bringing some aloha into our lives

while it certainly looks as if we were bitten hard by the travel bug this summer, this last trip was one that we'd been planning since christmas.  i don't remember if i mentioned it before, but when we headed to texas for the hub's grandpa's birthday party our outbound flight was overbooked.  when the offer went up to $1000 in travel vouchers per person, we jumped on it and knew we'd use it for a summer family vacay to hawaii.  after months of counting down, it was finally time to go.

too bad the hub ended up catching some sort of terrible cold the very day before we were set to leave.  poor guy.  and the last time we went to hawaii as a group of five (including the old lady's special friend), he got sick the first day of that trip, too.  huh.  anyway, he rallied enough to get himself packed and drive us all to the airport bright and early on our day of departure.  we dropped the car off at park 'n fly and waited for the shuttle to take us to the terminal.  seemed like a good time for our first group selfie:

the bean did her best to cheer up her ailing daddy.

TSA precheck remains a godsend.  the line to get through security was crazy long, and we were happy to sashay right past them and right up to the scanners without having to take off our shoes or pull out our liquids from our carry-ons.  we made it through in no time, and then we had some time to kill before boarding our plane.  the bean isn't much into toys anymore, but she was still happy to pose at the mattel shop in the terminal.

and - well, of course we did.

we ended up stopping at monsieur marcel's in the mini-farmers' market for some breakfast.  the ham & cheese quiche was tasty and filling.

boarding time!

and although the hub smirked at it, i busted out my little portable ottoman for the 6-hour flight.

that flight seemed to take forever.  or maybe we were just all excited to go.  or both.  either way, we were really excited when we landed in honolulu:

even the hub perked up, despite still feeling pretty crappy.  we picked up our rental car - a chevy equinox that barely held us plus our luggage - and decided to make a pitstop on our way to the condo.  we discovered waiola shave ice two years ago on our last trip to oahu, and we'd decided that it was superior to our old standby, matsumoto up on the north shore.

we'd chosen to stay at the same condo we took the special friend to back in 2015, at ko'olina right next to the disney aulani.  it was just as we remembered it.

the excitement and activity caught up to the hub, who decided to stretch out on the bed and sleep off his sickness while the rest of us (not including the bean, who was happy to stay behind and relax with her ipad) headed out to walk to the abc store for some snacks and grab some stuff for dinner.  on our way there, we stopped for our first look at the beach.

the abc store was just as i remembered it - full of all sorts of fun snacks, and even this:

we picked up as much as we thought we could carry, since we were walking back, and grabbed snacks, water and dinner items from the hot foods counter.  we took it all back, spread it out on the counter, let the bean and the hub know there was food available and sat down to enjoy our first dinner in hawaii.

maybe it wasn't a super exciting start to the trip, but it was good enough for us.  shave ice, a walk to the beach, the abc store and spam musubi.  all good.