Bella, Gabe and Josiah

I got to go on two dates! The first one was with Nathan. Since he has a full time job and together we have three small children, we haven’t had much time just the two of us. So I got up at the crack of dawn and met him for breakfast before he had to go to work. It was lovely! Then I headed back to the condo and all of my original plans of the fun things we could do seemed like too much with, so instead we went to the lagoon at Al Moana and played at the beach for a bit. We didn’t pay too long because we could see the clouds rolling in and we really wanted to avoid the Hanama Bay drama that happened last time we were here, which Gabe has renamed The Boom Beach after we ended up in the middle of a thunder storm. We headed to the food court at the mall for lunch and then back to the condo for a nap. Actually, Pat ran some errands, while the boys and I went back to nap. Unfortunately, I was the only one who was convinced that sleep was important... Actually, Gabe did pretty well. But Josy

We decided that it the perfect day to go to Kailua.  Josy was sure that we needed to bring the boogie board, so he decided to carry it. (As a side note, they’re painting the hallways and the elevators in our condo, so it looks lovely...) When we got to Kailua, I instantly wished that we’d been staying there for the entire trip... Gabe named his pirate ship Prince Duke in Boots. No idea why... But he spent a long time digging in the sand, trying to get a moat that it could sail in. It also spent a long time washing up on the shore. I was helping Gabe dig when he suddenly threw the ship at me and yelled “I’ve got to catch some waves!” and grabbed the boogie board. After a few waves, he declared a “life jacket emergency” and put on a floaty vest for the rest of his time in the water. After a long time of playing in the water, which was really the perfect beach day, we cleaned up to head to lunch. While we were loading up, a couple of people brought out an octopus that they’d caught. As a

We had a pretty slow morning. I got up and went for a run. It was so nice that when I got back, I told Pat that he should go for a run too. While he was running, I decided to take the boys to the beach. However, the beach was closed. It was the same beach that Gabe and I had sat at the day before, but now they were doing a massive construction project and we won’t be sitting at that beach again on this trip... We walked down the beach a ways and eventually found a place to play, but it isn’t quite as protected by the breakwater. Gabe was fine, but Josy was not interested in playing in the water at all. To be fair, Josiah wasn’t interested in anything. He was completely toast. Apparently the five minute nap the day before, plus an entire week of playing super hard and a bit of sunburn from the waterpark all combined together to give us a child that was so completely fried that he was completely non-functional. After the beach we went to get açaí bowls and I actually thought he’d fall as

I’ve been waking up super early, before everyone else. Sometimes I lay in bed until the boys are up, sometimes I get up and hang out on the balcony. This morning I was reading when Gabe got up, so we decided to eat breakfast on the lanai, where Gabe proclaimed it was “a lovely day!” Then he and I decided to go to the beach while Daddy and Josy slept. Then they both went up while we were heading out the door, but since they still needed breakfast, they missed out. And they definitely missed it. It was the perfect temperature and I felt like I missed out by not putting my swim suit on so that I could actually play in the water with Gabe. After an hour, we headed back and collected the other two and headed to the waterpark by Nathan and Cassie’s house. We spent most of the day there, but I took no pictures because my phone was in the locker so that I could play hands free. Josy was pretty apprehensive at first and was attached to my hip for a very long time, but eventually he warmed up a

We had a bit of a slow start, but we decided that it was a good day to head up to the lagoons at Ko Olina. In retrospect, that slow start was a huge mistake, but we didn’t know that at the time... We got up to Uncle Nathan and Auntie’s house and threw in a load of laundry (including Blankey, which needed washed desperately, but had to be washed when it wasn’t naptime, which is hard when you don’t have laundry in the condo you’re staying at...). By the time the laundry was going and everyone had eaten and played with the animals and said good morning to their cousins and whatnot, we headed out. Nathan casually mentioned that parking could be interesting, but we’d figure it out. Interesting was an understatement. All five lots were full, so we stopped Pat off to find some lunch while I sat in the car with the boys at what looked to be the shortest line into a lot. I never even moved. Eventually, Nathan and Cassie showed up, but Nathan had ripped his shorts and needed to head back to the