Wonder Where I've Been?

We just returned from a fabulous week in Hawaii. We stayed at the Renaissance Wailea Beach Resort in Maui. We went without the kids, so it was very relaxing and incredibly romantic.

Our room had an ocean view and overlooked the pool area. The hotel lobby, dining area and lounge sat perpendicular to our room. Being in a warm weather climate (80-82 degrees our whole stay!) everything there is open air, which meant that each night, we had a lounge music lullaby. We slept with the balcony door open at night—a great breeze, the lounge lullaby each night and the ocean calling us out to play each morning.

We never really adjusted to Maui time, so we went to bed around 8:30 or 9:00 each night and woke around 6:00 a.m. Chris has never been good at jumping out of bed in the morning, so while he watched TV, checked email and lounged, I started each morning with a Coke Zero and a book on the balcony.

We spent New Year’s Eve on a dinner cruise—a good idea, except that sunset is at 5:55 at this time of year. By the time we got out to sea, it was dark, which meant no scenic photo ops. We were asleep by 9:30. The fireworks woke us up—briefly. We looked at each other, “Uh, fireworks. Happy New Year,” and were back in dreamland 30 seconds later.

We took a five hour snuba/scuba/whale watching trip (a three hour tour just seemed unlucky…Gilligan). Snuba was interesting. I panicked for the first 15 minutes. When we had five minutes left, I finally felt comfortable breathing and asked our instructor to put my weights back on so I could sink. But, my ears wouldn’t pop, so I only went down about 10 feet. With snuba, you breathe out of a mouthpiece like a scuba diver would have, but it’s connected to a hose, which is connected to a little raft with an air tank. The instructor was a diver and took six people down each stop.

Our snuba site was the Molokini Crater. They say it’s one of the top 10 dive spots in the world. We preferred the snorkel site, Coral Gardens. Both were gorgeous. Along the way, we saw lots of humpback whales, dolphins and a few turtles.

It’s whale season in Hawaii right now. We could see the whales from our balcony. I wish I had thought to pack binoculars, for whale watching and for viewing the stars. There was a beach front path that connected the resorts. We walked the path at least once each day, enjoying the landscaping, the amazing houses, the whales and the fresh air.

We spent lots of time at the beach. The first few days were red flag days, so we had lots of surfers near our hotel. The first day, I flipped under a wave. My swimming suit bottoms fell to my ankles and I hooked them with my foot to keep them on. The girls laughed…and then put us on hold so they could tell their cousins the story…when we called with our first day update.

We got nice tans, which are already fading. I read seven novels—we had to find a bookstore so I could buy more. (I always wanted to be one of those people who got to read on the beach! With kids, that's impossible!) Unfortunately, there’s nothing spectacular to report about the food (I did like the macadamia nut and banana pancakes with coconut syrup…and of course, the tropical beach drinks :-) I received one of the best massages ever (the whole thing was good, but the neck massage was amazing.) I am SO ready to go back.

The girls had a fantastic time with our relatives (grandparents and cousins), but want to know if our next vacation will be a family vacation. It was a fantastic time for a vacation, so I’m already campaigning for New Year’s Eve at Disney World 2006. (We paid for four of our seven days in Maui on Marriott Rewards points from Chris’ travel, so we’ve now officially switched to collecting Southwest miles so we can buy five tickets to Orlando...if we can get the blackout dates to work, we'll be set!)

Back to regularly-scheduled writing posts as soon as the laundry is done and I get the Christmas tree put away!