Our Hawai'ian Adventrue: Getting There

I'm usually really bad about saying things like "here's a highlight of what has been happening- more details coming later!" and then never doing it. So, I'm trying something new. I'm going to try to chronicle as we go. GASP! Odd idea, I know.

Hawai'i is three hours behind our local time in Utah so it is barely 6:00 am here right now making the idea of getting up early and writing about the previous day easy for now. Yesterday morning, we woke up at about 4:00 after having slept in the second kids bedroom upstairs- I attempted the toddler bed and Craig the floor. Something hadn't agreed with Sophie's tummy that night and she wasn't a happy girl. I understand that she and Craig stayed up together for a while and watched "Despicable Me." Whatever works. Our friends, David & Jamie, are staying at our house with Sophie while we're away and were in our room for the night. Sophie really loves being around them and from what we hear, she's had a great time with them so far.

We picked up Craig's dad at about 4:45 and headed off to the airport, with one Walmart side stop to grab some bananas and apple sauce for our flight. The rest of the trip to SLC was beautifully uneventful. Security was frustrating as usual but in a different way. Did you know that diabetes is not a medical condition? Well, thanks TSA, but I'll be taking my unopened apple sauce, bananas and water because your website- which I printed the information off of and had with me- said I could have. Craig got the full pat down and did it right. I won't go into details here.

We had a lovely flight from SLC to Denver on a little "puddle jumper." Craig and I were the only ones in our row of two seats and had a nice nap. We had a 3 1/2 hour layover, ate, recharged our electronics, wandered around and watched the birds inside.

Our flight to HNL was equally pleasant. Same two-seat row but this time there were two other large rows. I don't think I've ever flown on something larger than a 747 before but this was a 767. It was seriously enormous. Even with the flight being nearly 8 hours and watching us on the screen (pictured at a different point in the flight) fly right over Provo and wishing we had Batman 'sky hook' powers, it wasn't a bad flight. Next time, I will remember that Continental/United isn't South West and you don't get any snacks. I was very tired of mushed granola bars by the time we landed but I'm so glad I still had them in there from our bowl game trip last week.

When we booked our trip, we had left about 4 hours between our mainland flight and our inter island flight so we could wander around Honolulu a bit before heading out. The airline canceled our flight and bumped us to an earlier one that was leaving only 30 minutes after we landed. And you can't check in online, on the phone or any other way than in person at the desk at HNL. Guess who ran and got to the gate 10 minutes before their flight and weren't allowed on? Yup. Us. Travelocity was useless and told us it was our own fault, deal with it and nothing was going to be refunded, changed or anything else. While running around like a crazy person, I happened to notice that it was very warm in the terminal. Why? Well, that's because there were no walls and in many places, no real ceilings. Gorgeous.

Anyway, I got my first tasted of the Aloha spirit when the manager of the little company personally came to our aid. They didn't have to do anything but he did. We are getting on the first flight this morning at 9:00, he put us up in a nice hotel, gave us two meal vouchers each and a shuttle. I would have been super happy with putting us on another flight and a discounted hotel. Did I mention he also carried my suitcase (we just came with two little carry ons) out to the pickup and waited with us? And put our bags on the shuttle? Yes. That was a lovely welcome to Hawai'i.

We got to the hotel, checked in quickly, found our nice room and headed to the hotel restaurant for dinner. $15 each went a very long way. We both got seafood dishes that were just delicious. Mmm. After dinner, we were wild and crazy and went to sleep. Aah, wonderful sleep. I'll be back tomorrow with a few more pictures and stories from our trip!


**Our internet so far hasn't been too great. I might post more pictures elsewhere when we get home.