Hawaii Trip

Last Saturday morning, we got back from our fantastic Hawaii trip with the Volk family. We were there a week and definitely were not ready to come back! Although, I was ready to have my own bed back and not share a room with the kids :) Well, Finley slept in the bathroom, but you get the idea, ha! More on her sleeping in the bathroom in a bit.

Here is how the trip went:

Flight there: Anyone that had been talking to me prior to our trip knew that I was pretty nervous about our 8.5 hour flight there. I mean, I have a hard time being on a flight more than 4 hours, so I knew a 10 month old and 3 year old would go a little crazy. However, they did amazing! Finley took a couple naps, ate a lot of snacks and flirted with everyone around her. Cole played on the iPad most of the time but we also walked around the airplane some. The pilot even walked around a bit and said Hi to people and Cole, who is really into Spiderman right now, spider-web'd the pilot :)
The last hour was super long but we were just so happy to finally be in Maui!
Here are a few pics from the flight. They are from my phone so horrible quality.

Finley doing her "sooooo big"

Cole getting annoyed that Finley kept touching his iPad

We are finally there: Once we got to our hotel, we had to quickly get things unpacked, try to freshen up a bit and get the kids ready for bed (because, it was 11:30pm back home and they were pretty tired). After we did all that, we were so excited to meet up with our good friends from college, Jackie and Kelsey. They moved to Hawaii a few years ago and we were just so thrilled that it worked out to see them. Ryan and Rachel, me and Nick and Jackie and Kelsey went to dinner that night and it was so fun to catch up with them. We sure do miss them!

Here are a few fun things that happened while we were there. First off, here is the view from our room, amazing right! We couldn't have asked for a better room, right on the corner, pool and ocean view. The best part was sleeping with the door open and hearing the ocean during the night, loved it! I mentioned Finley sleeping in the bathroom. Yeah, she is not the heaviest sleeper around so anytime anyone makes any movements, she is awake. So, we put her pack n play in the bathroom and it worked great! Problem solved!

Our first morning, of course the kids were WIDE awake at 5am (that whole 5 hr time change thing). Luckily my parents are early risers so we went and got coffee and walked along the beach. This was Cole and Finley's first time so it was fun to see their reaction. Cole was a little timid of the ocean at first but quickly warmed up to it.

However, Cole is not a huge fan of being "dirty" so having that sand all over him was a little stressful for him...ha! Totally his father's son!
This is Papa and Mimi trying to get Cole to play in the sand....

And Cole freaking out because he has sand stuck to his feet. Again, after the first day, he got over it and eventually loved playing at the beach.

Most of the days we spent by the amazing hotel pool, playing with the kids. They had a really cool pirate ship for the little kids, all this green space to run around in and the beach all right there.

One of the nights we went to a Luau a few hotels down. It was a gorgeous walk down there, but of course my feet aren't quite conditioned for sandals so my feet were not happy with me by the time we got there, oops!
The Luau was so fun, the kids had a blast, even Finley was going crazy with the music! She was a dancing maniac! Rachel and Cameron got to go up on stage and help do some hula dancing, they were so cute.
We took lots of pictures while we were there, but here are just a few.

How cute are they!?!

Uncle Ross and his hot date for the night :)

Another morning, we went to the aquarium. Again, the kids had so much fun running around and seeing all the different creatures. Cole and Cameron were pretty much attached at the hip and get along so well (for the most part, if they aren't fighting of the iPad, ha!)

Rachel and her two sweet girls at the aquarium. Rachel is pretty much super mom....she would carry around Sydney in the bjorn and just hoist Cameron up on the other hip like it was nothing. There was also one afternoon where for some reason Rachel and I were alone with all 4 kids and she asked if I wanted to take them down to the pool. At first I was a little hesitant because 4 kids, near water, 2 adults.....ugh, that made me a little nervous but she thought nothing of it, so if she can do it, I can do it. AND, we had a blast!

Back to the aquarium....Finley thought this was so cool. The scuba diver got right up to her and they were giving high-fives through the glass.

That same evening, we got together with some family friends that live in Maui. He is a photographer and he took some family pictures for us. We haven't gotten them back yet but we can't wait to see them! By the looks of it, he got some great shots! But here are a few that we took on our own camera.

The rest of our week was much of the same....one night, my parents even agreed to stay in with the kids so Ross, Ryan and Rachel, Nick and I could go out for a few drinks. It was a nice evening because I'm sure you can imagine that going out with kids can be a bit crazy.
We got all packed and left Friday evening on the red eye flight. I highly recommend those flights because the kids slept almost the whole time. Well, Finley was flying HIGH the beginning of the flight home, acting crazy but she finally settled down and slept the rest of the flight. Again, those flights are great for the kids, but very tiresome for the parents! Nick and I didn't sleep at all because we have kids sleeping on top of us so we didn't get much rest. However, when we landed in DFW, it was 5am so we drove home, put the kids to bed and crossed our fingers that they would sleep a few hours....and they did! We got up for the day at 11am and finished off the day with grocery shopping and LOTS of laundry. I knew our time zones would be off a bit but we gave it a shot and tried to put Finley to bed at 8:00pm. Well, at 9:00 she woke up and was ready to be up because apparently that was just a nap for her. Needless to say, it took a couple days to readjust but they are doing great. Actually, I'm really loving it because Cole is now sleeping in till 9am this whole week. No more of this 6am business! We'll see how long it lasts!
Again, we had such a fun trip and are so grateful for my parents for making it all happen. We are blessed to have such a wonderful family and make some great memories!