Hawaii

Forgive me in advance, I'm tired. I was home from Hawaii 18 hours and went to work for three nights in a row. I just woke up from a nap. Kindly look the other way at my misspellings, your vs you're, etc.

Wait, where was I? Oh....yes.....

Hawaii



The trip to Hawaii was a bit stressful. The flight to Phoenix was jammed full so Avery and I were packed in like sardines for 4 hours. She did fairly well though. From Phoenix to Honolulu we were able to move to a seat with an empty next to us for a little extra room. Bless that flight attendant, there were only 2 open seats on the plane. Avery slept 15 min on each flight but was still in a very good mood, all things considered. When we finally got to our hotel and settled in and in bed it was 1am Hawaii time, 7am locally. This means that Avery had been up 24 hours with only a 30 min nap.

Hawaii was good. It was AMAZING to not have to worry about work for 6 days. It was warm and sunny everyday minus a brief time one of the days. The beach was great. My little fishy loved the water, indifferent about the sand.



Logically the only way to get the sand off of your hands is to lick them. I'm pretty sure she ended up eating a pound of sand.

My parents kept Avery for the day one of the days and my sisters, myself, and their collective significant others headed to the north shore. Waimea Bay was BEAUTIFUL. Those of you that are my Facebook friends, I posted a blackberry pic while I was there. We ate burgers at this amazing hole in the wall place while we were up there. And, we visited the Dole Plantation.



We watched a pineapple demonstration, learned how to grow our own pineapples (a two year process), ate pineapple ice cream, and did the pineapple maze.

My sister got married while we were in Hawaii.



My sister that lives in Hawaii isn't deploying after all. They don't really let you when one of these are on the way.



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hawaii was....inspiring. I had a lot of time after Avery went to bed or before she got up to sit on the balcony and reflect. It was refreshing.

I was sad to leave Hawaii, I really could have stayed longer. Minus how expensive everything is (HELLO $9 for a gallon of milk!) it really is pretty perfect.

Our first flight home was overnight. It worked out great because Avery slept the entire flight. I carried her off the plane still asleep. One of the biggest blessings of this trip, Avery has learned to sleep almost anywhere. She slept multiple times while I was carrying her in the wrap walking on the beach or on the street. Before the trip she would literally ONLY sleep in her crib or a bit in the car. But, you don't mess with this girls 13 hours a night and 3 hour naps.

The second flight home boarded on time and we were strapped in and ready to go. Mechanical issues, hooray! Flight was PACKED. Avery fell asleep. An hour and a half later we start heading to the runway. We wait in line to take off and get almost to the front of the line and turn around and head to the gate.

Whiskey.Tango.Foxtrot.

The pilots would time out before they landed in Cincinnati and we had to go to the gate and get NEW pilots. NEW PILOTS. An hour later we FINALLY leave the ground. Some people got off the flight since they lost their connections which allowed me to move to a different seat with more room. By this point Avery was awake and up the entire flight. She was done traveling. D-O-N-E. It was not a fun flight. For her, for me, for anyone in ear shot. At that point we'd been traveling for over 16 hours so no one could blame her. We sat on a freaking plane, on the ground, for 2.5 hours before we even started our cross country flight. I know others felt the same way she did.

Now we're back to the real world. I've spend today recovering from a red-eye flight with a one year old, then an all day flight, then right back to three nights in a row. Avery's spent the day in not much more than a diaper. It's almost 90 and so humid here. Maybe it's time to install those window air conditioners.