I've actually been home about 5 days now, but I did decent job of journalling while we were over there so I want to finish the job.
Wednesday was our last full day in Maui. I'd planned to rent some snorkling equipment for our last beach visit, but when returning Ryan's rental Miata ended up taking longer than expected, I decided to scrap those plans so we could all just get out to the beach as soon as we could. We headed back to Airport Beach and spent probably 2 hours there, floating and swimming and enjoying the water. The surf was gentle enough that the kids enjoyed kind of rolling around in it, which was fun for them, but -- it meant that Rachel and I ended up back in the bathroom with her naked and me squirting her with a water bottle once again. Bleah. At least this time we caught it early enough that she was able to go back out in the water for a while after that.
When everyone was ready to head back to the condo, we packed up, rinsed off, and headed back. We went in the pool for a while to get all the sand off and then cleaned up and rested for a while in the condo. Mid-afternoon, we drove into Lahaina for lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise. The good news: no cruise ship docked offshore today, so Lahaina wasn't too crowded. Bad news: it was HOT. And humid. Having showered felt pointless. Even though CiP is open-air, it was pleasant due to getting the breeze off the water, and we had a good lunch there. Walking around Lahaina afterward was less than pleasant though. I was looking for gifts for a few of my friends, Rachel was looking for a tee shirt, Ryan was trying to sneak off to a jewelry store and buy me a Mother's Day gift, and it just seemed like we could hardly get anywhere. We did take the kids to the Celebrities gallery to see the Beatles exhibit, but it wasn't quite the same without them playing Beatles music, and the kids were so hot and crabby by the time we got there that they didn't get much out of it. We got some ice cream, made our purchases, and slogged our way back to the car, and as soon as we got back to the condo, Dana and the kids and I jumped in out swimsuits and headed out to the pool. Weird weather out there. Suddenly it was cold, with the sun behind the clouds. The kids swam and Dana and I went in the hot tub, then sat out on lounges. But as soon as the sun came back out, it felt like it was searing our skin. We spent about half an hour out there and then said goodbye to the pool for the final time. We spent the evening hanging out, finishing what we could of the leftover food, and getting organized and packed up. I was the last to go to bed, around 10, after I finished the book I was reading.
The next morning we were up around 6:30 and we mostly bustled around packing up. Left in plenty of time to get to the airport, drop off the rental, check in, etc -- IF we hadn't gotten behind the slowest driver ever on the highway back to Kahului. Also, Will got carsick and we ended up stop to let him throw up by the side of the road. Long story short: what should have been a 30-minute drive took an hour. We pulled up to the car rental return in a state of silent anxiety, grabbed our stuff, hopped the shuttle to the airport, and happily walked right up to the counter to check in with North American. Dana got in line to wait to check in at United, but since her flight left more than an hour after ours, that was fine. Little did we know they were going to make a federal case out of the can of Off! in one of our suitcases. We told them to just pull it out and throw it away, but they still insisted on filling out paperwork and getting a bunch of signatures before they let us go. We were still kind of freaking out about getting to the plane on time, even though it was 45 minutes till it was supposed to take off, mostly because we hadn't seen what the security line looked like yet and we knew it was potentially long, and the airline people were just taking their time, la la la. Finally they let us go and we sprinted off toward the gate (gate 39 in an airport with 39 gates, naturally). The kids were asking questions and we were telling them to stop, and for some reason Ryan blurted out that "our plane is getting ready to leave." OMG, I could have killed him. Will immediately bursts into hysterical sobs, which only slows him more, and we're both trying to calm him. I'm not sure if Ryan even noticed that I didn't speak to him for the next hour or so.
Well, the security line was nothing, and we hiked all the way to our gate at the opposite end of the airport, where the nice airline people told us to relax while we sat and filled out our boarding passes for this part of the flight -- we boarded in plenty of time and I read HP4 to Will for the length of the 18-minute flight to Honolulu. Once we got there, we had an hour layover and actually had to get off the plane -- we had lunch, picked up a few things, reboarded, and flew back to Oakland. Once again, we rented the digital TV thing, and after Will had a nap, he watched "Racing Stripes" with Rachel while Ryan and I read and I napped. We got in on time at about 10 pm, waited a bit for our luggage, waited forever for our shuttle back to the La Quinta motel where our car was parked (we later discovered that Rachel left her backpack on that shuttle -- Ryan went back to Oakland to get it on Saturday) and got on the road. Were in our own beds in Davis by 1 am -- but it only felt like 10.
All in all, great vacation. I can't wait to do it again!
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