HAWAI'I

A GREAT SUMMER VACATION!
Ken and Coppelia decided to take all the family on a last hurrah vacation. At that time, Aria & Nate were planning to attend BYU-Hawaii and so the family would go over with 9 people and come back with 7. Things have changed and Aria & Nate are now going to BYU and UVU.

Here are a few excerpts from Ken about the trip.

Packing went well. I was a bit curious to see if we could fit all 11 bags in our two cars with our 9 people. It pretty much filed our Odyssey to the max with the 7 people and 9 bags (Aria and Nate being in different cars). Plus, I didn't know if they'd be true to their word and let us check in those bags for free (due to my various statuses on Delta). But the bags went in without a hitch.

JP has his list and has all his clothes lined up on the dining room table.

Dad and Mom checking some bags.

Every flat space in the house had someone's clothes!

Those are just some of the shoes!

I think that is Sophie's things on the sofa ready to pack.

 The flight was actually quite nice. Sophie loved flying as would be expected. The plane was full. I received an upgrade to 1st class, but I wanted to sit with Coppelia and/or Sophie/JP. So I offered it to Nate or Aria who declined as they wanted to sit together. I figured Steven wouldn't want it so it came down to Nathan and Davis. They rock/paper/scissored for it and Davis' scissors carried the day. I think he enjoyed being pampered a bit.

We arrived after 6 hours or so with most having watched a couple of movies. Travel isn't as hard as it was 40 years ago. There were, of course, a few screaming babies, but that's why they invented headphones. 

Arriving, we found it quite humid due to the tropical storm Darby. We went to get our cars. Coppelia's status with Enterprise won the day as I received a compact car and was told that there was no other cars available. I was thinking we wouldn't possible get our luggage in one trip and went to the taxi stand to see about the costs of taking it to Laie ($200) to carry our luggage. That didn't sound too good, but it would work. But then Coppelia did get an upgrade to the biggest Subaru (still only carries 5 people, but it has a much bigger trunk). Using my tetris skills I could see that we could fold down a seat and get everything in, which we did. (Yea for Ken's Tetris skills. I was the recipient of that when he loaded my moving truck!)

Hawaii remains beautiful even in the light rain. We made our way to the hotel. Aria and Nate didn't have a big lunch like we did at the airport so they were starving. However, I find that most people can eat if they're boys and their between the age of 15 and 25. So we did just that as two of our three rooms weren't quite ready. We piled our suitcases in the one and headed to get some food. We went to neighboring Hauula that has the benefit of a nice eatery and a Longs Drug store. As we knew, things are expensive here, but we have strategies to cut down expenses. For example, they don't sell cheap water at Longs in individual containers, but they sale gallon jugs for the same price as the individuals. So we bought a single smaller container and a bunch of gallon jugs for refill (see we're smart like that). 

Great panorama shot!

We enjoyed eating and a bit of shopping and then went back to the hotel where our rooms were now ready (it was 5 pm so you'd hope so, but then again this is Hawaii). The kids really wanted to swim and it being a bit muggy I felt inclined to allow even though it was Sunday. The pool here at the courtyard is quite amazing. It has a fun water feature and a nice hot tub. Before too long everyone but Aria and Nate, who were still recovering from driving from Sunnyvale to Mapleton through the night on Friday and then working to fix their new apartment up on Saturday, made it to the pool. It was nice and I think made everyone quite tired by 10 because that's 2 am for us Utahans. A nice first day. We'll see what today brings.