Yes, we went to Hawaii. We own a timeshare out in Ko'Olina on the island of Oahu. It's located about half-hour west of Honolulu. It's an ideal location because it's not near anything touristical, but if you need anything it's only a quick drive away.
Here are all the kids (except Miles) that went on this trip. Yes, that's Lena Latour. She's a great friend and her parents agreed to have her come along with us on the trip. So, if you count it up, that's 6 from the McFarlane's, 4 from the Nings, and Lena makes 11 people in a 2 bedroom resort. Luckily, there was plenty of room and we spent most of the time at the pools.
I don't know who had the wise idea of sending Susie and Tannya to Target shopping together. They were gone for HOURS and when they came back, Crew and Simon had several matching outfits. As you can tell, Simon got tan, but crew pretty stayed white.
There were several pools at the resort...2 main pools which had various features. One pool had a beach walk-in and was only 10" deep which made it perfect for Simon and Crew to just crawl around. There were at least 6 hot tubs. If you ever felt crowded, you could just walk over and jump into another one. Another pool had a cave, waterfall, and a slide. This is Paige coming down the slide. The older kids really enjoyed this one.
Simon of course had arm floaties on. We brought a floating island for Miles to sit in. That way we all could enjoy time in the water.
Crew and Simon really enjoyed playing with eachother. Crew, being able to you know, speak...would ask where Simon and Miles were all the time. Here they were chasing waves out at 1 of 4 private man-made lagoons.
A 10 minute walk down the beach brought us to the Ihilani Hotel which had an exotic fish pool where we went and saw very color fish, hammer-head sharks, and sting rays.
There were all sorts of activities that you could do there. Everyone who could swim, went out on a catamaran ride one morning and saw dozens of dolphins, snorkeled and also saw giant sea turtles. Every morning you could also walk over to the Ihilani to feed the tropical fish which were trained to show-up there every morning for food.
Depending on his mood, Miles would some times just look at us all from the stroller while we enjoyed the water. He was a trooper.
Simon always wakes up at 6:30 PST. Being 3 hours earlier, we were worried that Simon would wake-up at 3:30am, so we kept him up really late the first night. He still woke up at 3:30 the first night, then 4:00, then 4:15, then 5:00, then 5:30, 5:30, 5:30, then we went home. He would routinely head out to the living room where Lena was sleeping and climb all over her.
After the first couple of nights, she requested that we not have him head out there until at least 7pm. We caught her several times pushing a nap in the afternoons.
We all had a wonderful time. We were able to go out in the evenings and spent some quality time as adults in hot tubs, dining at Roy's, and watching Wolverine in the theatre. It had been a long time since we spent this much time with all of the McFarlane's. There were free/open BBQ pits outside the buildings which we probably should have taken more advantage of. But there was a CostCo, we went to see the LDS Temple in Laie', and went body surfing at Hukilau beach, at Shaved ice, shopped at the Swap Meet, walked the Alamoana Mall...and we never walked in Waikiki. Very fun and relaxing trip.
That's right, he wouldn't wear it. I won't say what it is, just in case next year Miles decides to wear it. I'll give you a hint though, it went in theme with Miles' shark costume, and Kelvin and Susie's matching "Discovery Channel" t-shirts.
