Ahhh...Maui!

Well, Maui fails to disappoint again! This was our first trip to the islands in October and it was hard for me to believe that the weather would be as warm and sunny and consistent as it is in the summer months...but, it was beautiful (and noticeably less crowded!). Highs in the upper 80s every day - the evenings were cool and pleasant - lows around 70 -- it was great! Windy at times, which didn't always make me want to jump in the pool or the ocean, but... the kids were completely unaffected. Ellie would swim day or night, sunny or cloudy, even the morning it rained for a few minutes -- she wanted to be swimming 24-7! Frank was a good sport - he always jumped right in with them. (Ellie did tell me that "daddy was way more fun than mommy at swimming." Fair enough :)

We visited our favorite restaurants -- Cheeseburger in Paradise (Nathan's new favorite, too -- they have live music -- he was hooked -- best behavior from him at a restaurant ever!), Longhi's (Frank and I got to go alone...left Grandma and Grandpa in the pool with the kids...), Leilani's on the Beach (they got rid of my chicken teriyaki sandwich, but it was still good), and of course, Pizza Paradiso (ok, we did this one more than once!)

We tried some new places, too. We went to Kimo's (great location / view...food OK, too!), back to Longhi's for breakfast (always wanted to try it in the a.m. -- we were not disappointed), and the Cool Cat Cafe (yum - burgers!). Overall, we ate like kings (as the scale would indicate... I gained some weight last week in Maui, and a couple more pounds than can be accounted for by "baby"...) Home again, and time to be "good" and get back on track - bummer!

We also did a couple of "kid-friendly" touristy things while we were there -- a couple of boat tours. The first one was called the Reefdancer -- it was a semi-submarine -- the bottom half of the boat was under water - that's where we sat - there were big glass windows to look out. The boat sailed out to the reef and we enjoyed the reef-life. They also had divers go down to the ocean floor and bring up things we might not notice on our own -- urchins, octopus, etc. That was cool -- Ellie got a big kick out of it - especially the octopus! The diver stuck it right to her window and spread out all of its arms -- she was impressed... It was a nice alternative to snorkeling... all the views, without any of the actual snorkeling (which our kids could definitely not have done...) The other boat tour that we did was a "Dolphin Adventure" put on by the Pacific Whale Foundation -- it was a longer tour (about 3 hours) and it was very cool! We sailed out off the coast of Lana'i -- and once we found where dolphins were hanging out that day, the boat was surrounded by them. It was amazing (and hard to capture on film)! They were so fast - they were racing the boat, jumping into the air (yeah, like at the zoo shows). Ellie thought the trip was all worth while because she saw a baby dolphin swimming with its mommy and daddy. It was very cool to see this dolphin family swimming along together -- she called it "even amazing-er" than the octopus!

Besides the two boat tours, we spent most of the week, souvenir shopping, swimming (at least once, if not twice a day!), playing in the sand, and of course, eating! The week went by so quickly -- the kids were great (busy all the time - always ready to nap / sleep). Even the traveling was smooth -- Nathan had his "tunes" and Ellie was happy to watch DVD's and do dot-to dots. The 8 hour flight over was almost enjoyable! (OK, so after the overnight flight back to O'Hare -- nathan didn't sleep hardly at all -- we would have rather not had to wait 2 hours to get on another plane back to Omaha, but you gotta do what you gotta do...Nathan was asking for "no more air-panes")

We are still recovering from our jet-lag. The kids are a bit thrown off still. (the first morning we were home, ellie was surprised that when she woke up..."the sun was already up!") It has been a while since that has happened! We're getting there, though. The jet lag is all completely worth it -- we always leave Maui wondering when we will return, but it's never long before we find our way back.