Hawaii, December 2016

12/26/2016

Geez it is early. 6 we get up. We have packed two days before since yesterday was Christmas. Fiona is a rag tag zombie packing for everyone. I did manage to get my things outs. Turns out she forgot underware. LOL. I forgot my present from Mark which was a breathalyzer. We throw together the dobb kits and electronics. Everyone has their own suitcase and backpack, Fiona has a giant canvas bag and her purse instead of a backpack. We have Kate’s gift in the bag that Lawson wants to unwrap. We call an Ruberry which arrives at 7:15, and we all manage to squeeze in the small compact car of a nice man who is typically a security guard. We breeze through security, and make it to gate 3 for Hawaii Airlines. Lawson is hungry. I get Starbucks stuff, Fiona has to suffer through a chocolate croissant since they ran out of bagels. Niamey happily munches of coffee cake. I and quite delighted with my mocha frappachino and chocolate croissant. Laawson pouts, and does not want to share or even try and of the items purchased to satisfy his whining. Oh, but he has to pee first, then he is hungry which he does tell me till after we get back to our airport nest. Good gawd man. I got get the equilvent of pirate booty which he doesn’t like. Bummer. We are in zone four seats 22, 23 A and B. We get on last of a 2, 4, 2 737 seater which crappy seats and horrible entertainment on the walls and ceiling of the plane. 

I am sitting with Lawson and the girls are together in front of us. Lawson’s want to know when we are going to go. As soon as the plane is full of people I reply. A pallet has become jammed in the loading process. Please wait 15 minutes. Lawson asked when we are going? As soon as the plane starts to move is when we are going to go. The pallet is still jammed, please wait for 10 more minutes the captain pleads. The 5 year old begins to turn into poltergeist with his head spinning sand and pea soup coming out of him. No not that bad, but the head spinning is about right. He is hungry. I console him with a blue blanket. Not good enough, how about another blanket. Lookout the window and see if you can see the broken pallet strewn across the tarmac? 

Hey we are moving. Lawson gets some pringles, and an iPad from the plane since the kindles are out of juice. Niamh didn’t bring a book, but only her kindle. Well so much for reading for her. I finish the 3rd book in the series of Pendergast peculiar children, which is very good. Lawson is placaided with 3 grapes and his can of pringles and 4 cups of apple juice. I’m so hungry I eat the cardboard egg sandwich and all 6 pieces fruit. Yes I will take your complimentary Mai Tai. Other than Lawson’s many bathroom breaks at awkward times (take off, landing, etc) it was a good flight, and only 30 minutes late – damn pallet.

We get out bags, get on the dollar car rental bus, and arrive to get our red compact scratched and dented Mazda 2 from 2014. Fiona discovers her underware problem with a quick peek of her bag. The poor car looks defeated even before we get in. I turned in the dent and scratch ticket with my chicken scratch everywhere but the hood. Where are we going, but to the happiest place on earth, Costco. You thought Aulani, well okay we made it there too after we picked up milk, bacon, eggs waffles, champagne and beer. No underware. Ha. Valet and self parking per night cost the same so I opted for valet for 37 dollars a night. We see the NW Marshall’s stroll by as we are pulling in, and we are greeted with bear hugs, smiles, and leis. The 6 kids are corralled outside, while Mark, Amah, and I check in. We sit for 20 minutes while a nice lady switches our names around on rooms and then we are all on the 15th floor. 1513 for the NW Marshalls, 1523 for our group of 4, and 1536 for the grandparents with their 2 queen beds. We get the suite with a separate room from the kids, Mark’s room faces the wrong way but has a full kitchen and a bigger table but is otherwise the same as our suite. Our suite faces over the inner workings of the resort and the old people are next door, but with no adjoining room door. Bummer, but it is ok. 

Micah get her birthday button at checkin. And we all make it too out rooms and unpack. It is around 4 and kids are hungry again. Yes we are going to go eat shortly. Reservations are at 6. It is a 30 minute walk so not enough time for kids to swim since they will never leave once they get in. So for just over an hour the kids scream and yell in the halls and run back and forth between rooms. People change, but Fiona and I stay in our airplane clothes and we saunter off to find Longhi’s at the Marriott down the street. Man at the front says it is 300 yards away, and to go left to go right. It is more like a half mile in which we go down the wrong street to a locked gate. Awe shucks. The 12 Marshalls lumber in at 6:15 and get a table near a coy pond. Not really a pond, but more like a lake since is was huge and the fish even bigger. The kids are fascinated and the adults have their cocktails. We made it and the holiday kick off has officially begun. Yes please another cocktail; that would be delightful. I had the tuna and Fiona a bowl of pasta. Kids are happy with chicken strips or pasta. Mark notices Amah’s left ear ring is missing its jeweled button, which he thinks is the same button that Peter wanted to pick up? Hum? We are also missing an American dollar left shoe since Niamh and Kate wanted to bring their dolls to dinner. So we hunt for missing pieces on our half mile trek back to Aulani. lol and behold we find the ear ring button. PopPop is truly stunned with the probably that Peter would be the one who wanted to pick it up, and the Fiona would be the one to spot it at the entrance of the resort. Not sure the doll shoe will have the same fortune, but we are not trying that hard. It is late 9pm, and I have a shower and we are all off to bed.

12/27/2016

WHAT! Yes, 6am in Hawaii time to get up. We must be on holiday to get up as a family at this time. I remember to pay my taxes. Now we have to make it down to breakfast for our 7am reservation at Makahiki. Amal and PopPop arrive at 7:15. Boo. LOL. We get our picture with Mickey Mouse, and find our table for 12 ten minutes later. Buffet is great, but probably since we are first at the restaurant. There is a lady walking around singing island tunes. Pluto says hello, so does Minni Mouse at our table. Camera phones fly out to capture the moment among kids and adults. Micah has her birthday button on since it is her birthday, and she does a little dance With other birthday people at the front of the restaurant. A chocolate Mickey Cake is delivered. Everyone is too full so we save the cake for later. 

Back to room for swim suits, but manage to first get our wrist band before going up to change. Back down we find a place to park all our junk that is near a water park, but is is too windy, and mist covers PopPop. Amah is missing? Fiona and Micah scope out places on the beach. Turns out Amah rented a cabana all day on the beach, so she is found and PopPop joins her. We then go between the pool and beach all day. I ride down the two person raft slide with Lawson many times. I go down the dark tunnel of death with Peter. There are no hidden gotchas on this dark tubed slide which is good for an old person like me wearing my hat and glasses. I manage to make it around the lazy river too. Hotdogs, chicken fingers, tacos, and drinks of the beach. Yahoo. I try 4 different kinds of cocktails, not sure I have found the favorite but will do my best to keep at it until I find the one I like. Vacation has arrived. Back to the room at 3:30 since dinner is at 5:30 at Roys.  We all take showers. Niamh is crispy since she didn’t put on her swim shirt or reapply face cream, but Lawson is in better shape. I wear a yellow Hawaiian shirt my parents gave me, and Fiona he yellow Hawaiian dress. We look the part now we can play tourist too 😉 Oh, wait I already did that with my white whale beach body, never mind. 

Roy’s is half the distance tonight and really is 300 yards. Sim our waiter is a beer buff so he and I get along just fine. I try a pineapple, tomato salad thing that is great. I drink some Japanese beer which is not too shabby. More raw tuna. Ok. Fiona does a fillet and cocktail. Everything is grand. We stroll back and have cake in the big suite. We surprise Micah with a ‘surprise’ party in her room. The cake is very good. I’m in bed again by 9pm. Are you sure this is a holiday cause I’m pretty tired.

12/28/2016

Up at 6am. Hey I’m on a roll. Well my alarm went off at 6, I didn’t start catching up on the blog until about 7. Kids are off to be watched and the girls are off to spa stuff at noon. Guess I’ll have to do my best with drinking and finely that mystery cocktail. Eggos and bacon?  I said hello in the NW Marshall room but I missed the bacon and the eggos. I had cheese and salami instead. It takes a bit of time to catch up on events. We dropped the kids off at Aunt Ruthie’s at 9:30 and found Somme chairs on the beach. Mark and Micah went paddle boarding, and Fiona and I took a a tour to find a micro SD and guess what we found one. Not only that but a little market that also had them. Saw some closed shops and headed back. The paddle boarding was ending, and it was nearly lunch. Mark and I smartly left for chairs covered in snorkel gear and the girls rounded up up the kids who had lunch. I had a drink instide a frozen pineapple and a pulled pork Caesar salad. Yum. Every meal is around 250 dollars for 10, so not so shabby. While the girls where at the spa mark and I signed 5 kids up for rainbow reef and 2 adults. It was cold, and Lawson’s snorkel didn’t work, and Niamh was cold. Mark stayed out with Emmett, while the kids trickled out of the reef. We got some Go Pro pictures at 1:30 of the kids holding a fish feeder. Kate was the last one out. The other kids stood in line getting a frozen ice treats. Of course half the kids didn’t get the treat so had to go stand in line for second time. Mark and I with kids in tow headed back to out chairs on beach. We greased up with sun screen and put on sun shirts and played on the beach until Fiona and Micah appeared on the beach. I wine t and got my room key and the kids keys punched to see the rainbow reef for the week, but instead of putting cards in bag I left them in my pocket and went swimming out in the lagoon they came out of my pocket. Boo. Back to the at 4 to start cleaning up. We decided on pizza and a story telling. We got down to story telling at 5:45 and Micah and Levi stayed behind. I got a pizza half cheese and pepperoni, and the made my own combination with 2 dollar per toppings. Ended up spreading 70 dollars for 2 pizzas. With story time ending after 30 minutes, Fiona and the girls went off to sniff out some movies. Mark and I brought the pizzas back and waited for the pizza in baby water park. We had beer while Emmett went nuts splashing around in his underwear. I didn’t know when the pizza was done since Lawson was playing Pokémon Go on my phone. I ask him did he see the timer button appear, he nods at me, well thenour pizza is ready. We get Emmett, Peter, and Lawson and the pizza back to the NW Marshall room. I forget that the girls are with Fiona when I ask Micah how are the girls. Micah gives me a look of crazed terror when I remember they are with the Fiona. The DVD hunters return. The kids who do not want pizza get left over noddles and chicken strips. We put ina fantastic 4 movie and I head of to our room to go to sleep. I’m in bed and hear PopPop come in and check on us at sometime. Not sure when everyone else goes to sleep, but that is the day eh.

​[wpvideo aLX4IIlV]​12/29/2016

Word of the, Doritos. Why perhaps our kids are obsessed with the fake cheese and crunch snack, but more on this word later. My alarm rang out at 6am,  up it was promptly turned off. The Hawaiian chant started at 7am and the kids where up. I caught up on yesterday’s events, and managed to get some waffles this morning, but no bacon. So I got out one of the pounds of bacon and cut it in half, and Micah left to go meet Mark at the pool. She took NW kids so bacon cooking was all up to me for the CA Marshall’s, 20 minutes later, yum. Bacon. Niamh had 3 eggos, wow. By 9 we decided that a car adventure would be for today. Some how I had misplaced yet another room key, but only mine this time. We took Kate’s never ending mug to her and got our pool bands and two towels. We took the towels and our swimsuits and our first stop Turtle Cove. Niamh is finally hitting her wall and was ticking off the Fiona with inane questions and responses all the way during the 30 minute ride. Oh well. It was low tide, but rough waves so no Turtle spotting. There were local people handing out information and we got a coloring book out of the stop in both English and Hawaiian. Bonus. We asked what to do next and the nice lady said to go to shark cove to splash around in knee deep water. Cool, off we went.

Pit stop at a water fall and lunch at Waimea Falls. We parked in a mud hole. First thing to do is eat. So order up a tuna melt and big wave IPA for me, salads for the long haired people with a bikini blonde for the old one and a sprite for the little one, and a local hotdog with no bun made of local meat with ‘blue juice’. Lawson asked what meat and we made a guess at pork since it is Hawaii, even I’d Fiona had a blond moment. Lawson pouted and complained the mile hike to the falls after lunch. Lawson had also hit his wall for the trip it appears. We saw some interesting plants along the way, a pepper plants that fruits the pepper corns, a leis garden but there was no orchids or plumerias so it was not very leis like, a living village, fishing totems, ginger plants, big old trees, and a muddy waterfall from all the recent rain. It gets 230 inches of rain a year 0n average, which is slightly more then the Bay Area 6 inches. Niamh and Lawson are both great now going back to car. Lawson manages to slip and fall in men’s bath room in inch of standing water. He manages to fall on his butt but the aftermath is a wet shirt, shorts, and underware. Oh hum.

I smartly go get car to avoid the mud puddle from the kids, a lady slips and falls in the mud in front of me, so I guess a bathroom slip is not that bad. The lady is ok and I go get kids. We all pile in and has Doritos and water for the trip home. We go through North Shore to spy surfers, but all we see are heads in the water and no surfing. Bummer. We eat half a bag of Doritos and put them away. Every 7 minutes the kids ask for Doritos, we take the back way to the hotel so it takes around 45 minutes to get back. So now The word Doritos is banned for the rest of the trip since each kid asked for the fake cheese snack about a dozen times each in a 45 minute period. The masseuse yesterday commented that Fiona needs to see a specialist about her knots, I’m not sure why. LOL. Fiona knows the number of times but exaggerates, but this time it literally was a dozen times for eat kid. 

Kids shower, I shower. Niamh and Kate FaceTime and the spot Moana from our 15th floor window, so Fiona takes them down for some pictures. I usher Lawson into clothes and we meet them by the elevators on their way up. Hula lessons for the kids at 6? Sure ok. We manage to get on a wait list, and are first in line to be walk-ins where as the NW Marshalls smartly made a reservation. The kids are dropped off at 5:30 and apparently our kids are not the only ones reaching the tipping point but all kids have reached max exhaustion. I drink 3 island cocktails and final finish having one of each of the poolside cocktails of the dozen they offer. I now have a favorite and it has spiced rum in it. Marshall’s NW made a reservation at the buffet at 6:45, so mark and I go see if we can add 4 more. No problem sirs. Great the 10 of us are together.  The old people played golf and have dinner by themselves at Roy’s. PopPop shot an 89 so he is in a good mood Mark tells me, but we do not see them for the entire day. I have 2 lava flows which are quite good, manage to swear like a pirate in front of Levi, and dinner I feel is a succcess, but might be the cocktail haze? We catch a fireside chat after dinner, and are back to room around 8ish. I’m ready for bed, Niamh wants to see a movie. So I grump, but watch a movie with the kiddos. Lawson falls asleep to the movie, and like daughter like father we both watch to entire dumb movie which is like charmed or enchanted with kids of the Disney fairytales. The is music and love so Niamh eats it up, and I think it is not that bad, but it really is by the end. I did like the singing. I put Lawson in his trundle, and am off to sleep by 10:30ish. 

12/30/2016

Guess what time it is? If you guessed 6 you would be right. It appears to take me quite some time to write these little updates, but i opted not to have bacon and eggos this morning. These is a chant that occurs every morning at 7am, not sure why but it helps tell the time. The kids usually get up when they hear this chant. Down to the first floor around 9am and found some lounge chairs. We thought mark had chairs already but turns out the stroller was some one else’s so we all sat together in 7 chairs. A pretty lazy day. Kids went in pool or hot tub. Lawson went to the beach and got his bogey board. Mark build a sand castle. I rented a paddle board for an hour and let Peter and Lawson each have 15 minute turns on it. We paddled over to the rocks to see crabs, and the life guard gave me a warning to not go beyond the buoys. Ah to see crabs is worth falling on rocks, oh wait it is not. I did my best to stay away from the rocks and in side the buoy line, but I made a great sail and it was really windy. Mark got on for 10 minutes, and Levi went out by himself for the last 20. I had pulled pork nachos and a lava flow for lunch. Then is just layed on the lounge chair and froze for around 2 hours, and drank more lava flows and other fruity tropical drinks at 17 dollars each. Then it got to windy and wet from the rain so spent the last hour in our room watching Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets, and cleaned up with showers for everyone. Pictures where at 4:3o, so we all met at the elevators at 4:05 even if it only takes 7 minutes to walk to the meeting place, outside the chapel next to public restrooms. Where? Yeah that s what I thought too. Anywho, we saw the photographer finishing up with other people so waited about 20 minutes for our turn. Down to the beach to take off footwear and hope the water didn’t rise to fast or the sun set too quickly. The clouds made for a great diffuser so the pictures should be great. Then off to the luau which was at 5:30. There was a line. We stood. PopPop went to talk to people and Mark went to go get pants, not his but some for Emmett who somehow managed to get a bit wet in the water. The other 5 would race to stay out of the gentle waves, but no one fell in or slipped on the beach. 

We managed to skip the line, but Mark was not back so we called and he skipped the line too. Apparently Amah got the VIP seats which included a never ending bar. Yahoo. What they didn’t tell you was the bar only made two fruity drinks, and had ok beer. I guess I could of had rum and cokes,  it that is just not tropical feeling enough for me. When I asked the bar tender to make me something he liked he whipped up a Blue Hawaiian. Oh well. Guess he likes Blue Hawaiians? The luau was great with a lady who was the main person with her brother who narrated and introduced the 10 different dances of the evening. Mickey and Minnie decided to do a hula dance early in the evening before it got even more windy and cold. The kids played with the LED color changing candles on the table. Luckily there where 6 candles. We took pictures with the dancers when it ended at 8pm. NW Marshall’s didn’t stick around for pictures. I went to sleep and the kids wound down with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that ended at 9. 

6:45 and it sounds like a kid is sleeping next to me? Oh it is Niamh. Eggos and left over bacon? Sure. I’ll have 3 please. I’m on my first longboard, the beer, not the floating device, and it is only 9:30. The sun is out and it is HOT. More beer to cool off. Sure. Number two please. Kids are running around and Fiona is doing laundry. Apparently the goo from auntie’s beach house got all over Niamh’s sweater. Doh! So all told 5 beers and 2 lava flows. So I took the rest of the afternoon off and had some water. For lunch I had a Caesar salad with tuna. After lunch I went through the tunnel of doom with Lawson two times and then managed to convince Kate and Niamh to go through the tunnel of doom as well. Fiona went through the tunnel of doom as well, we hope she didn’t lose her top, this can be neither confirmed nor denid. 

We left the pool around 4 o’clock to rush back to our room to shower and change for a 5 o’clock showing to go to the monkeypod for dinner. We were 10 minutes late to the kick off to dinner because we went down to the beach for some sunset pictures. So the four of us walked over to the Monkeypod and joined the rest of the group where I had two flights of beers (8 total) and pizza from other people. On one side, I had lobster and mushrooms from my mother and on the other side I had pepperoni, sausages and olives with my father; all in all a very good pizza between the two. Fiona snuck across to the market and bought some New Year’s hats and noisemakers to celebrate the 2017 New Year’s. It is now roughly 9 PM and Fiona is yelling at the kids that she doesn’t know things and I have the sliding door open listening to the karaoke bar downstairs. We hope to watch the fireworks from our deck, but chances of staying up till midnight are not good. I wish everyone reading this a Happy New Year’s and a wonderful 2017. Hooray. Hurrah. Hippity hip hoora.