So Jason and I got the opportunity to go to Hawaii a couple of weeks ago. It was a work trip for him an annual trip that his company goes on usually to somewhere warm. I always enjoy tagging along on these trips for a couple of reasons. 1- It really isn't much of a work trip for me, he has one meeting for a couple of days in the morning for a few hours then we have the rest of the day 2- it makes for a fairly inexpensive trip when we only have to pay for my airfare. 3- I don't think he should get to go to such a fun place, while I stay home with the kids! We decided to go a couple of days early and make it a real vacation for us. We haven't technically taken a trip like this before. We have gone on trips like this in the past but we only go for the work part then come home. This time we stayed for 10 days, 5 of them were work and the rest was play for us. (but seriously I use work in the loosest terms here) My mom watched the kids for us and I was so happy that she is willing to do this for us I know we are so very blessed to have her willing to help us out. I also knew we were going to have to do something huge for her when we came home cause she was going to be exhausted! These kids of mine are a lot of work.
We left on Friday morning flew to Seattle and had a 4 1/2 hour layover then onto Maui. I hadn't been to the Seattle airport before it was nice and we had some lunch then we sat and watched the airplanes take off for a while from some awesome seats. We found an awesome little cheese store with this amazing cheese so we bought some and had them cut it up for us with an apple and some crackers to make us some dinner for when we were on the airplane.
Our seats were not together on any part of the flights because our tickets had been purchased separately. We used sky miles for mu tickets and Jason's was paid for by his work. I wasn't super worried about this on the first part of the flight a 2 hour flight isn't a big deal. But for the second part of the flight I wanted to be by him. So we checked into our gate before boarding the airplane and asked if we could sit together. The gate agent took our tickets and said they would do what they could but they needed 6-8 people to get off this flight because of headwinds and they would be put on another flight the next day. This got Jason very nervous, he kept saying we weren't going to get on this flight and the airline didn't have to let us. We were kind of stuck, they were boarding the airplane but we couldn't get on because they had our tickets. finally they gave us our tickets back and got us seats together, and asked if we would be willing to take a bump to a flight the next morning. We said no thank you and got in line. There were only like 5 people behind us in line and I kept hearing the agents asking people to take a bump. No one was willing, finally it was our turn the gate agent stopped and was talking to the other agent and then she let us on the plane and said she was closing the doors and running. They closed the doors behind us, we were the last passengers they let on the plane. I was so grateful to of made it, it would of made for a not fun way to start our trip. We settled into our flight and made it to Maui, we had a quick bathroom break once we got off the airplane and then headed down to the baggage carousel to get our luggage and find our shuttle. The shuttle drive was a little annoyed with us saying he was about to leave us and wondered where we were. But we got in our shuttle and settled in for the hour drive we had ahead of us to the hotel. It was 9:30 in Hawaii which is a 4 hour difference from SLC, so it was a long day of traveling.
We finally made it to the hotel and it was a very welcome sight, they got us checked in and we were on our way to our room in no time. We had a two room suite which was very nice there was the sitting room which had a semi kitchen with a table and chairs and then a living room, then there was the bedroom and bathroom. We were both to tired to check out too much we both just wanted to climb into bed.
We woke up Saturday morning and got ready to go exploring. We decided to rent a car and check out the island, it was a cloudy overcast day with rain in the forecast so we thought this would be the best plan. We asked the guy we rented the car from what he would suggest we do and then went from there. We first took the back road from Kapalua where we were staying and drove back to Kahalua where the airport was. it was an amazing beautiful drive with the ocean on the left side of the road and mountains on the left side. We stopped at a couple beaches along the way and even stopped to get Julia's famous banana bread from a little stand along the way. It was delicious bread. At one point the road seriously turned into a one lane road and I was so glad we didn't run into any traffic going the opposite direction.
Then we drove to check out Ioa valley which was basically the heart of the rain forest part of Maui, it was beautiful and rainy. But we didn't mind it was such a light misty rain and it was so beautiful. The plan after that was to head back towards our hotel and stop in Lahiana and check out the banyan tree and explore then maybe get some dinner and then head back to the hotel. But on our way to Lahiana Jason started not feeling well, he was super tired and thought he was going to be sick (I think the jet lag was kicking in) so we headed back to the hotel to just rest for a bit. We hung out in our room and rested for a while till he felt better. The sun finally decided to come out so we headed to the pool for a little bit, but unfortunately for us the sun also went behind the hotel fairly quickly and we were left in the shade which wasn't as warm as we had hoped. We decided to go get dinner instead. We headed back to Lahinana to find something to eat we figured we would have lots of opportunity to eat at the hotel during the rest of the time we were in Maui. We took a chance on the first place we came upon. Hona I think it was called, they had a bunch of fish and then pizza on the menu. I was super boring and ordered a pepperoni pizza and Jason and I shared it. It was actually a very good pizza.
The Sunday morning we decided to keep the car another day and make the drive to Hanna. We weren't super early in getting away but we had no schedule we needed to keep so it was nice. We stopped at a couple of beaches along the way. The weather was not awesome it was pretty windy and overcast. As we started on our way towards Hana it started to rain and it pretty much rained the whole way there. We stopped at almost all the pull outs along the way to check out the painted trees, the waterfalls and overlooks. It was such a beautiful drive and I was loving having this time with Jason. When we had almost made it to Hanna there were some food vendors set up on the side of the road. We stopped to stretch our legs and to get a bite to eat. Jason got a fish taco which was delicious I got a pork taco which was amazing. We made it to Hana and then went to see the black sand beach which was awesome and did a little exploring in that area. It started raining again but it wasn't too bad it was such a light misty rain we didn't mind getting wet. There wasn't really much else to see so we headed back to our hotel. It was raining pretty good on the way back so we didn't make any stops on the way. We stopped to have dinner in Piai we parked and checked out a couple stores then went to eat at a Mexican restaurant. Our food was delicious and we were stuffed when we left. I would of liked to of checked out a few more stores but everything had closed at 6pm which I thought was kind of early. We got back to our hotel about an 1 1/2 later and we just vegged out in our room. We had such an awesome day just exploring.
While we were in bed watching TV we heard some fireworks going off. We were able to watch them from our balcony it was so cool to see them over the ocean.
Monday morning we turned the car back in and we spent the day at the hotel. It was the first nice day we had so we seriously spent the day on the beach playing in the water and enjoying the sunshine. The only downside to this day was that I lost my sunglasses in the ocean. Jason and I were playing in the water and I got hit by a wave that was bigger than I had anticipated and it swept them right off my face. Oh and Jason did get burned pretty good, he had thought that he would be fine with sunscreen with an SPF of 8. I was so sad they were my coach sunglasses and i loved them. Tuesday we did the same thing just hang out on the beach and play in the water.
Wednesday night was the first night of the event and we went to the registration booth at the pool and got checked in and then we had the welcome dinner on the lawn between the pool and the ocean.
Thursday and Friday were pretty much the same Jason left for meetings in the morning and he was done around lunch time. I went to breakfast and then just hung out by the pool then headed back to the room to meet Jason for the rest of our day.
Thursday Jason spent most of the day working some major things were happening at work so he was not himself that night. We had dinners most night with the rest of the group and it was fun to mingle and talk with these people I only see once or twice a year.
Saturday we woke up and went to breakfast then we went on a whale watching tour. It was awesome some people were a little worried about it raining and it was windy so it was going to be a little rough. But it ended up being perfect the sun was shining and it was warm. It was a little rough at times but not too bad. I was down on the bottom of the boat and as we were hitting some waves we got pretty soaked so I went to the top so I would not get so wet. I did dry off good so that was nice. We saw a bunch of whales and even a baby whale with its mom. It was pretty cool. We had the rest of the afternoon off till dinner time when we were going to a luau.
I was pretty excited about the luau, but also nervous cause it was overcast and did not look promising. But the luau went on as planned so we all loaded onto the two buses and went to the luau. Well it turns out the weather was not going to cooperate, it was windy and cold and started to rain on us. Most of the group opted to go back to the resort. By the time we got back to the resort and there was back up plan for dinner for everyone we all had to go our separate ways. We decided to just order food and take it back to our room and hang out. By this time I was missing the kids and was ready to be back home. As much fun as this trip was, I was ready to be home with my kids especially Caitlin.
On our last day on the island we spent time on the beach, at least we tried too there wasn't much beach that day. The waves were crazy big and came up and had taken over most of the beach. There weren't very many people in the water willing to brave the water.
Sunday we got up and Jason had a quick wrap up meeting and then we just had our flight to catch that night at 10:30pm. Well Jason got a message that the flight was going to be delayed so we were going to miss our connecting flight in LA so we needed to figure out what we wanted to do. Jason had to be home for class Monday afternoon. He talked to a Delta agent and she got us booked on a different flight leaving at 8:30 and going through Seattle and we were getting home to SLC at around 10:30am. So we had to get packed up quicker and leave much earlier for the airport. We got to the airport at 6:00pm and got checked in and had some dinner and then just waited for our flight. We weren't sitting together and it didn't look like we were going to be able to so that was a bummer but oh well. We started to board the plane and they scanned Jason's ticket and said he didn't have a valid ticket and pulled him out of the line. The gate agent was doing everything she could but the Delta agent who changed our tickets messed up on Jason's and didn't finish the transaction so he did not have a valid ticket. I did but mine was separate from his. I asked if I could give his seat away but they couldn't do that cause his ticket wasn't valid. Jason was on the phone with a delta agent the Alaskan airlines agent was doing whatever she could but it wasn't fast enough and they had held the plane as long as they could. They gave away our seats and closed the doors. About 5 minutes later Jason got his ticket re booked and he was on our original flight that was delayed and was not going to leave until 12:45am that night. So then I had to go through the process of changing my ticket to get on the same flight. I got us sitting together on the first part of the flight but there were not seats left on the plane for the flight out of LA so I left Jason on that one and I got the next flight out about 1 1/2 later. Jason landed and had to take a Taxi to school so he could make it to class. Mom came and picked me up and I got all of our luggage cause it had been on the first flight we didn't get on and we headed home. We had just pulled into the garage when Jason called and school had been let out early so I went to pick him up from school.
I had an amazing trip, but that flight situation on the way home was so awful it has made me not want to go back to Hawaii any time soon. I am also so very grateful to my mom who spent the last week with my kids. I know how lucky we are to have her around and she is so willing and loves to spend time with our children.
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