See ya! We’re off to Marseille. I will update as I can, but I have lots of time in the meeting!

But our luggage isn’t…..yet

Sigh

Ah, the first day survived! Hello all! We left our home around 6am, and arrived in Honolulu at 3:35pm, Hawaiian Standard Time. By the time we got the kids in bed, Soleil had been up for 21 hours straight and Luna had a single 1.5 hour nap on the second flight.

***Note to Figlet*** The kids were great on the flights. We had one whiny episode where I had to talk to them, but the rest of the time we watched movies (Snow White, Fairytopia and Aladin) and colored, drew and talked.

Today we had serious whine. Soleil woke up at 4am and I invited her into bed. She fell back asleep once I started deep breathing. Then Luna cam in at 5 am. At 5:15, I sent them both out to the main room to watch tv. After half of a show, they turned it off to watch the sunrise. By 6, we had sent them down to the grandparents room and we showered and got dressed.

Soleil REALLY wanted to go to the pool, we FORCED the poor kiddo to go see the ocean. After 10 minutes of being at the ocean, she turned to Jay and said “daddy, I am so sorry I wanted to stay at the pool. This is much better.” Then she said “Can we still go to the pool today?”
I had left the single most important item in the suitcase that we switched out of at the last minute, sunscreen. Fortunately, I picked some up and had mom’s for the morning. They were not pleased that mommy kept sunscreening them today.

Luna was a fruitcake as usual. I love this kid. She would run into the ocean when a wave receded and then scream like a little child when one came in and tickled her feet. Yes, I KNOW she is a little child, but come on, it’s fun!

After movie and lunch (the only way we could convince them to leave the ocean was to suggest the possiblity of a movie) we took a drive to diamond Head and Manalula Bay. They loved it and Mom and Dad loved having a tour guide.

An hour dip in the pool and a failed dinner attempt later, Jay and I headed over to the meeting for the first evening tonight. Mom and Dad stayed with the girls. They both stayed up for the movie and both crashed within 20 minutes of the end.

And now it is my turn to crash! We have a ton and a half of photos! I want to post some, but we will see what I can get….

In just a few short weeks, we will jet set across the continent, breifly stop on the west coast and then hop skip and jump (not literrally) over the ocean to Hawai’i. Now this time around, we are flying directly to Oahu. No stopping at the paradise known as the Big Island.

Yesterday, I started searching the web for things to do with kids on Oahu. I have already promised them a trip in the rainforest and Jay has promised them sweet sweet bananas.
Sigh.

I am looking up: hikes, the temple which I forget where it was, ocean trips, etc…

I am actually getting psyched for this. I need to bug the woman in the director’s office to start figuring out a schedule so I know when my parents will be out at the pool with the kids and when I will be with the girls…

The funny thing is that the girls are expecting to go back to Hawai’i. Granted, many meetings occur there just so people will go….

Ah, Jimmy Buffett and I are still jamming! Gotta love it!

We are getting our travel stuff together for our trip to Hawai’i. Yes, the American Astronomical Society is having their summer meeting in Hawai’i. It is on Oahu, not my favorite island, but hey, it’s HAWAI’I! My parents are coming. This is good. I am helping the director’s office by helping man our booth. That is cool. I will have a few set hours to work and then I can pick what talks I want to see, which posters I wish to see and then I can also spend time with the girls.
Ah… that will be nice.

In some senses, our girls are spoiled. We are so lucky to travel so much. Imagine going to Hawai’i twice before you turn 3. That is Luna.

When I grew up, we went to Disney once. I remember, vaguely, a trip to Chicago. I barely remember it so I often don’t count Illinois as a state I visited although we stayed for 2 weeks.

So far, my girls have been to Buffalo, NYC, Cleveland, Baltimore, Seattle(Soleil only), Florida(Orlando),  The Great Smokeys (NC- Soleil), Atlanta, Hawai’i. There are plenty of places we have been.

We have been on planes with the girls often. We travel often in cars. Wow, we have been everywhere and we are now planning bigger trips, to Sicily for example for Jay to work with some collaborators.

Is this spoiling them? We already talk about how we help others out. We discuss Tzdaka- The sharing of our money with others. We try to explain how lucky we are to get to travel this much. I just hope we can really get them to understand how lucky they really are….

Now, if you are a parent, get yourself over to JenEx’s place and check out this post….

© 2006, Despair, Inc.  All rights reserved

Scene: Burbank Airport
Time: 8:30pm
Spacemom is in urgent need of a restroom. She finds a women’s room and walks in with 2 women following. She manages to get stuck with the handicap stall that is sans lock. Lovely. She steps out of the stall to hear one of the women sudden jump out of a stall

"It’s Broken! My toilet is broken!"
I peer in, looks good to me…
"It doesn’t have a flusher!"
Flusher? WTF?
The other woman also comes out " Mine doesn’t have one either!"
This is surreal, this isn’t true.
I speak up "these are automatically flushing toilets"
A VERY dirty look sent my way "Yeah!, How can these toilets flush without the flusher?"
I start to explain and then realize this is just not worth it. I take the stall she has just abandoned (without the flusher) and void. I get up, zip and button and Ah… the toilet flushes. Thanks to technology.
The stall next to mine flushes. The  "no flusher" woman yells "HOW DID YOU GET IT TO FLUSH?"

Seriously
I
Can
NOT
Make
This
Up

Two women had never heard of automatically flushing toilets. Where have they been? Have they missed the technology boom north of them? Damn, I guess Figlet was right. It’s the Valley Girls.