Maui

Tutt family, wet., originally uploaded by DPC Tutt.

Wow. Maui was great. I sure wish we could have spent about 4 more months there.

I think Maui is the hot equivalent to Whistler. Lots of fancy hotels, restaurants and shops. Surf bums and CEOs and everyone in between seems to like it there for good reason. There is no shortage of fun things to do for people of all ages. Our trip was definitely focused on water, either the pool or a beach. We made it into the ocean on everyday but one (the rain day) and had a blast. We stuck mostly to the beaches that were protected with little or no surf. On our first or second day we went to Big Beach where the wind was blowing and the waves were big (at least they seemed big, maybe 3 feet?). In those conditions it was hard to swim safely while holding a child. I drank a fair amount of salt water that day trying to swim with Andrew. We didn't do any of the driving trips on Maui like the road to Hana or the Haleakala volcano. The kids just wouldn't have appreciated it. I guess we'll just have to go back and do those another time.

Our condo (Papakea on the north end of Kaanapali beach) was good and was near a number of good beaches and restaurants. The only complaint we had was that during the day, construction noise from a unit two floors above made relaxing while the kids napped difficult. Carly loved going to the pool. She liked to play with the other kids and got pretty good at floating around by herself with a pool noodle. Andrew loved being in any type of water and would flap his arms and kick his legs laughing the whole time.

Penny and I both enjoyed the time together as a family. It was great to be away from "life" for a while and have a few days where you're most challenging issue was which beach to go to or which place to go for supper. Neither of us got much time to really enjoy the fruits of Maui (surfing, snorkeling, dining without children) so a future trip may be in the cards 'sans enfants'.

Travelling with the kids went much better than I expected. Carly didn't nap on the way there but was very well behaved. She watched tv, played some games, read some books and took lots of walks up and down the isle. I think she really enjoyed using the "tiny little bathroom at the back". Andrew was a dream to travel with. For the most part it was like having an extra piece of carry-on baggage. He spent half the trip on the way there and the ENTIRE flight on the way back sleeping under the seat in front of Penny. He was really a trooper. Out return flight was delayed a bit by snow (in Vancouver not Maui!) but other than that our travels went without incident. Also, I didn't have any medical issues on the trip. It was a great trip. You can count on us going back at the earliest opportunity!