Trek to Maui

My grandparents are quite the travelers.

They have a timeshare that allows them to visit resorts all over Mexico, and they travel to many other places too.

They are also very generous.

When they travel they often rent a two bedroom condo [that ends up sleeping some crazy number of people like 15], and invite anyone and everyone who wants to join them with free room and board.

Cool, right?

Since the offer is usually extended on the Mexico trips, Jeff and I haven't gone since Carter came along.

Traveling in a foreign country that is increasingly unstable with two small kids has always made us a little nervous.  Even the use of car seats is a little laughable over there, so you can understand why we've held back over the past couple of years.

I knew my Grandpa and Grandma were going on a trip to Hawaii soon, but I figured they were going on a trip with friends or something since Hawaii wasn't one of their usual destinations.  I asked my Grandma who they were going with, and she said, "No one.  We have a week in Maui, and a week in Kona both with two bedrooms, and no one to join us.  You should come."

I kinda of chuckled at the thought, thinking, "Yeah, that would be fun, but....I don't know....kids."

I went home and told Jeff about it anyway.  More in passing like, "My grandparents have no one going with them to Hawaii, and they offered for us to go."

And then Jeff got that look in his eyes.  He loves to travel.  And he loves vacations.  He'll spend hours planning trips that we'll never take just because he enjoys putting travel plans together, and living vicariously through travel websites I guess.  If you think I'm kidding, ask him about the African Safari he has planned.

We both could use a little time away, so we thought, "Let's just look up airfare.  I'm sure we couldn't even afford it.  I mean it would probably cost like a thousand a piece to get us out there."

Nope.  $500.  And Carter was still free.

And so we sat there staring down the barrel of a Hawaiian Vacation for 4 for a mere $1500 plus food.

SOLD!

We booked, and then anxiously waited for our vacation to come.

And when I say anxiously, I mean ANXIOUSLY.

8-10 hours of traveling with two kids had both of us wanting to assume the fetal position.

Remember that is was only last May that is said I had absolutely NO desire to ever go on vacation again.

This was after a disaster trip to California which involved ear infections, ornery kids, staring at nothing but the walls of our budget hotel room for days on end, and a struggle to feel good enough to use our tickets to Disneyland.

I said NEVER AGAIN.

And here I was.  On my way to Hawaii.  A place where if my boys got sick or some emergency happened, I'm still 8-10 hours away from home.

OH BOY.

The big day came and we found ourselves at Salt Lake International Airport in the early hours of morning.  My grandparents were flying out the same time as us, but not on the same flight.  Oddly enough, when booking our flights, my grandparents [being two adult travelers] were given a completely different offering of flights than us [flying with two kids] even though we were booking at the same time.  They weren't offered our flight, and they weren't offered ours.  Weird.

So we were off.  The cabin door locked, and Jeff and I looked at each other like, "Well, here we go."

And you know what?

It didn't suck.

In fact, it was near perfect.

I would have rated it an A+ other than the part where I accidentally choked Carter with his Benadryl and he puked EVERYWHERE.

But I'm used to puke [especially on airplanes], so it was [in the grand scheme of things] really no big deal.

Our first flight was about 2 hours to LA where we had an hour to switch planes [which ended up being about three hours], and then a 6 hour flight to Maui.

The first flight Carter took a little nap and Kade just watched movies and colored.  So far so good.  But it was the 6 hour flight I was worried about.

On the second flight, the boys both fared well.  Carter stayed awake for about 2 hours, and we colored, watched TV, ate M&M's one by one, and just hung out.  I was actually amazed at how easy things were going.  I could tell Carter was tired, but the plane offered too much stimuli for him to actually drift off.  At this point I decided it was time to give him a dose of Benadryl to help him fall asleep.

As I'm giving it to him I accidentally pushed the syringe a little too hard shooting the medicine to the back of his throat.  This then caused him to gag, and any time my kids gag, throw up ensues.

And it did.  All over me, all over my seat, and all over him.  Since he's had so much milk by this point, he had a ton to offer back up.  And it stunk.

I was mortified.

Jeff took him and cleaned him up in the bathroom while I stripped down [literally] and tried to clean up everything around me.  321674874 wipes later, and I had everything back to normal, but the sour milk smell was undeniable.

At this point I just tried not to make eye contact with any of my fellow passengers.  I wanted to cry.  Especially when the people behind us asked the flight attendant to be moved.

After the drama, Carter quickly fell asleep, and both my boys ended up taking about a 3.5 hour nap.  It was great.  The smell dissipated  and I knew soon enough we'd be on solid ground again.

Like I said, overall it was fine.  In fact, I couldn't have imagined it going any better.  I was prepared for the worst!  The people sitting across the aisle from me [who I assumed were honeymooners] even said, "Your kids were so well behaved!"  To which I replied, "Yeah, sorry about the throw up though."  And the girl told me, "Oh!  No big deal!  I have to travel with my three kids alone for the holidays and I'm terrified.   A little throw-up never hurt anyone."

And she was right.

And we were here.

Hallelujah, we made it!!

Since my grandparents didn't arrive for another couple of hours we headed out to find our hotel and start what would arguably become one of the BEST VACATIONS EVER.

We immediately dipped our toes in the ocean.

And took in the beautiful surroundings around us.

We already knew one week would never be enough.