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Hawaii and small children November 2, 2005

Posted by spacemom in : Kids , 1 comment so far

Our trip was great. The girls did really well on the
flights. I think we had a total of 30 minutes of Luna crying on one flight.
That’s pretty good for 13 hours of flying. Soleil never napped. While this
should have whipped her out, she was up for 19 hours straight 2 days in a row.
Very scary.

 

The hotel/resort is an amazing place. It is a gilded cage.
You are trapped there, unless you have a car. The food is expensive, the birds
have their wings clipped (on the little islands). You are really really
trapped. However, there is swimming galore! The girls loved going in the pools
everyday. We let Soleil use her floatie suit. It’s a swimsuit with floaties
sewn in. After the first day, she got brave and started to swim without holding
onto me! I am so excited. She’s been taking swim classes, but this will go a
long way to helping her become confident in water.

 

Luna was wiped out by all of this. I am not sure if it was
sensory overload or if the tubes have helped, but she is speaking clearer these
days. Instead of individual words, she is learning catch phrases. “I did it!”
is one of her favorites. And “I want that” although many times she just screams
“MORE” and “MINE” to express her desires.

 

Dr. Jay and I did get some quiet time. We disappeared to
Buddah Point to find a group of beer drinking astronomers (that’s kind of
redundant) and we spent a while there talking one night. We did go out to
dinner alone 2 nights.

 

One day, we did travel around the island. Instead of taking
the short way to volcanoes (which we were afraid that Soleil would get motion
sickness), we did the long way, to the north. We never made it to volcanoes. We
stopped at

Akaka

Falls

,
a beautiful state park with an amazing water fall. We got caught in a down pour
there. Soleil and I had fun, but the rest of them, didn’t. We made it to

Hilo


and ate at Ken’s and then headed back.

 

I think by day 6, the girls were wiped out and wanted to
head home. I don’t blame them. We had another 13 hour travel day. Luckily, we
had a direct Kona- LAX flight. But then our connection was on the other side of
the United terminal. With 20 minutes to connect.

We made that flight just as they started boarding. Then we
finally got the girls to sleep. After 1-2 hours of sleep, there was a medical
emergency. Someone was having a heart attack! Did you know you can land an
Airbus 320 in about 7 minutes? We landed in

Chicago

.
Neither girl had trouble with their ears, although I did and my left ear is
still hurting. I think I stressed the eardrum, but didn’t break it.

The guy was not in great shape when he got off, but at least
he had pure oxygen on the flight.

 

We got home to…as Sparky said…SNOW! I had snow on my roof!
Yikes!

Glad we missed that!

 

So all in all it was a great trip. But man, traveling with
small kids can be tough!