2018 Dec 27, Thursday
Yes I did laundry at 9pm and finished around 11pm and then did YouTube videos till 1am the night before we leave. The kids went to bed at 8:30 and were only a little jazzed about going to Maui. We set alarms at 5:45 but got up at 5:20. Lyft driver scheduled for 6:15. I get crap for being early which is alway better then being late. We get to airport at 6:30ish and are to gate 30 around 6:50. Plane leaves at 8:20 and we board at 7:50 so we only wait an hour. Niamh is confused why we are not boarding with everyone else, but I say we really do not want to go to San Diego or Portland who are leaving at 8am and 8:10am respectively from the same door but a different gangway gates of 28 and 29. We get on and get settled and then have to wait for people connecting another 15 minutes. We leave.
Lawson asks 4 times when we are going to arrive, Niamh asks twice. So much for the digital nanny. They have to share the iPad since Fiona is using hers to watch The MEG and her outlander show. I also watch the MEG and Adrift. MEG is awful and Adrfit is a little better but the girl is better in other movies. The Robert Redford movie All is Lost is a better sailing savior movie. I finished with RED which is pretty good blow’em up movie. I have 7 glasses of POG Mimosa which was mostly champagne with a splash of POG to go better with my first class ticket. They kids liked the cheese fruit meal, but didn’t do the snack before or after the meal. Oh well. Fiona liked her bent fork tong but got over it plentiful POG Mimosas.
It is hot. I’m sticky. Oh we have arrived 30 minutes early. Cool. 12:15 we get are bags and walk hopefully to departures for something to eat. Nope. Turn around and I wait in a long line at Starbucks. I get ice for the kids. Fiona ends up making a mess, and we have no towels to clean up the spill. Oh hum. The old people arrive early too at 1:05. We get their bags. Amah walks around looking for driver. Turns out they walked pasted their own sign. Oh well. We leave airport around 1:30 and arrive the the Grand Wailea at 2ish. Mark is 30 minutes behind. A nice lady by name of Sarah meets us at the hotel and guides us to hang out at the Cafe Kula. I have a German beer and yogurt. Mark and family arrive around 2:45. Rooms are ready by 3:15 and take a room tour. Kids want to swim, but we want to tour the grounds to get our bearings. NW marshall bags arrive around 4:15. We are down to pool at 4:30 and get our fist pool band of the trip. All the fun stuff ends at 5. Bummer. Lawson manages to lose his goggles in first 15 minutes. Oh hum. I have rum drink.
Nice sunset. We leave to walk back to rooms at 5:45. We take left instead of right. It is uphill. Need more rum. Have to get back down at 6:30 for dinner so rush to take showers. We divide and conquer. I yell at kids for a wet toilet area but they plead the fifth. Huh, water is coming out of the phone in master bathroom WC. Bubbles on bottom of wall? That was not there earlier. Is our shower leaking water into potty room? Not much water but mop it up and take my shower. Get text from old people they are bar. Get text from mark saying their toilet exploded and there is an inch of water in bathroom, oh I guess that would explain the water coming out of phone.
Have a lava flow and a mule while splitting a burger with Fiona. The power cuts out at the restaurant. We sing happy birthday to Micah. Niamh is falling asleep in chair. A fun filled first day. Hope we find those goggles.
2018 Dec 28, Friday
I get up at 7am. Text mark about running. I text again. I get ready. Text some more. I go up to his room. Knock. Text. About the leave and a sleepy Mark answers door. We start run 10 minutes to 8. 200 feet into run Mark slams into old man. Shoulder to shoulder contact. Silence for 10 seconds. I ask mark if he is ok. Old man says is it a sideWALK. We continue on our way avoiding other walkers. It is a very busy and narrow path, but we manage our park to park run of 3.2 miles. A good start.
We find Lawson wandering around in he PJ’s on the 7th floor. We explain the cousins are on the 9th floor. Mark takes him to his wet room. The staff brought a dryer fan to dry out the bathroom. The Fiona is gone, but 8 take quick shower and the NW marshall need to need to feed their horde. I explain our two little birds like to peck at Cheerios in the morning but the nine of us make our way to the buffet.
The birds actually do a descends job even if Niamh gets toast with butter as a second dish. Lawson at least has some waffles. I get an omelette with fruit and a glass of POG. A sweaty Fiona finds us after the kick butt spin class.
We go from buffet to pool to get our wrist band and towels. We find our casabellas A02 and A07 which are great. A02 is the best which is by itself and next to kiddie pool. Emmett is not taller then the dolphin so he gets the kiddie wrist band which only means he can go on two slides but can do everything else. A07 can see the rope swing which is nice since the kids start out on it. Turns out we probably only need one casabella except for lunch time, but after lunch I used the other since it was shady. Lost and found has googles, but peter manages to lose Lawson’s back up pair. Oh hum.
I went on the rope swing, down tubes, down slides, meandered thru the lazy river. A very eventful day with mai tais and beer. We took family pictures starting at 4 and wandered around till 5. Had cocktails till 5:45 and then walked to the pint and cork. I had a burger and a Belgian. Lady said it was a triple pale ale, but t was a Belgian. I tried it and it tasted like a Belgian, but the burger with a fried egg on it was great. We went to a woodshop and saw Maui’s hook made out of monkey wood in different sizes and prices. I liked the totems but they had turtles and dolphins too. We walked home and Niamh complained about her throat which I explained was due to her nose running and her feet smelling. She didn’t like the joke. I went to bed at 10:30 when I could hold them open.
2018 Dec 29, Saturday
Woke up early to finish the post on Friday just like today. Did you know there is an undo button on the iPad. Freggin undo button. Hopefully will not fall into that mistyped button today. Ran all the way to a beach on a road with little Marky. We didn’t hit any people which was good, but the road allowed us to run side by side. The beach we ran to was nice the Po‘olenalena Beach Park, Kihei, HI 96753. It was another just over 3 mile run, but some how my phone stopped after .22 miles so had to start it again as we where running. Stupid phone. We talked about kayaking this morning (Sunday) instead but am not too sure about that?
I just sat on my butt for the entire day. The kids had cereal in the room and we also munch on left over fruit from the casabella. We got down to the pool at 9:15 but there really is no point going down until 10 since all the cool stuff does not start till 10. Frank signed up for the membership deal to save some money so it sounds like we are doing this again next year based on now a membership. It also works with a place in the desert so that is cool. We will have to check it out to se if it works with other resort places too.
I didn’t even get in the water that is how slothful I was for the day. Back to rooms at 3 but I grumped about it since I had to come back down to check us in at 4 to the luau. I got 12 wrist bands and table number 7. The table lady asked if two tables would be ok, I said if th kids want to sit with another family that might be ok or we could do with two tables of 6? She didn’t go for it so we all sat at one table. I came back showered and we all went down. We were 3 minutes early but had blue bands so got to go into before people with yellow bands fancy. Open bar and open food. The party started at 6 and went for 2 hours. A guy came out on stilts, but the best part was the guys sat down on fire and snuffed it out with the banana skirts. Then there was a fire tosser who tossed fire, ate fire, and balance fire on his feet. Do not try this at home. A very good show.
2018 Dec 30, Sunday
Not sure if Mark really wants to Kayak today or if we can keep up our boring runs? Hum.
