Maui Forest Hike

We went for a short hike with all the kids (all 5 of them!). It was a beautiful walk throug banyan trees. Here are some photos. And videos of the kids swinging from the vines like Tarzan! First the photos (click here or on the photo for the slideshow):


Here is Skyler swinging from the Banyan tree like Tarzan:

And Oren...:

And Tom:

Dinner on the beach.... with no kids!!!

On Monday night we got a babysitter and went out to a really nice place for dinner on the beach in Lahaina with Tom and Natasha

Click here for photos from the dinner!

More scenes from Day One on Maui

Our first Mai Tais ever!

I don't know exactly what's in a Mai Tai, but I now know they're very yummy and they make you feel warm and fuzzy inside :)

Maui arrival

With guitar safely in hand, we drove to Kanapali and were amazed at the setting of the resort. Right on the beach... pool with waterfall and waterslide, tiki torches everywhere... Within an hour we had already been treated to a hula dance and the kids actually got a lesson! (note, you can click on any image to see it bigger)












Skyler's Hula Dance Lesson (video!):




Oren's Hula Dance Lesson (video!):

They lost my guitar!

We made it to San Fran after a very long flight across the country. We had a hotel room reserved near the airport before our morning flight to Honolulu, and that was a good idea. I think going all the way form Vermont to Hawaii in one strectch without a night in a hotel would have been a disaster. After a jet-lagged sleep, our flight from SFO to HI was uneventful, except for the approach to Hawaii. I must say from above looking down at the beaches, I saw a color of blue that I have never seen before. Almost immediately I started to write a song about a "new color of blue." The camera doesn't capture it at all; hopefully the song will do better justice. But here are a few photos from the approach to Honolulu from above:







this must be Pearl Harbor:



After a nice 5 hour flight, however, I got off the plane expecting to find my guitar at the gate in Honolulu, along with all the strollers and carseats that people can't bring on board with them. And it wasn't there. Yikes. Now I'm not one to be attached to my possessions, but I do love my guitar and I need to have it on this trip. So needless to say my normally calm attitude was being tested. They said it must have been sent to baggage claim... Why would they send it to baggage claim when I have a connecting flight? I don't know. And the big problem was that our connection to Maui was in 15 minutes. So we had to abandon the guitar, reluctantly. When we got to Maui I immediately went to the lost baggage desk and filed a claim. Luckily I hadn't lost the stub. And by the time we got our bags and our rental car, they had found the guitar and we only had to wait an extra 15 minutes really for it to arrive. Tragedy narrowly averted!

Leaving Burlington...

I recently read that in other countries there is a limit on how long they can make you sit on an airplane on the runway. Evidently we don't have any such laws here because we sat on the runway in Burlington for almost 2 hours. Three times the captain came on the loudspeaker and said we got the clearance we needed and we got in position to take off, and then then said we could't because of air traffic control problems in Newark. We finally took off and the passengers cheered. Here's a video of the takeoff:



And a few photos from the flight:





Albany from Above:


New York City:

At the airport....

And so the trip begins.

I created this blog so that we could share our trip with friends and family. We are about to get on a plane from Burlington to Newark, and then we head to San Francisco, where will stay in a hotel for one night and then head to HAWAII for 6 days, and then we spend another week in Oregon and California. It's been 8 years since we were on the West Coast and we lived there for 10 years so we have lots of friends we haven't seen in a long time. Big thanks to Amy's Tom and Liz for making the Hawaii part trip possible! We are so psyched -- 4 out of 5 of us have never been to Hawaii (Amy has been there once). We're staying on Maui.

They just said boarding begins in 10 minutes so I better log off. We'll try to have fun with this blog, with all 5 of us contributing, and some photos too.