Coming home

We're back! We had a roughy couple of days but we are thankful to be in our home safe and sound.

On Friday night while still in Hawaii Noah developed a fever. The next day he wouldn't eat, play and just laid around crying. Tylenol wasn't doing anything so towards the end of the day we figured we better get him checked out by a doctor, since we were due to fly home the next day. Thankfully my hubby has great medical coverage abroad and we were told everything we needed to do would be covered.
The doctor was concerned that he was developing some kind of infection and prescribed antibiotics. Normally I'm weary of putting my child on them without a 100% need but we decided to ere on the side of caution because of our next day flight. We were told flying with an ear infection was not a good idea!

The meds seemed to be working and although Noah was still cranky and out of sorts he was at least eating and playing a bit. The sucky thing was that we had to be out of our hotel room by 1130am and our flight didn't leave until midnight. So we had a sick tired baby with nowhere to sleep all day.

There was a nice lounge in our hotel for guests to use during departure/arrival day complete with a kids playroom, tvs and Internet, but still no where for our little guy to sleep. Matt manage to get home to pass out in his arms once or twice but without a bed to sleep in he quickly woke up.

Thankfully we were once again given a seat on our flight just for Noah and he passed out in his car seat before we even taxied onto the runway. It was after midnight at this point! He slept for about 3.5 hours out of the 5.5 hour flight, with me holding him for about an hour and a half of that. He did cry a few times but over all I think he did really well considering the circumstances! For the last 45 minutes of the flight he just stared out the window pointing and talking. When we had a rough landing I expected him to start crying, but instead he smiled and giggled as if to say,"that was fun!" Have I mentioned he loves planes?

We arrived home around 1000am yesterday and all crashed in our beds for about four hours. We're still tired today and can honestly say we have no desire to go on a long plane ride anytime in the next few years!!!

Sun, surf & lots of sand.

Our last few days have basically consisted of the same thing. We go for a walk in the sunshine, eat some food, play in the sand, eat some food, shop, swim, relax and then eat some more food. Not such a bag gig really. Of course Noahs schedule is more like eat, play, sleep, repeat. I have to admit, Hawaii is not nearly as relaxing as advertised when you spend your day chasing around a toddler and helping him with whatever he needs done. When he sees water of any kind he goes right for it with complete disregard for his safety. He always has sand on his body and in every one of his little crevices and he absolutely hates to sit still. Thankfully a nice walk around the resort is usually enough to keep him occupied.

Yesterday we rented a car and drove about 30 minutes outside of town to go to Kaihlua beach with the whole family and a few friends. We were only able to stay for about 1.5 hours because Noah was exhausted, hungry and down right cranky. He fell asleep within 2 minutes of being in the car so we ended up getting some subway and sitting in a mall parking lot eating it. Nothing we can do but go with the flow with a 1 year old.

We've started to collect our usual favourite Hawaiian items. I've got my candles, multiple bags of Kona coffee and some Mauna Loa chocolates. Today the plan is to hit up Hilo Hatties and that ought to add a few more items to our collection. I think Bubba Gumps is our dinner destination tonight - mmm mmm good!

This morning I called the Disney resort Aulani to make a reservation for their character breakfast. Since we aren't staying at the resort we weren't able to call until the day before. Sure enough, totally booked. Our concierge told us that it's pretty much impossible to get a reservation there if you aren't a resort guest. Sucky... We still plan to go and explore the resort and get a few pictures. Oh, and to do some Disney Hawaiian shopping ;)

Enjoying Aloha

We are on our second day here in Hawaii.

Yesterday we kept everything pretty low key. We explored the resort and got to see many of the different creatures that live here on the grounds, like penguins, parrots and turtles. We went for a walk along the path on the beachfront and Noah spent some time getting his toes (and the rest of his body) wet. He was ready to fully submerge himself at 8:00am so we knew we better get him back for a nap so that he could go swimming after.



We spent the afternoon in one of the many pools and Daddy even took Noah down his first water slide! Then it was off to the lagoon so that Noah could dig in the sand and splash around.
He was in bed by 6:30 and I was still pretty exhausted from our travel day and couldn't stay awake past 8:30pm.

This morning we got up around 6:00 and Matt headed off with some of our other friends to hike up Diamond Head. I put Noah in the stroller and did a little shopping around the resort with my parents before stopping by the beach so Noah could do some digging with his new toys.

So far I'd say Noah is loving Hawaii.

I'm currently eating Mauna Loa chocolate covered macadamia nuts. It's safe to say that I'm loving it too!

The long plane ride to Hawaii...

Whew! What a long day of travelling. Going on a trip with a 1 year old is not for the faint of heart.

We left yesterday morning for the border, hitting up a few American stores before heading to the airport. First of all let me just say how happy I was to be flying a family friendly airline like Alaska and not Allegiant. Allegiants line ups were insane and nobody seemed to know what they were suppose to be doing and were all stressed out. No thank you, we will pass on travels with them.

"Lets get on it momma!"

We were incredibly fortunate to have a friendly airline employee do some switching around so that Noah could go from being a lap child to getting his very own seat for FREE. What a lifesaver that was! We had brought his car seat just in case and were able to use it for the flight. Noah understands what his car seat is for, so he was perfectly content being strapped into it while we travelled.

Tired but content baby on our flight.

Let me just say how much God answered our prayers! Noah was an absolute angel on the 6 hour flight. We were in the air from 4pm-10pm and get this, he never slept. He was awake and happy the entire time. I didn't even need half of the toys I had packed for him because he spent a good hour or two of the flight playing with two plastic cups that the flight attendant had given him. That being said, Matt and I still had basically no time to do whatever we wanted, but such is life travelling with a toddler.
His favourite part was when we were landing. He watched out the window saying "Óooo!" and "Was dat?" He thought it was great! Then we packed him into the stroller, got our luggage and headed to our hotel.

Checking into our suite at the Hilton

By the time he got to sleep it was 11:00pm and had had a total of 40 minutes of shut eye since 6:30 that morning. It was truly unbelievable that he was still a happy camper. What a trooper!

When we arrived we were all given a lei. Noah has been obsessed with these things ever since - and was wearing ALL of them this morning.

This morning we woke up to an absolutely beautiful view from our balcony over looking the Hilton Hawaiian Village lagoon with the ocean just behind. It's hot, it's sunny and it smells wonderful! It's currently 9:30 Hawaii time and since we've been up since 5:00am (silly time change) Noah is already passed out in his crib. I'm considering taking a nap myself as the rest of the family is off getting groceries. This afternoon we plan to hit up one of the many pools at the resort. Noah is just dying to get his toes in that water...

The view we woke up to this morning! Blessed.

First signs of fall

Want to go for a fall drive?

I love the fall season.
Candles, boots, coloured leaves, roast beef dinners and all things pumpkin flavored. Yes, I will miss summer, but I am a true Vancouver girl. Im ready to do away with the shorts and get back into pants and comfy sweaters. Last week I even baked pumpkin scones. Twice!
Im seriously contemplating pulling out all my fall decorations and putting them up around my house. Perhaps this next week.

We did a bit of running around this morning and I got (on sale) an apple pie candle for my dining room table and nice jean jacket to complete my 'fall' look. Oh, and we got Noah his Halloween costume. He picked it himself at the store and despite my other plans for him, he is being a monster. He looks pretty stinking cute in it so I'm fine with it.

It does feel a little odd to start switching seasons considering we are taking off to Hawaii in a few weeks and will be right back to 30 degree weather. That and the fact that despite a few colder days last week we are still running around in shorts and tshirts.

Basically, I just wanted to share with you how excited I am that we are enterting the fall season!

PS - you DO know what comes shortly after fall right? And thats a whole other reason to get excited!

Reflections... Our Wedding Day pt 4

*in case you missed it... you can find part 3 here *

... the wedding was perfect! I couldn't have imagined it being any better. Is that crazy or what? How is it possible that our wedding day turned out to be better then we could ever have imagined and we didn't even know whether it would happen only a week before.

The ceremony was beautiful. Matt and I said 'I do' amongst tropical flowers, palm trees and the ocean behind us. We had loved ones around us; supporting us, encouraging us and just 'being there' for us. It was a very hot day, around 32 degrees, but I barely noticed.

Our wedding party - too bad all our guests weren't in this picture too!

We enjoyed an incredibly unique reception with traditional Hawaiian music and fantastic food, right on the ocean. We had a private table just for our group. Such a blast and totally unforgetable!

We couldn't have planned anything more perfect. God had a better plan for us that we had for ourselves. And seriously... what a story!

Reflections... our crazy wedding story pt 3

... So we were all booked to go to Hawaii along with a group of friends.
*you can read part 2 here *
*or part 1 here *

Matt and I looked up local photographers and found one for a good price that we liked. We called him up and he said he only had one date of availability; the following Thursday. We looked at each other and said, "Okay, guess we'll get married next Thursday!"

We knew we wouldn't be able to plan a full reception last minute. My family and I had been to a Luau a few years back run by the Christian group YWAM and wondered if that would make a good dinner reception. After all, it was entertainment and great food! We called them up and sure enough they were more then happy to accommodate our whole group for the Thursday evening show.

The next day we drove down to Arlington and stayed over night with some very dear friends of ours. The following morning we all met up at the airport (at least all of those from BC and Washington state. There was also a group of family coming from Toronto) and took off to Hawaii.

Once there we started to plan out little details. There was a beautiful garden at the resort and we decided that we should hold the ceremony there. My dad talked with the resort and planned out chairs and a hoopa. My mother and Aunt drove up the street to the florist and planned out the flowers. Our friend Ashley started practising some music for during the ceremony. And I attempted to relax.

Once that was all arranged; we vacationed. We hit up the beaches, the local dining and enjoyed everyones company around the pool. This was why we had decided on a destination wedding in the first place. We wanted to spend quality time with loved ones in a beautiful location. It was wonderful.

There were a few hiccoughs along the way - if you can even call them that. I had no place to get my hair, nails or makeup done. But no big deal, I did them myself. My maid of Honor ended up with some kind of eye trouble. No problem, we got some antibiotics from a local doctors office. I passed out in a Subway restaurant the afternoon before the wedding; not exactly what you envision for the day before you wedding, but I sat through my rehearsal ceremony and was in bed by 7pm.

I woke up the morning of May 7th, sat on my giant lanai with my best girlfriend Ally soaking up the beautiful scenery and feeling 100% calm. Finally, after a year and a half engagement, a cancelled wedding and alot of stress, I was going to marry Matt.

...to be continued... (the final part...)

Reflections... our crazy wedding story pt 2

... So we had decided to look into Hawaii.
*You can read part one here *

My family had been several times and found the islands to be such a relaxing place. We had no idea what availability would be like or the prices of flights at the last minute, so after deciding on the island we wanted we started looking things up online.

The Big Island of Hawaii. Kona is located on the left.

I love Kona on the Big Island. It is very low key, with no high rises or over commercialised tourism. We found a condo resort in our favourite location and gave them a call to check their availability. Turned out the recession had hit them hard and they had many rooms open. They were also going for a great price - $80 a night for a one bedroom with a full kitchen, living room and lanai.
We then proceeded to check into flights and found the same thing, great deals. Flights for around $400-$500 round trip from Seattle. Awesome!

Kona. See how tiny it is? That's why I love it so much.

We called up all our guests. Sadly, not everyone was able to reschedule at the last minute. Some were not willing to travel with what was going on, others hadn't wanted to risk wasting their vacation time and had booked other trips and some just preferred to stay home. We totally understood everyones decision. It was stressful for all involved, not just us.

But we really appreciated those who stuck with us and trusted our judgement on the new plans. I don't think you will ever understand how much your support meant to us at that time. Your phone calls, your emails, you kept us sane!
A group of us went ahead and booked the trip to Hawaii - approximately 48 hours before we were to leave. We still had no idea what we were going to do as far as a wedding ceremony, photographer, flowers, reception, anything.

Once the flights and condos were booked, we talked it over with my dad and decided that he would be the one to marry us. He already had a legal licence to do so, so it just made sense. We also decided to sign our papers here, as it would have been too complicated to go through all the necessary steps once in the States. We only did the legal part of it. No ceremony, no vows, no hype. Just sitting casually in my families living room. In the eyes of the government we were now legally married. But in the eyes of us (& God) we were not.

We started to pack our bags and think about what we were going to do about everything else.

...to be continued...

Reflections... our crazy wedding story pt 1

   

     This time 3 years ago Matt and I found ourselves in quite the stressful situation.
We had spent months planning our destination wedding to the Mayan Riviera along with approximately 40 guests accompanying us from BC, Alberta, Ontario and Washington State. We were due to leave in one week and then... the swine flu hit.
At first it wasn't a big deal. Sure, alot of people were getting sick, but we weren't about to change our wedding around at the risk of catching a flu bug. We probably wouldn't catch it anyway. But then the government stepped in and stopped all travel to Mexico, causing all our flights to be cancelled; basically cancelling our entire wedding.

     The travel company offered us last minute trips to Jamaica and Cuba. Sure, we would have to re plan our entire wedding but the resorts were similar and we could probably pull it off. But within 12 hours of making those offers they were retracted, and we were told we would have to reschedule our Mexico trip for months down the road. We explained to them how this wasn't possible. Our guests had booked time off work for this trip and put money into it, we weren't going to reschedule. They told us, 'too bad, we aren't giving you your money back.'

     Thankfully, CBC news got ahold of our story through our travel agent and immediately set up TV and newspaper interviews. You can read the news story on us here . *just a side note - we never said we were going to file a class action lawsuit. I guess that sounds a bit more dramatic though doesn't it* After we had been on the air a couple of times we got a call saying that if we stopped talking to the media, the travel company would refund our whole parties money. No problem, we just wanted our money back. Nothing like a little bad publicity to do the right thing eh?

     Now that everyone had their money back, what were we going to do about a wedding? We had several options. We could have a last minute wedding here, but we felt like it would turn into a 'pity party' event. Already when we saw people we knew they were giving us the sad head tilted to the side look followed by, "I am so sorry..." line. No thank you. Thats not what I wanted for my wedding day. Matt and I considered running off to Greece and eloping. Seriously. We actually considered this. But our friends and family had been so supportive through the whole situation that we really wanted them to be a part of our special day.

     So we decided to try for another location. First place that came to my mind was Hawaii.

...to be continued...

Our tropical paradise

Yep, were going back! Today I booked flights for us to go to Hawaii this fall.

My family has loved Hawaii since our first visit over 10 years ago. But it became even more special 3 years ago when Matt and I got married there amongst a few close family and friends.
We are very excited to share this special place with our son, who will be a year old then and most likely able to toddle around on the beach. Oh the cuteness!

This time we are heading to the island of Oahu and staying at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. My parents and brothers will be there as well as a few of our friends. I can't wait!

After this trip we plan to take a year off and stick close to home. But of course I will probably be dreaming of and planning our next adventure. I can't help it! It's in my genes!