Hawaii - Day 1

Wow.  What a long day that was.  I'm writing this at 5:30am Hawaiian time on our first morning because I could not get the hotel wireless to work last night, plus I was exhausted.  Now the wireless is working, and all the kids are up, because it is 9:30am in Regina and they aren't tired.  Hopefully we will survive the day with them.

Our day yesterday started at 3:15am when we got up, got ready to go to the airport and left the house.  We arrived at the airport at 4:00am and went through the manual check in process, only to be told that we had to use the regular check in process, so we hauled everything through the line and got checked in.  Security was complicated due to all the carry on and kids, but we got through easily.  Everyone sat down and had a quick bite to eat while I went through the Tim Horton's line for some hot water for Bradley and some cold water for the rest of us.

The flight to Calgary was uneventful.  The kids loved it, though Evan struggled with his ears as we descended.  Our time in Calgary was a blur, as we only had 1.5 hours to get through customs and security again.  At customs, they allowed us to jump the majority of the line, due to how late we were and how long it took our luggage to get off the plane.  We still had to go through part of the line, but not all of it.  Security was a bit more crazy as Jonathan touched the scanner for some reason as he walked through, which sets off an alarm, and they randomly selected Evan's carry on bag for extra testing.  We then hustled through the airport and got to our gate right after the final boarding check.  We settled in and then took off for Hawaii.

The kids did extremely well on the flight, watching a movie and playing with their toys.  Grandpa took Bradley for a number of walks up and down the plane, as he was a bit tired of being confined.  The only problems occurred while landing - Jonathan had only napped for about half an hour and decided to throw a fit instead of buckling his seatbelt.  Luckily a stewardess had some small rubber spiders for the kids and that calmed him down.  Once again, Evan complained about his ears, and I have to admit the descent was horrible.  As I write this Saturday morning, my one ear is still plugged up a bit and I'm having trouble hearing.

In Honolulu, we met our ride to the hotel, got our luggage and made it to the hotel.  Unfortunately, they didn't do check-ins until 4:00pm and it was only 1:00pm local time.  We did all the check in stuff except for getting a room, left our luggage at the hotel and then went out for lunch (or supper, depending upon your point of view).  After that we walked down to the beach and let the kids play in the sand for a bit, though since we had no swim trunks, no towels and everyone was still in long pants, it was more frustrating than fun.  We returned at 3:55pm and were told our room still wasn't ready, which I found quite annoying, as they knew we were here already, we had been up for 19 hours and the kids were getting out of control.  Finally, at about 4:30pm we were in our room and somewhat settled down.

The wireless at the hotel is spotty, to say the least, as it would not connect all evening, except for a couple of times on my phone, so I'm not sure how up to date I will be able to be on the blog.  We're here until Friday, when we fly over to the island of Hawaii (or the Big Island) for the rest of our trip.