Aloha Maui!

Well, we are at the airport.  Yes, I am definitely sad to leave the ocean and this beautiful sunshine.  Very sad.  But...I am so thankful for the amazing week we had here and have no regrets.  It might even feel good to be home.

For our last day in Maui yesterday, we went back to the beach we started at: Ulua Beach.  Of course I was hoping to see another turtle, but no such luck.  There were; however, about 50 snorkelers out, so I'm sure if I'd tried harder I could've made it happen.  Regardless, we enjoyed the beach for one last morning.

Fear of sand officially conquered.

Here's Rory getting really confident.

After the Beach we spent some time poolside, then went to Kalama Beach Park for the evening.  We caught an amazing sunset, got some family pictures, had Hawaiian Ice, and let our TinySuperhero fly around!

We got some amazing Hawaiian shaved ice (with ice cream in the bottom).

Thanks to all of you for caring to join in on our vacation.  We wished we could've had all of you here with us, but then again the peace and quiet was nice.  Haha.  I guess the one thing that makes going home today more than ok is that I'm taking the best part of this trip home with me: my two boys.  Now, to go see how much Puddles has grown and to start saving for next year!

Mahalo and Aloha!

Robyn

St. Nick followed us to Maui!

Thursdsay was Jolly Old St. Nick's day and while I had left our shoes by the door in Seattle, looks like he came to Maui instead!  

We were also given another amazing gift yesterday from my Dad and Francine.  There is an incredibly expensive beautiful resort here called the Grand Wailea.  It's just about a mile down the road from where we are staying.  They rented us a cabana by the day so not only did we have some sweet chairs to lounge on, but we had access to all of the amenities at the Grand Wailea for the day.  It's of course on the beach, but also has about 12 (not exaggerating) swimming pools including an infant beach pool!  We got there at 8am and lasted about 7 hours.  We were so thankful for such an amazing gift!  Here are some pics:

Wailea Beach

This was the view from our Cabana.  Not too shabby! 

The Infant beach pool. Great way to transition from beach to pool!

The view from the top. Check out all of those pools! 

So yes, we are now in love with the Grand Wailea, which is great except that it would require us winning the lottery to sleep there even 2 nights.  But, we had such a wonderful day and lived it up!  I think our biggest accomplishment was getting Rory to actually take a nap in the Cabana.  I would say that 90% of the times Rory has slept here has been induced by us driving around the island...so this was quite a feat!

So sweet!

We even managed a transition out of arms!

We also had some good treats while we were there.

I was really excited about the plastic pineapple cup/bank!
We are going to use it to start saving for our next trip to Maui!

Did I mention I ordered a kids oreo milkshake in order to get the cup?  Joke's on them - the shake was amazing.

Rory had a great time at the Grand Wailea, we went from pool to beach to pool to beach all day.  He is becoming quite independent here in Maui.  Running all over the place, splashing in the water.  It's really fun to watch him!

The only negatives about yesterday was me getting stung by a bee, and the fact that we can't live in the Grand Wailea forever.  But we had such a fun day!  Thanks Dad & Francine!

Last night we went out to dinner and were asleep at 8pm!

Aloha!

Wednesday in Maui

Today was overcast in Maui, but it didn't stop us from having another wonderful day together. 

We first went to Honolulu Coffee - a seemingly popular coffee shop in the very ritzy mall down the street from us.  Then, we went to try out a new beach called Keawakapu Beach.  It, of course, was beautiful, but it was different kind of beach day as it was so overcast and still wavy.

Keawakapu Beach

We met a nice family there with a 2 year old boy and 5 month old boy.  We had fun visiting with them and Rory enjoyed the playmate.  It was nice just relaxing on the beach...the beach seems to be quiet when the sun isn't out.  I wasn't drawn to go into the water...until a few people said they spotted some turtles.  As you know by now, that is all I need to drop everything and bolt right into the ocean.  I grabbed my snorkel and under water camera and headed into the waves.  I got knocked down by one wave, but kept going.  Then a big one hit me.  I now know that I've been approaching the waves incorrectly, but I didn't know that then, and this one knocked me clear off my feet.  I might have somersaulted, I don't even know, but about a gallon of salt water went up my nose, my snorkel flew off and even my hair band came out.  We never saw the snorkel again...and I gave up on the turtles.  I did manage to hang onto our underwater camera, which we have not taken a single picture with since we bought it after my sea turtle siting.  I like to think that deep inside I'm naturally connected to the ocean...but I may need to work on that a bit.  

Since the sun was hiding today, we decided it would be a great day to go to the Maui Ocean Center, which is an aquarium we've heard good things about.  We cleaned up from the beach (a rather intensive process) and headed that way.  Rory, who has been so exhausted from all this beach time, was passed out in the car when we arrived.  We transferred him to the stroller and decided to walk around the shopping center until he woke up.  While doing so, my attention was caught by some onlookers staring into the bay...sure enough, they had seen a whale.  After our experience last night, this got me very excited and indeed there was a humpback whale!  One thing led to another, which led to us booking a 4:30 whale watching tour!  I was elated.

Since we'd already paid too much for aquarium tickets, we needed to get as much out of the experience as we could before our 4pm check-in.  Joe didn't know it, but I had now set myself up for the aquarium to be a disappointment.  First mistake - when I hear aquarium, I think of Sea World.  Anyone who has been to Sea World knows how disappointing an aquarium is in comparison.  To top it off, it is illegal in Maui to have mammals in captivity, so there aren't any whales or dolphins.  Now, knowing that we'd be following the aquarium with a whale watching tour where we'd hope to see whales and dolphins...well, you can see how the Maui Ocean Center was anti-climatic for me.  To be fair, as far as aquariums go, it was nice.  They did have a really great shark exhibit, but the three small sea turtles just didn't really do it for me.  On the bright side - had we not gone to the aquarium, we never would have booked a whale watching tour.  Since this isn't all about me, Rory and Joe really loved the aquarium.

The Hammerhead shark was pretty cool.

Then, we boarded our whale watching tour.  The boat holds 150 people, but only 17 people were on our tour.  It is the very beginning of whale season here, but the tour was awesome!  I would say we saw at least 5 humpback whales and tons of dolphins.  It was so incredible!  The harbor we went from is actually the 2nd windiest in the world, but today both the harbor and the water were still.  It's kind of hard to describe seeing whales in this element.  I of course was hoping for an up close and personal breach, but what we saw was incredible.  I managed to get a lot of it on film and can't wait to share it with you!

Best hair ever.

Cheeeeeeeese!

I have to fight very hard not to worry about the end of this amazing vacation coming to an end. It's really easy for me to spend an entire vacation worrying about it going to fast.  But this trip - I'm just trying to enjoy for what it is and be thankful that we have a wonderful home to go back to.  I do have to fight the urge of anxiety that it's Wednesday, but I told Joe that if today was our last day of vacation I would be so satisfied with our trip.  Lucky for us, we still have days ahead of us!  But we have gotten more than we ever imagined out of this vacation - it has been so good for our souls.

Thanks for loving us!

Robyn, Joe & Rory

Tuesday in Maui

We started today off with a nice breakfast at a nearby restaurant called Longhis. We were already ordering by 8:30am, so we beat the crowds!  I had really great French Toast and Joe had Eggs Benedict.  Rory had a little of everything.  We've been eating all of our meals in our condo, so it was a fun way to start the day.

We are really enjoying checking out all of the beaches around here. Today we went to Baby Beach on the North Shore.  We'd heard about it from many people, a line of rocks form a natural lagoon, making it great for kids!  It was about 30 minutes from Wailea where we're staying, but well worth the drive.  Below you can see the lagoon; many people also use it to swim laps.

We were at the beach most of the day and had a great time swimming, building castles, trying to stop Rory from eating sand, being completely covered in sand, and soaking up some sun.  Rory really has caught onto this vacation and seems to be loving it.

I love this picture.

Caught in the act trying to eat a rock.

He's got the greatest little sausage legs.

And there's that smile again!

Our days start early here, so by 1:30 we had already been at the beach several hours.  We headed back to our condo and rested for a bit.  Then, we went back to the Wailea Beach Path for a stroll along the beaches.  It's just so beautiful and it's really fun to walk by all of the resorts.  We've met so many nice people on these walks, and I've probably taken a dozen pictures of nice couples!

His big blue eyes spark many conversations here!

This next part will certainly be a highlight for us - but I'm afraid you won't believe me.  On the path, there is one of those telescopes that you can pay a quarter to use.  The sign says that it's a good place to spot Humpback whales.  So on our way back to the car, when we were passing it I told Joe to just give me 10 seconds to look for a whale (I really did say this).  We both stopped and looked at the ocean and in about 3 seconds a huge whale came out of the water and splashed back in.  We both saw it and neither of us could believe it!  It was incredible.  It was pretty far out but there was no doubt what we saw.  The whale came out twice more after that and it was just incredible!  I could not believe what we had seen!  Oh it was so cool.  We gathered quite a crowd with our excitement - all staring at the ocean hoping for another jump.  These evening strolls are one of my favorite parts of this trip.

After our stroll, Joe grilled some steaks for us by the pool.  We had envisioned a quiet night with Rory asleep...but Rory wouldn't dare miss out on some steak!  All in all, another wonderful day in Maui.

Impressive, eh?

It's not ours.

Monday in Maui

I was feeling a little over-confident about my first day's sea turtle spotting, so after some research, decided we should hit up "Turtle Town" Monday morning for some more sightings, this time with a waterproof camera.  

So first thing Monday morning we headed to Maluaka Beach in Makena, where supposedly the turtles like to hang out.  This is Maluaka Beach:

Unfortunately, the waves were really big that morning.  I watched about a dozen people try to get past the waves to find the turtles before I got the nerve to give it a try.  I went far enough to get knocked down by a wave, recover, and after I regained composure I got terrified of running into a shark and went back to shore.  I was relieved when the real snorkelers came back and said they hadn't seen a single thing.  I'm beginning to think that my run-in with the turtle on day 1 was really lucky.  Anyways, we spent about 30 minutes of the morning watching a group attempt to board a boat while fighting the waves.  It actually became quite scary and the people were literally under water while trying to climb up the stairs.  I think it took the boat about 10 times back and forth before they got the final person on board.  I was nearly sea sick just watching and I definitely would not have gotten on that boat.  In the picture below check out the guy trying to scramble on board:

We had a great day on the beach though.  Rory loves the sand now - so much that he will try to eat it by the handful.  I don't even want to know how much he's actually swallowed but I figure he can't be the first kid to eat sand.  He's having a blast!

Rory is growing so fast these days that he's even changing on this trip.  We've noticed 3 new teeth that have come out (can we blame them for his lack of sleep?) and he learned how to smile when I want to take a picture!  I'm pretty sure we can thank Shauna for that.  But he's got the greatest (hideous) smile!  Here's what his smile looks like:

Beautiful view from the beach.

Then, Monday night we went to the Old Lahaina Luau!  It was really cool because it was the same Luau that I went to 10 years earlier with my family!  It was awesome to be there with Joe and Rory.  We had a great time.  Rory is such a ham.  He just wants to be on his own.  He'll say hi to everybody and wants to see everything!  It was so much fun.

He recently started laying his head down on pillows.  If only he'd close his eyes!

Finally, I'll leave you with this sweet face!