Hawaii May 2009

In early May Mike tells me he has to go to Honolulu on business and had been trying to work it out for me to go along but he just wasn't able to do it alone. Thanks to our wonderful friends, the Smiths and another awesome couple in our ward, the Larsons, who took over with the kids when the Smith's left town for their own vacation--I was able to go along. Our hotel, car and Mike's food were all paid for by his company and Mike had a $400 voucher with Delta Airlines after being bumped from a flight a few months prior so all I had to pay was $209 for my plane ticket for a week in beautiful Waikiki!!! Although we miss him when he's gone, there are definitely advantages to having a husband who travels frequently for work. With our kids in competent and loving hands, we flew off for another week away (we had only returned from our cruise a few weeks before). My favorite part of the entire week was the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie but of course right when we got there our camera battery died! Seems like that's the story of every vacation we go on. I even went back a different day during the week to take more photos (and enjoy my favorite shows again while Mike was working) but for some reason those photos and video clips didn't save properly because when I downloaded the camera, they didn't appear....I really wish I was more electronic savvy! We flew to Honolulu on a Sunday and spent most of Monday at the Polynesian Cultural Center. So here we are after the show and back in our hotel room. Tuesday through Friday morning Mike really did have to work all day but Friday we went to Pearl Harbor. We toured a submarine, the USS Bowfin as well as the USS Missouri battleship and the USS Arizona Memorial. There were lots of old pieces of ships to see while we waited for our tour to begin. USS Arizona Memorial. USS Missouri in the background. Thanks to recommendations from the Clement family, we had an awesome dinner at a great place called "Dukes" -- it was well worth the hour long wait! We went someplace else for dessert but had an amazing mud pie (to share, of course). Waiting for dinner we wandered around outside and found dozens of surf boards all stored for the night...someday I might take a surfing lesson on vacation but there wasn't time during this trip. The last day we were there we went on a lengthy horseback ride. It's kind of a tradition we've been able to do on most of our vacations. It was beautiful country and we were with a small group so it was quiet and peaceful...a great way to see the north side of the island.We had an awful hotel the first 5 nights but the last night we moved to the beautiful Hawaii Prince and this was the view out our window. We should have stayed there the entire week. It was down by the marina instead of right in downtown Waikiki but the hotel was clean and spacious and just simply gorgeous. I highly recommend it to anyone heading out there...best of all, we got it on Hotwire.com for only $89 for the night. (Since we extended our stay past Mike's work obligations, we paid for the last night ourselves.) A beautiful floral arrangement greeted us by the elevators. Oh, how I wish we would have stayed here the entire week. One piece of advice: listen to tripadvisor.com -- they know what they are talking about! It's a great resource for actual guest reviews of just about anyplace you would go on vacation. Thanks again to the Smiths, Larsons and my darling spouse for allowing me the gift of time away from kiddos and although the days were long with Mike working, I found great places to go shopping and even worked out at the YMCA every day. I know I am especially blessed to enjoy traveling like we do but it's my absolute most favorite thing to do whenever I have the chance. Our next trip was our West Coast road trip. I'll post all about our month away when I have a chance. Stay tuned....

Taffy

Okay Mom -- this is for you! My mom keeps telling me she checks my blog often only to find I haven't posted anything new. Well this news is not new to her but a post of news of our family anyway.... So in May and early June we were preparing for a 6,000 mile road trip out West and contemplating whether or not to rent a car for the trip or take our own van. The rental would cost almost $1,000 and without upgrading to a full-size SUV (for $2,200 for a month) the rental company wouldn't guarantee us a vehicle that would seat our family of 7. The didn't have any mini-vans available at the time. This all goes back to the summer of 2003 when we drove our old van from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, CA for our summer trip only to have our transmission die right when we got off the freeway at our home exit, Bond Road. I didn't want to spent the $3,000+ to fix the older van we'd had continuous problems with. Mike wasn't ready to stray from our plan to wait 6-9 more months to buy a new van. The dealership where the van had been towed offered us $3,000 toward a trade-in which I wanted to do but Mike wasn't willing to change our time line for a new vehicle. We really don't fight -- we disagree sometimes -- but this was by far the biggest "disagreement" of our 7 years of marriage at that time. To top it off we were leaving in a few days for a trip to Hawaii, leaving our kids with Mike's mom for a week to have a romantic vacation alone. So we paid the $3,000 to have the old van fixed then only kept it for 6 more months before we gave up trying to continue repairing the old van and traded it in for Mike's Altima where we got how much for a trade-in???? Just $3,000!!! It had been a lemon of a van in my opinion which is another reason our next vehicles have all been brand new. Mike promised me back then that we would never drive an old van on a long trip. It wasn't worth the stress of wondering if it would die -- of course at that time we didn't have to rent a large vehicle as we only had 3 kids are weren't planning to have any more. Mason was 8 months old at the time. So in preparation for an even longer trip with our family of 7 we decided what are cars for -- we pay for them to drive them where we want to go. So we agreed to take our van in to a repair shop to have it checked out and made ready for such a long trip. We agreed we wouldn't spend any more than $500 on repairs for a vehicle with 101,000 miles that we were only planning to keep till the end of the year. The owner of the shop called us himself and said he definitely would NOT take this van on a long trip. The rack & pinion on the front right side was worn and could fail at any time causing us to lose steering in the right front wheel. That was the only major repair but others were needed soon. This NEEDED repair would cost us over $1200 and we were planning to leave town the next afternoon. After talking with Mike we decided we would move up our plans to buy a new van. I spent that afternoon looking on the internet for dealerships in the area who had the model and color I wanted and also talked with a neighbor who had bought the same exact van just 10 days before. So what did we do? We drove the silver van three of my kids had ever only known from the repair shop straight to a Honda dealership and bought the white Honda Odyssey I had wanted when we bought this Chrysler van almost 7 years ago. We didn't even see it or drive it before we filled out all the paperwork. The research our neighbor had done before buying their Odyssey was invaluable as we had just one evening to buy this new van and pack it up to drive out to the west coast and back with stops in Colorado, Utah, California & Nebraska. It's a bit crazy to be so excited about a new MINIVAN but I've recommended the van to numerous friends over the years who have known of my obsession with cars and asked for my opinion about which van to buy. I finally got my own!!! Thank you to Mike for giving me this luxury. It's an EX-L model with leather, sunroof, DVD player with wireless headsets, 8 seats and a power liftgate. The middle windows roll down (my kids were constantly asking me to do this in our old van that didn't have the ability to do so) and I even have XM radio for a few months. We've had it for 8 weeks today and have over 7200 miles already but they've been fun to drive, even when I had to drive all the way home from Sacramento by myself with all five kids! Mike had flown home from there to return to work. We have a few friends and family members who name their cars so we thought it would be fun to do as well. After unsuccessfully trying a few other names we agreed to name her "Taffy". The official name of the van color is "taffeta white" which is where the name came from. Okay, Mom -- there's your post. When I have a bit more time I'll share all about Hawaii, summer fun with cousins and our road trip of 2009. Stay tuned....