Hawaii Part 1

When we would ask the kids where they wanted to go on vacation all they would ever say is Disneyland. Which is understandable because they have 2 disney obsessed parents and have known nothing more. But we felt like it was time for something more.  The kids are getting older and more fun and we wanted to introduce them to a different style of vacation. Insert our first trip to Hawaii as a family. I haven't been to Hawaii since I was a kid and Peter hasn't been since he was a teenager so it was a pretty new experience for all of us, but we sure were excited to see some sun!  

All of our kids love to fly so that was the first very exciting part of our journey. 

And we were so thankful for our awesome airport and the playground they had put in to let the kids run around and be a bit crazy before being confined for several hours. 

While the kids were super excited for the flight, that was the one part of the trip I was most concerned about. 6.5 hours is a long time for even me, much less the kids. We had grandparents along on the trip so that made the flight way easier than it could have been. Our biggest issue was keeping our very busy and stubborn 4 year old calm and entertained.  Overall the kids did awesome, the big kids seemed easy peasy with their grandparents and LB had a couple of rough moments but was overall better than I expected.  

Our first day was full of travel and business like getting a rental car and shopping. The kids were more than done by the time we got to the rental house. I was so excited by the view, it definitely had the wow factor I was hoping for, we were definitely in paradise!

By this point in the day the kids really just needed a chance to run off some steam, enter the pool in the backyard! Even though it was a bit cold the kids loved having the pool in the backyard to jump in anytime there was a second of downtime. 

After a quick dinner and pool time we marched down to the beach to check it out and see our first sunset! We knew right then and there that this was gonna be a good vacation!