it, but it was an interesting place.  Very windy too.

Later that night we went to a Luau. We were on the front row, and had a great time! This was a special luau which also served hot dogs and chicken nuggets, so Everyone was happy!  Unfortunately my camera battery had died that afternoon and so I didn't get many pictures.


 On Tuesday we had arranged for a raft boat snorkel/tour excursion. We had to get the girls up at 5:00 am in order to be at the dock by 6:30. Yikes! We had a lot of fun, though Thing 1 got splashed which put her in a bad mood, and she wasn't as hyped about the snorkeling as Thing 2. Thing 2 exhibited her fishy side and really took to the snorkeling.

We saw more turtles and whales. Thing 1 and I sat in the middle of the boat, so I didn't get any good pictures of her, as she was practically on my lap. Oh, well there is one of her rockin' out to the tunes that the captain blasted over the speakers.

We didn't feel like we'd gotten enough snorkeling, so after the raft trip we stopped at a nearby beach to let the kids play and do a little more water activities. I think it was one of the kid's most favorite days, which only goes to show that they probably would have just been thrilled to play on the beach the whole week.  The water was incredibly warm and the sand was like silk, and the waves didn't assault them like they're used to from the ocean.  It was blissful!

Our last day was Wednesday.  We were checking out and missed the hotel breakfast (grumble grumble) and so we went into Lahaina for lunch.  Then since Hubby really wanted to see the tropical side of the island, we decided to try and make it farther down the road to Hana.  This time we made it to Mile Marker 22 before we had to turn around and head back.

We had a very nice dinner back in Paia (say pie-EE-ah) before we headed to the airport for our 11:20 pm flight. Thing 2 was asleep about 20 seconds after I fastened her seatbelt and she barely stirred until she woke up in L.A.  Thing 1 tossed and turned, and hardly slept at all. I'm still trying to recover from my sleepless night!  Hubby didn't even try to sleep.  I don't know how he does it. We got back home about 11:00 a.m.
It was an absolutely lovely trip, and we didn't want it to end.  We learned a lot about how to do it even better next time! Because we all expect there definitely needs to be a next time!

Three days at Grandma's

We got home late last night from my folk's.  The dog had a ball, the girls had a ball, and I actually got a couple things accomplished.

I wrote in my last post how we picked apples.  We also trimmed the trees a little.

Trimmed branches make dramatic (if somewhat unwieldy) swords.

The dog and his cousins romped and ran and growled and played.  We drove them out to a field and let them all play, trying to wear them out.  My father doesn't want all these hairy beasts in his house, so the dogs all go to my sister's.  This time she had her own two boxers, our collie, my brother's short hair/border collie mix, and her stepson's lab/pointer puppy. She doesn't usually have all these dogs and was worried they were going to keep her and her husband up all night, so she wanted to give them a good run to wear them out.

On the way back from that walk we saw three deer in someone's front yard. Just driving along in the middle of the neighborhood, and there are three deer.

The next day the girls and I went on a horseback ride with my sister.  (This was the highlight of the trip for them.)  A friend of my sister's came to help, so there were three grown-ups to herd the two little girls, who both did very well at steering their own horses and obeying the orders called to them.  

"Pull his head up!"  
"Don't let him eat the grass!"  
"Don't let her get ahead of the leader or she'll run home with you!"  
"Pull his head up!"
"Remember you're in control!"
"Don't let her stop and talk to those strange horses on the other side of the fence or we'll be here all day!"  
"Pull his head up!"

It helps that the horses they're riding are very well behaved.  They do what they're told, if they're told firm enough to notice, and are not too prone to misbehave. It's also nice they're not the "stick your nose in the tail of the horse in front of you and never remove it" kind of horses.  My sister owns the horses she and Thing 1 rode, her friend owns the horse she rode, and Thing 2 and I borrowed horses from a family friend, who used to keep my sister's horses.  

Thing 1, me, and Thing 2

The horse we borrowed for Thing 2 is "half draft" which means she's a little stockier than the others, which are mostly Tennessee Walkers.   She also had to trot to keep up with the long Walkers, which explains why Thing 2 spent so much of the ride giggling hysterically.  Apparently when you're 7 years old having your bones bounced out of their sockets while trotting is fabulous entertainment.
Seeing the little Thing 2 on the back of that big half draft reminded my sister of a cartoon she'd seen once, so she had to take a picture, which turned out better than she'd expected.

"Does this kid make butt look big?"

We also picked out pumpkins from a neighbor of my sister's who sells them much cheaper than the grocery stores.
We were driving back to my parents' house for dinner when I saw some kids out on a corner wearing bee keeper suits, waving at cars and selling their honey. The house looked familiar and so I stopped and bought some Raw, Local Honey, and sure enough the kids in the bee suits belonged to a good friend of my sister's (whose big brother I used to date) who has become something of a farmer.  She came out and talked to us, then took us to her garage and showed my girls her hives and gave us a brief lesson on how they get honey from the hives. 

We had really gone to the garage to see giant pumpkins they raised.  The bee hives were actually a bonus.

We had a great time, and got back very late last night. I still haven't unloaded all the pumpkins from the car.

Pat and Luke Road Trip

Two of the most fabulous people on earth spent the weekend with us. They're on a visit from their native land of Britain, not just any Britain, but Great Britain. Pat is keeping a blog with photos and videos. We had a really marvelous time with them, they are gracious and funny and great company, the only problem was that they didn't stay longer.

We took them to the Gilgal Sculpture garden. I've lived here most of my life and never seen this before. Of course there was lots of conversation about how absurd everything was, especially the crazy brick pants those pioneers wore.


We took them to the Olympic Park.
I took this picture of Thing 2 just before the gate opened and she and I went down the zip line. She was excited but a little scared. The first time. 2nd time it was all fun.


You had to be over 100 pounds to ride the big zip line, and the girls are too small. So bless Pat's heart he stayed down and played with them while Luke, Hubby, and I took the big zip line. Luke lagged at the beginning, but he beat me at the end.


Luke rode everything but the bobsled, and Pat rode the bobsled. We got to watch the bobsled before we went down it.



I wanted to video the bobsled ride too, but no, there's way too much shaking going on for that. I barely survived the ride, gripping the sides for dear life and hoping my whole body didn't just spontaneously disintegrate. But we were fast, boy howdy. We had the best time of the day (so far).


Luke enjoyed Kelso, I think he misses Charley. Kelso slept by Luke's bed while he was here.


Thing 1 and 2 just enjoyed having someone else to horse around with.


The girls were very disappointed to see them go. Luke had been suggesting to Pat that he (Luke) stay on, so he could see Disneyland, Arches, basically everything else they haven't been able to pack into this trip. The girls are still working on their abilities to discern when they're being teased or not and they took this talk seriously. When we were reviewing what would happen the next day as we were tucking them in last night Thing 2 conspiritoraly told us that Luke is actually staying on, hadn't we heard? She was very upset when we assured her they were both leaving today. We completely foiled her plans to adopt Luke as her big brother.

Just before they got on their bike and rode away, off toward that horizon...


It could be argued that now it's our turn to go back to England to visit them. Either way, we look forward to their next visit.