Nelli Family Antics: Aloha from Kauai!

On May 21st, we travelled to Kauai to visit my parents. Chris had been travelling to Asia so much this year that he was able to upgrade our whole family to business-first for the long flight. The hot fudge sundae was Lia's favorite part of this experience. My favorite part was all the space and the chairs that not only recline but provide a foot rest and lumbar support! I was able to watch a great movie called The Big Miracle about the attempt to rescue a family of whales trapped in ice in Alaska. It was a fabulous movie and made the time go by really fast. The kids enjoyed working on their new Usborne sticker books and playing the games on the video system. And yes, we were very spoiled. We would never pay for business first... but it is nice to see how the other half lives every now and then.

It takes the entire day to get to Kauai. We flew Houston to Honolulu direct and then we switched to a Hawaiian flight for the island hop to Lihue, Kauai. Our routine is always the same... Once we land in Kauai and get our baggage, Chris gets the rental car and we head to our favorite pizza place in Kilauea for take-out. David and Emily were still awake but Lia passed out in the van on the way to Nana and Grandpa's condo. In fact, she never even ate dinner that night but just passed out till the next day. After dinner, we are always exhausted and fall asleep before 8pm. The next day our body clocks are always mixed up. We were all up by 5am. I was greeted by Emily's overly cheerful "Hello Mom!" which is always quickly followed by, "I'm hungry!." My parent's condo is an open-air community and quiet hours are strictly enforced between 9am and 9pm. It is always a challenge to keep my kids quiet... but it is an especially difficult challenge when you are 4 hours away from 9am!!

So once the sun came up, we were able to head out for our traditional morning walk to The Cliffs. What a beautiful morning. The girls kenw they wanted to collect flowers for the condo so they came prepared with a bag. Our rule is that they can only pick up flowers that fall on the ground.... but this doesn't limit them much. There are flowers all over the ground everywhere. We were lucky to find a plumeria branch on the ground that had been pruned by some workers. It had a ton of plumeria blooms on it and once we got it in some water at the condo, it bloomed for the entire 2 weeks we were on vacation. If we could have planted it, I'm sure we could have grown a new tree.

After settling in, we headed to beautiful Hanalei Bay to get in some ocean time. The kids were thrilled to pull out all their sand toys and get to work.