Hello, Paradise

Brian first introduced the concept of a family trip to Hawaii about four days after Finn was born. The logic was to take the trip at the end of my maternity leave and at the beginning of his parental leave, so we wouldn't have to use any vacation days, and we would get to visit our friend, the Sun. Honestly, I thought he was kidding, so I smiled and said "sure!"

Imagine my surprise when, a few days later, he started sending me listings off of http://www.vrbo.com/. He found a unit that had everything we thought we'd need - a floor unit with a kitchen, just a few steps from the beach. Oh, and wi fi. Can't live without the internets! Next thing I knew, we had a condo in Kaua'i for a week and airline tickets. Let the adventure begin!

I didn't travel much as a kid, and although I have since remedied that with a couple of jobs that had me traveling so much I got the fancy gold cards that helped me skip security lines, I had zero expeirence traveling with a child, let alone an infant. BW was no help in this arena either, however he is a much more relaxed traveler than I am, for which I am always grateful.

We are also really lucky that Finn is a super easy kid. Nevertheless, we had no idea what to expect when we hopped on our Hawaiian flight at 8am on Thursday morning.

The fates were smiling fondly on us that day. First of all, the plane was only about 2/3 full, so the very helpful agent put us in a three-seated row with an empty middle seat for Finn, which meant we could bring his car seat on the plane and not have to hold him for the entire 5 1/2 hr flight. Then Finn fell asleep right before we got on board, and stayed that way for the next 2 and a half hours. For a little while, it was BW watching a movie on his Zune and me reading People magazine - just like old times.

Finn was pretty much wonderful the whole flight. He got a couple of meals, and a couple of diaper changes (courtesy of Brian, although I would have loved a hidden camera in the tiny airplane bathroom to watch him working that one!) and mostly just hung out in his car seat with some toys and either played or slept.

We changed planes in Honolulu and boarded a 20 minute inter-island flight to Kaua'i. This time I had to hold him for the flight, but since it was lunchtime (again), that kept him very happy. We nabbed our rental car in time for his nap, and made our way to our little condo in paradise.

Today was our first full day of vacation, and was aptly filled with a whole lot of nothing. Just enjoying the scenery...

on a stroll down the beach...

looking back at our resort from the Sheraton next door

pina coladas at lunch

We also learned some things about Finn today.

1) He likes being warm because it means he can go without socks and shoes. And he loves his toes.

2) Although he's not a big fan of the wind in his face, he does enjoy it when it blows his toys about and he doesn't have to do anything to make them chime.

and perhaps most importantly...

3) He HATES wearing his hat :)

TAKE.THIS.OFF.ME.NOW!!!!!

Needless to say, we revised our plan to just keep him out of the sun rather than have him screaming the entire time.

More pictures soon... Mahalo!

-cw