Retreating

We were on a church retreat this past weekend.  It was a pretty fantastic time to *get away*, chill, and let the kids run amok for a couple of days.  :)

It was a great weekend - hot, but nice breezes.  We all spent a good chunk of time in the pool, usually while Meaghan was napping.  I guess that's not *all* of us, then.

Dustin started out with an eye infection, but Graeme went into town to grab some polysporin drops right away, so we got it under control.  By the next morning, you could barely tell that his eye was being problematic!

First night was OK - rough sleep all around.  Dustin barged into the room where Meaghan and Graeme and I were sleeping - at 5:00 a.m. - to ask if it was time to wake up.  Of course I sent him back to bed and told him to close the door quietly on his way out.  Yup, he slammed the door.  Meaghan was then awake basically from 5:00 a.m. until probably around 1:00 that afternoon, with the exception of a half-hour dozing sometime between 5:30 and 6:30.  Because being up 3-4 times that first night wasn't enough, apparently.  Needless to say, exhaustion quickly crept in and last night Graeme was sent to the boys' room to keep them in there when dawn hit.  Good thing, too.... Dustin fell out of bed once (ever try to stuff a sleeping boy back into a sleeping bag?), both boys had stuffed noses that needed to be blown (because of course they were completely incapable themselves), and Dustin had a bad dream (might've had something to do with falling out of bed). Meaghan?  Oh, she slept phenomenally.  :)

It was a nice relaxing time away; lots of good food, lots of opportunities to sit and chat with people, etc...  I didn't get to go canoeing, but we did get some good pool time in.  That was worth a lot!!  Dustin is now loving the diving board concept, with life jacket of course, and can 'swim' to the edge of the pool.  Joshua is also MUCH more enjoying the diving board concept... but has started getting braver and now does it without a life jacket, and still gets to the edge of the pool.  Fun times!

Joshua, however, ended up with what I believed to be heat exhaustion, but he isn't better yet.  Fever, upset tummy, cough (that's what's making me wonder now...)... poor kid has been low-grade fever for over 24 hours now.  He's fairly lethargic and wasted...  I had severe heat exhaustion once, and it's not something I ever want to deal with again.

Now for some pictures...

Meaghan was trying to convince Madi (in the stroller, Mike & Christina's youngest daughter) that the bottle should be shared... Madi was having nothing to do with that coercion.  Interesting how Meaghan is so interested in bottles when she still gets it straight from mama-moo...

Maybe if I look pretty enough...?  This is Meaghan's first ponytail.  It was quite the process to get this thing in!!

The boys playing with other children... fun times!

Meaghan playing with one of the older girls...

Sitting pretty, showing off her new ponytail and her teeth.

This is how Meaghan "crawls" on the grass.  She doesn't like her knees to touch the ground/sidewalk/anything, unless she's indoors.

The view.

Joshua jumping off the diving board.

A friend of Joshua's (we are good friends with her family), also jumping off the diving board.  How graceful!!

The sister of the girl in the above picture... this girl is not so graceful.  Nope.  Not one iota.

And then there's Dustin. Nope, not so graceful either.  Sure had fun, though!

Meaghan in the ergo, Daddy holding Joshua's hand.

A fun relay race... the participants had to dress up in this hat, with a rubber chicken in the top of it, wearing angel wings and a flower, and carrying a plastic egg in a toilet plunger.

Beautiful sunset pictures that Graeme caught...

We had a baptism service also on the Sunday afternoon... we actually know this kid's family; his mom was my doula, and they attend our church.  Anyway, I used my "burst" mode on all the baptism candidates' dunkings... I even caught some splash in the pictures!!

Maui Chronicles - Day Nine

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Slow drivers, free stuff, and birds that mock me

This morning was my last walk on the beach.  I finally get Graeme to walk with me to the very end of the beach; usually when we are out walking together, we've only gone so far as it's been dark and we've needed to get Meggie back to nap.  But this day, it was young in the day, and we needed to get some air.

I'd done a bunch of packing so far, so when we got back from our walk, we only had to put Meaghan down for her nap and finish up the last details. We each grabbed a shower (not together... good grief! this is a PUBLIC blog! Did you REALLY think that?) and then Graeme started hauling stuff down to the jeep.  We had requested a late checkout to accommodate Meaghan's napping, however, the incessant scraping of chairs *right* above where she was sleeping was enough to drive me batty!  As for Meaghan, the nap was not a success; she only got about 45 minutes.  This worried me, as I knew we would be out the rest of the day, and that napping was not a certainty for her later on... and that she would be a mess if the nap didn't happen later.

So we checked out, and inquired about the private units available for rent.  We were told that there was no printout, but that we'd have to go into the lower level (parkade level) of each tower (there were 2) and copy down the info we wanted.  

Now, we'd already checked out, meaning we had no way to get back into the building.  So we did what anyone would do; we waited for someone to either go in or come out of the building and we just snuck in after them.  :)  We found massive lists... no way we could copy down the info!  So we brought out our camera and took pictures of the lists.  We'll be doing some phoning!

We drove to Lahaina one more time, where the weather was HOT and beautiful!  

We walked around a bit, bought two more bags of chocolate-toffee covered macadamia nuts, and a little bracelet & necklace for me.  We found a nice little 50's diner called Cool Cat Cafe.  

Meaghan reading the drinks menu:

Since she was underage, she chose instead to eat the menu.

Chillin' with my Daddy, waitin' for our food...

"Oh, how I adore my daddy..."

We ordered Frings (half a basket of fries with half a basket of onion rings), and we both ordered a chicken club sandwich called a Chubby Checker.  The thing was huge, and oh so good!!  

Graeme scarfing down the last piece of Maui Gold Pineapple he would eat on the island...

Oh, and we got free root beer floats.  It's been years since I've had a root beer float.  But some guy on the street gave us coupons for free ones.  So, who am I to pass up a free dessert?  HA!

We then walked around a bit more - we still had about 6 hours to kill before we even had to be at the airport - and found the big banyon tree of Lahaina.  These things are massive - it's basically all one tree, with tendrils that come down and root themselves.  It's almost freakish.  But beautiful.  After taking some pictures, I nursed Meaghan under the banyon tree.  So nice!!

We still had about 5 hours to kill, but Meaghan was tired and we were hot, and my heat rash was starting to vehemently protest.  So we hopped in the van and explored the island for an hour or so, while Meaghan (thankfully!) napped.  The roads were narrow and winding.  

And busy.

And coming towards us, we saw a caravan... we could only see a few vehicles, but soon we realized it would be much much longer than that.  You see, the guy in the 'lead' vehicle was only clicking along at about 20 miles an hour.

On a 45 mph road.  The signs also post a "minimum" speed.  This guy was nowhere close to the posted minimum 35 mph.

So I started counting vehicles.  By the time I hit 50 cars, I was giggling.  Number 73 was a fire truck.  By the time we hit the end, number (ready?) 122, I was in hysterics.  Can you imagine how frustrating this must've been for all those people??  Oh man...  and more vehicles were quickly approaching the slow-moving caravan.

We finally ended up back in Kahului, where we flew into.  We were going to walk around a bit, but it had turned windy and rainy a bit, so we kept indoors as much as possible.  It was very clear that Kahului was not a tourist town.  Lots of industrial, lots of regular stores.  Very dirty.  Not well manicured.

But there we were.

We ended up in a new organic food grocery store that had just opened in the mall there.  We were hungry but didn't want greasy food-court food, so Graeme ordered a brie cheese turkey sandwich, and I went to the salad bar and built my own salad, where you pay "per pound".  It was fantastic... mixed spring greens, tomatoes, a bit of cheese, mushrooms, peas, and a few other things... and my body was pleased.

After we ate, we walked a bit more... but it started raining again.  We found a pet store, and just inside the door was a talking parrot.  

I said “hello” it answered… I said “hi”, it answered… then it said Aloha… and then it SCREAMED at me!!... I jumped, then the evil thing laughed at me.  Meaghan thought it was riot, and thoroughly loved the pet store!!  Birdies, fish, even the evil parrot.  Highlight of her night, I suppose!

Back to the parking lot... where it was cool enough for us to change into our "flying home" clothes - yes, we changed in the front seat of the jeep in the middle of the parking lot, but it was dark!  We repacked our last-minute items - stuff strewn all over the parking lot - but we got it done and packed just the way I wanted it to be.

Off to the airport... where day 9 will meld into a very long day 10, I'm sure.  Here's hoping it's an OK flight!

Maui Chronicles - Day Eight

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Whales & footprints

Today - finally - Graeme gets to go on his whale-watching tour.  He left pretty early - he had to be at the dock around 9:15 or so.  The boat would leave at 9:45, and the tour was 2 hours long.  So, it was just me and the Megster for 2 hours.

Graeme had a great time playing with our camera and getting some great whale shots!!

The boat was very tippy, though... hindsight is always 20/20, and I would've been verrrry sick on that thing.  I'd really wanted to go on the whale watch, too, but we decided that it would be too windy and even hot (the sun had started to shine again) for Meaghan to be on the boat with us for a 2-hour trip.  So I stayed behind.  God is good to have given us those "reasons" not to go, because otherwise I would've gone and been green and pukey the entire time!

I, unfortunately, still was being quite bothered by the heat rash.  I decided to brave the elements - it didn't look too windy - and just suck it up and go to the beach with Meaghan.

We got there...

I laid the towel down...

...stuck the umbrella in the sand....

...took out a couple toys for Meaghan...

...and a great gust of wind blew up and took the umbrella away.  I left Meaghan sitting there, stunned, while I ran after the wayward umbrella (which almost ended up in the ocean!).  Me... swimsuit... running... not pretty.

So I put the umbrella away and just decided that we wouldn't stay out too long.  Then the wind kept whipping up and literally sandblasting us.  I couldn't shelter M enough with my body - besides the fact that I was getting beaten up, too!

Long story short is that it took longer to get us ready to go out there than the time we actually spent outside.

Disheartened, we went back inside.  Meaghan was getting grumpy from being cooped up in a home that was not hers.  I was getting resentful of the weather and the major discomfort from the rash.  No amount of hydrocortisone application, cool showering, or aloe would soothe it.

Graeme came back, and we looked at some of his pictures.  

After the sun started to lower in the sky a bit, we went out for a beach walk.  I desperately wanted to get some "footprints in the sand" pictures.  So, we played in the sand for about half an hour.  This was probably where my day started turning around.  It was so therapeutic just to play.  

Walk.  

Press Meggie's footprints into the sand.  

And enjoy some fresh air.

After we came back, we actually ordered supper for pick-up from this place down the beach.  Graeme brought me a chicken wrap with coleslaw, and he had a sandwich of some sort.  So healthy, so yummy.  Satisfied.

We had these "thank you for not opening" cards from Haagen Dazs the other night, but we figured, there's no WAY we're going back there this holiday!  Our first card gave us a free scoop on an ice cream cone... really?  Hmph.  Whoop.  A whole dollar.  We got us each a cone.  So we opened the new cards, expecting to find something lame-o.

Two.  Free.  Dazzlers.

A dazzler is basically layers of ice cream, oreo cookies, and I think some extra chocolate.  You can look it up if you want, but we could NOT believe we'd just opened TWO cards that each would give us a free dazzler.  Since we'd opened them, we were fairly certain they'd be invalid.

I convinced Graeme to go ask.  These things are worth about $7 or $8 each.

He came home with two.  free.  dazzlers.  They didn't even question the fact that the cards were opened. Graeme is an honest guy, and wouldn't have pushed it.  He was just as shocked as I was!!

I don't even want to think about how many calories... I didn't indulge much on this trip, but this was one time I threw all caution to the wind.  

Soooooo good.

And did I mention they were free?

Score!

Time to start thinking about packing up our stuff.  The problem was, we had about 10 bags of chocolate-toffee covered macadamia nuts, and 7 packages of coffee, plus souvenirs for the kids and other family.. how was I going to fit everything in the suitcases when we'd come over with them stuffed full?  I started rolling clothes instead of folding them, and that made some room.  Whew!  We tossed out a couple of plastic containers that we no longer needed.  We had used almost all of our diapers, but were not going to have enough to make it home, so unfortunately the "diaper space", which we'd figured would be vacant, was now refilled with another almost full package of diapers that we had to buy in Maui.

Somehow, it all fit.  And the suitcases had that little zipper that allows you to expand them.

Mmmmm... Mauna Loa chocolate-toffee-covered mac nuts....