The First Two days.....

After getting settled into our condo and a good night sleep the twins and I awoke to our first day in paradise. As far as Hunter and Hayden were concerned there was only one thing on the agenda playing in the Swimming pool with their buddies Kiel and Trenton. So we got up had breakfast, put on a thick layer of sunblock and off we went to start our day!

Hunter loves the water, Hayden on the other hand is quite scared of it he is happy to just hang out on the steps where he knows he can touch the bottom. Even with floaties on he still doesn't trust that he won't sink! We spent a good part of the morning playing in the pool and lounging in the sun. Soon it was evident that the sunblock was wearing off so we headed upstairs to shower and get dressed with the promise of lunch and a stop at the shave ice place down the street.

I was really enjoying this time with the the twins it's not very often that I get time with just them. After lunch we found a little road side farmers market, This market was filled with fantastic fresh fruits and vegetables which for us Alaskans is a rare treat considering it is so hard for us to get fresh from the garden taste and quality. For dinner we made a great big green salad with a fruit salad and yogurt for desert. The boys favorite part of this market were the greetings from the farmers peacocks and chickens! Needless to say we visited this market often for yummy things to eat while were were there. I think we ate a whole pineapple daily.

After dinner the twins and I decided to take the short 100 yard walk down the the beach to watch the sunset and walk in the surf. It was the perfect ending to the perfect day :)

More Hawaii fun :)

With all of my traveling done for the time being I sure was ready to get our rental van, find our condo and take a nap. That was my idea but the twins had other things on their minds being that they actually got some sleep on the plane and at the airport. All they were thinking was swimming pool, swimming pool, SWIMMING POOL! :) I was excited because we had found a very nice condo in a small complex for a really good price, for $105 a night we had a 2 bedroom two bath 1200 square foot condo with all the comforts of home for our two weeks in Hawaii!

Being that there were only two buildings in the complex we found that it was a very quite, nice and relaxing place to vacation. It has a nice pool and BBQ area that we often found empty and it actually felt as if we had our own private little piece of paradise.

I am so happy that we choose to get a condo for this trip as it was cheaper then some of the hotels we found, but we also had a full kitchen which meant we could do allot of our cooking at home. Which was absolutely fantastic to be able to do with our family. My absolute favorite part of the morning was spent having coffee and breakfast on the lani, basking in the smells, sounds and warmth of Kihei.

Our Hawaii Vacation!

My Family and I just got back from a fantastic Hawaii vacation! Two and a half weeks of fun in the sun and adventures we will never forget. To cover everything in one post would be hard so I am sure there will be several posts about all the things we did. This is the first time we have traveled with all our whole family, with 4 kids it's quite spendy to travel out of Juneau as a matter of fact this is the first time Hunter and Hayden had even been on a plane and they are almost 6 and their excitement was very contagious.

So step one to any vacation packing! Now being this is the first time we have done this needless to say I was quite overwhelmed with preparing all of us for this trip. But when all was said and done I got us down to 4 suitecases and a backpack for each of us to carry on the plane.

We are very lucky to have a great friend who works for Alaska Airlines that we took this vacation with and we flew on her passes for this fabulous trip. (Thank you Monica you are the best) One of the drawbacks flying this way is you have to fly standby, which means you stand the chance of getting to the airport all ready to go with the possibility that you will get bumped from the flight. And considering we were traveling with 4 adults and 8 children between our two families that possiblity was very high, but considering we were flying for free we didn't complain. We were looking at this as an adventure because who knew what city we would end up in on our way to our final destination, we were determined to just enjoy every minute of this time with eachother. I must say Monica is very good at planning though cause we went to and from Hawaii without getting bumped from a single flight we planned on catching and Justin and I even got to sit in first class a couple of times which definatley was a bonus :) Another perk of traveling this way is your travel dates are "flexible" based on flight loads, so on the first leg of our trip there was an open window of flights so Monica and 3 of her kids and Hunter, Hayden and I left 2 days earlier then the rest of the gang as the older boys had to stay in town to finish SBA testing at school! Bummer for them haha :) So off we went to the airport to start our long journey to Maui.

Hayden was very excited but cautious as always about what it was going to be like flying in an airplane. He had lots of questions for the flight crew and was a little scared after looking over the emergency evacutation card!

Hunter on the other hand was a ball of fire ready to get moving so excited about his first ride in and airplane!

We started out leaving at 8:05 from Juneau and had to overnight in Seattle we only had 5 hours though so we decided to stay at that airport. So after numerous bathroom breaks and I'm not tired stories we finally got them all to sleep in the terminal at Sea-Tac needless to say Monica and I didn't get much sleep on the airport floor the boys slept really well !

After 4 hours of little to no sleep for mom we woke the boys to catch our early flight to Portland, that was a short flight and took no time at all. Then on to Maui what a long flight that was 5 1/2 hours but the boys did fantastic and were all very good on all the flights. We landed at noon in Maui and it was all worth it to feel the warm tropical air and the smell of the flowers filled the air! The boys were needless to say extatic about our arrival.

stay tuned for more to come!