Talk of visiting
Hawaii in the fall of 2015 began as soon as we concluded our trip to Maui in
the fall of 2012. Thanksgiving of 2015 seemed the perfect timing - three years
seemed a fair amount of time to wait to return and Justin's 40th birthday would
be just days after Thanksgiving and what better place to celebrate a monumental
birthday than in paradise?
As these past three
years passed it seemed less and less likely. Taking seven people to Hawaii is
expensive and there seemed to be so many other things we should (or should not)
spend money on. When we were in Colorado this summer we joked with the kids
that if we spotted a license plate for each and every state in the US then we'd
take them to Hawaii afterall. When we failed to find Delaware, North Carolina,
Rhode Island, Vermont and Hawaii it gave us an official out. Then Justin and I
went to Utah at the end of October and as we were driving up to see family I
looked at airfare and found it was actual quite reasonable if we flew out the
day after Thanksgiving and we decided to make it happen. Here's the deal. Our
kids are growing up dang fast. Like were down to a few years here before kiddos
start leaving the nest and that is seriously so sad to me. In 10 years we're
not going to look back and wish we still had that money sitting in the bank,
but there's a really, really good chance we'll look back and wish we'd spent
more time making memories with our family. And thankfully we love to travel
with our crew.
There's a few
bonuses for booking travel with less than a month away - we found cheaper
airfare, the condos we rented were willing to give us last minute discounts,
and a huge perk is not having months and months anxiously waiting.
To avoid paying
baggage fees we borrowed a few carry-ons from Justin's parents and trekked
through the airport with 6 small roller suitcases, a large duffel bag (Justin
had to bring his fins), 2 carseats, 4 large backpacks, 1 diaper bag, 1 camera
bag, and 1 small backpack. We looked like quite the circus, but seriously my
kids are great travelers and huge helpers. I'm sure we shocked quite a few with
our efficiency through security and how quickly we could stow everything in the
overhead bins at boarding.
all smiles at 6am - someone gave us their cart while we were printing our boarding pass. Unfortunately, it had to be abandoned at
security, but it was nice to have for those few minutes.
picture above actually taken when we arrived back home, but you get the idea
The six hour flight to Honolulu was a breeze. I'm all about bringing carseats on board so I can strap my young kids in them the entire duration of the flight. Drew is a good little traveler (he acts like taking off is as fun as any ride at Disneyland) and he did great even though he didn't take a nap at all on our travel day. Somehow we ended up with three seats in the front of the plane and four in the back so we sent the three oldest kids up front and Justin and I had Katie and Drew in the back. The short flight from Honolulu to Kauai was less than an hour and flew by. I was excited to sit by Jason on our short flight.
By the time we got our rental van arranged and drove to the condo in Koloa it was already evening (approx 5pm local time) but the kids were eager to jump into the pool and get in as much swimming as they could before we dragged them in for bed.
Cute girls
excited to be in Hawaii
It started
pouring just as we were heading to the pool but that couldn't stop us. The pool
was really nice and big - no fancy waterslides or lazy rivers, but the kids
thought it was fantastic.
Couple images off
their website:
We decided to
split our 9 nights up and spent the first 4 on the south end of the island (in
Poipu) and the last 5 nights up north (in Princeville) we found both condos on
VRBO. Our first condo was really nice and clean and had 2 bedrooms. We put the
three youngest in the 2nd bedroom and Abigail and Carly slept on the pullout
sofa bed in the living room. Our lanai overlooked the swimming pool, which was
nice.
After the three
youngest were in bed Justin and I headed back toward Lihue to stock up on
groceries and other necessities at Costco and Wal-Mart.
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