Here is the scenario. It is travel day and we have a 9:30am flight from Houston to Honolulu. The goal was to leave the house at 6:30am. This means all the bags had to be packed and ready to go the night before so our children could be escorted from their beds to the car. The packing kept us up till midnight. My alarm went off at 5:15am (ugh.) I got the kids up at 6:00. Emily was so excited she jumped out of bed and said, "I'm not going to miss out on Hawaii!" Emily is not usually a morning person so this is big. David and Lia were pretty much half asleep. They cooperated but didn't really understand what was going on. As you can see, pulling out of our driveway, we were only 7 minutes late. I'm sure this was built into my husband's contingency plan.
Our flight was uneventful. 8 hours on a plane with a 6, 4, and a 2 year old is pretty much what we thought it would be... Emily, our super traveller, kept busy with all her new stuff. She had snacks, crayons, coloring sheets, paper dolls, a Mickey Mouse paint with water book, and a new Pippi Longstocking book. Throw in the Continental entertainment of music and movies... she was set. She entertained herself the whole time. We couldn't have been more proud.
David stayed busy but had some issues dropping his toys and crayons... luckily sister could help him most of the time as they had the two seats by the window. David liked looking at the real time map display so he could see where the plane was and get all the stats about how fast we were going, how much time left, etc... And he overcame his fear of the airplane bathroom on our last trip so all was pretty good in that department.
And Lia, on my lap went as well as it could. At some point she was screaming on the floor for about half an hour and I kicked myself for not packing lollipops for the inconsolable child. Oh well, such is life. We made it though. In Honolulu, there was a short layover for a flight to Lihue. My sweet and loving husband got me an espresso to wake me up.... and David in pure boy fashion rammed into me causing 'said espresso' to spill all over me. Lovely. I smelled like a coffee shop. Ahh.. memories.
At the airport, while Chris got the rental car, Emily found a Hawaiian red ginger flower to be put in her hair. So exciting. More adventures to come.
I saw this gingerbread kit at Kroger and thought my kids might have fun with it. I helped them assemble the pieces to make the house and they did the decorating on their own... while consuming quite a bit of candy as well!
I think they were very proud!
Side view...
Kiddie pyramid.