farewell tropical sunshine

this post is being started on the airplane home from maui. we arrived at the airport in time to pick up some pizza to supplement the airplane food, although hawaiin airlines did come up with a pretty good turkey sandwich and brownie for dinner. i wanted a bloody mary, but while the tomato juice and tabasco sauce was free, they wanted $7.50 for a shot of vodka, so i opted for a virgin. to which historico/religious mary does the eponymous drink refer to? kylie is better equipped to answer that question.

a long flight affords me the opportunity to further elucidate details of our time in hawaii that have been previously glossed over, as well as occasionally and egregiously forgotten altogether.
first up, tyrn james. he was fantastic on this trip. he had a great plane ride over, and he is currently sleeping in his seat on the ride home. he is a pretty easy kid and a good traveller, and this trip has borne that out. aside from getting up at 5:30 every morning (we'll come back to that) he has been a pleasure to have along.
certainly beach vacations are different with a toddler, but the rewards come in new ways. instead of trekking all over the island looking for the best snorkelling and surfing sites, we have spent most of our beach time running up and down the shore getting swamped by waves or building sand piles (you couldn't call them castles).
for the second week of our time in hawaii, we moved north to lahaina where we had found a one bedroom cottage well outside of town.


ty's early start time produced a pleasant byproduct; every morning i would take him for a run or a hike to allow kylie to get back to sleep after her early shift. our place outside lahaina backed onto beautiful volcanic slopes cleaved with steep valleys. two mornings we ventured out before sunrise to experience dawn in the mountains.






some friends of julie and lowell's, named ryan and adele, were staying in lahaina as well, and we got together on a few occasions to play on the beach and use the hottub and kids pool. on the first day of our arrival, the resort was serving wine, baked brie with cashews, grapes and cream cheese and mushroom pastries in the lobby. we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and i ate a lot of brie.
ty really enjoyed both ryan and adele. despite the fact that we had never met them before, we were able to leave ty playing in the waves with them while kylie and i borrowed their snorkeling gear to check out the reef just off the hotel beach.
the pool was a great setup for kids, with a swimming pool, wading pool and hottub all juxtaposed, meaning everyone could be where they wanted to and remain within supervisory distance.


kylie celebrated her birthday while we were in hawaii. she had an excellent day, starting with breakfast on our front deck.
after that we went to the beach, then kylie left for the spa while ty napped. in the afternoon we returned to ryan and adele's hotel and poached their hottub, even though they had already checked out.

in the evening, we went out for a nice dinner in the harbour and took ty for gelato after. he much preferred kylie's coconut cream to my dark chocolate.
but alas, contrary to our previous experience, holidays like this cannot continue until we are sun sated. we are now back in chilliwack and i am back at work. it has been an easy transition though. today i went for a bike ride in the sunshine, and for our first two days back in BC, we played host to aaron and su, newly arrived from singapore. we enjoyed meeting su for the first time, and touring her around our corner of canada. more on that to come.