Back again

Hi everyone

Long time, no talk, but as we've just had a fantastic Hawaiian vacation, this seemed the best way to tell you all about it.

We flew up the night of Dec 23/4, arriving at 5am. Luckily both this flight and the one back again were half empty, so we had plenty of room to spread out. Our plan was to spend Christmas Eve shopping so after a short nap we went to the Ala Moana Centre, which is huge. Four floors of food court, shops, dept stores (Macys, Nordstorm, Sears, Neimann Marcus - all those names you've heard about) and everything else from Gap to Prada. We all went slightly crazy and staggered home 6 hours later.

We were staying at the Ilikai Towers, right at the north end of Waikiki Beach. The condo was great - 2 bed, 2 bath and a full kitchen. No portacot unfortunately, so Seth had to sleep on some cushions on the floor. That was fine except he spent the first week rolling over; just one way of course, he still hasn't learnt how to roll back again. So there were a few squalls at 4am and we turned on the light to see him face planted on the carpet. Poor poppet. He's barely rolled since.

The weather wasn't fantastic, so we didn't spend a lot of time at the beach. Christmas Day it was packed but the water was a lot colder than we were used to (we're spoilt!) and the bottom was rocky. I guess I'm very spoilt with Mt Maunganui as my home beach - aren't all beaches like that?

If we were at the beach, it was usually throwing a ball around. Taine had a great hour or so playing gridiron with another couple of boys. He insisted he knew what he was doing, and didn't seem at all fazed by the older brother introducing new rules everytime he dropped the ball - boys the world over, huh!

Matt was very keen to go to Pearl Harbor, but strollers were forbidden and neither of us felt up to carrying Seth in the sling for hours and hours, and we weren't sure if Taine's concentration would last all day either. So our touristy activities were limited to the Aquarium (excellent jellyfish), the zoo (komodo dragons) and the International marketplace. Taine tried to get himself a whole new surfie big boy wardrobe, and thinks he's quite the man now. He's working on his Blue Steel pose (Zoolander) and does bunny ears in 9 out of 10 photos.

After a week of gorging on food, beer (most places serve 22oz glasses - I think that's 3 cans a pop) and shops, we took a 40 min flight to Hawaii - the Big Island. We were staying in another condo 6 miles inland, very nice golf resort. Matt and I were very dismissive of the quality of golf we saw while drinking beer on our balcony, but then we're used to watching experts! The other guests got their revenge watching us throw an American football around. One actually came out of her room to show us how to do it properly.

The Big Island was gorgeous. I hadn't realised how volcanic it was; miles of black rock with tiny pockets of golf courses and resorts. We hired a car so we saw several beaches (one where I got dumped like I have never been dumped before, and unluckily Taine got so freaked he wouldn't go back in the water that afternoon), and our big trip was to see Kilauea, the active volcano at the southern end of the island. That was a long day, 11 hours all up, but we saw waterfalls, the crater, the lava tubes, and we followed the road to meet the ocean at the bottom. All very, very impressive. Unfortunately the camera ran out of batteries after three shots, it rained all day, and we couldn't actually see the lava meeting the water, but it was still a great day. Taine had been talking for months about the relative merits of lava and water as superhero weapons, so we're still not totally resolved on which would win - another trip one day!

Matt and Taine also went in a submarine to look at fish and shipwrecks while Seth and I shopped, we found lots of playgrounds, and ate and drank well again. I didn't get to a coffee plantation (don't like Kona coffee anyway, and don't get me started on the espresso), and never got round to surfing lessons, but we all came home very relaxed.

Seth was an angel baby (he's teething now), and of course he smiled and was cute at every single one of the million people who stopped to admire him. I'm glad we didn't buy him the T-shirt that said "I only cry when ugly people hold me" - it wouldn't have been used! He wasn't too happy at spending extended time in the car seat or stroller, but now we're back on the little island he won't have to worry about that for a while.

So back in to the routine again. Taine starts school on Monday with a new teacher, Matt's at work for a week then he's off to Fiji for a conference, and Seth and I will just chill with the ladies.