{Hawaiian Vacation} Day One

This morning, my mom arrived bright and early to take us to the airport. Our flight, direct from San Diego to Honolulu, left at 11:20am. This meant we had to leave around 7:30am to get to the airport on time. We had to allow extra time because some of the freeways were closed for the Rock N Roll Marathon here in San Diego. When we arrived at the airport, we got everything unloaded and we got Lauren's carseat all packed up in its box for the long flight to Hawaii.


She is getting so good at going through security!

Once we got on the plane, we ponied up the $10 to rent a movie player for the flight. Our DVD player only lasts about 2 hours, so we wanted something to last a bit longer. Lauren watched Born To Be Wild, a documentary about orphaned orangutans and elephants for part of the flight. She thought it was very cool!

A few minutes in to the movie, Justin showed her that the ear phones had sound for the movie coming out of them. She was so excited.

About two and a half hours in to our six hour flight, Lauren decided it was time to take a nap, so she and I snuggled up and she slept for two hours. She woke up just as the flight attendants were starting the landing procedures in the cabin. We landed about a half an hour early because of some great wind we had...but then sat on the tarmac while we waited for a giant 757 plane to back out of our gate. The pilot pulled in to the wrong gate and then got stuck...

I forgot how beautiful the open air airport at Honolulu was.




After we gathered all of our luggage, we went on a serious trek through the airport and a parking garage to find the famous lei stands. Gosh, they were so amazing. I picked a traditional double orchid lei for Lauren and a lei with purple and green orchids, white tuberose, hot pink carnations, and orange lantern ilima for myself. Simply based on the amount of pictures I took of my lei, I think you can tell that I loved it so much...and this is only half the pictures.

After the lei stands, we made our way back to the arrivals area of the airport to meet our shuttle to the rental car place. We ended up getting a Buick Lacerne with heated leather seats for the price of an economy car. YAY! We made our way to our hotel in Waikiki and quickly got settled and then headed out for dinner because we were starving.


Lauren and I gave Clifford an orchid and Justin wore a shell lei! Aloha.


We went to dinner at Islands at the Ala Moana Mall (we knew Lauren could eat there). Once we were seated Lauren turned in to a real stinker and was refusing to eat her meal. I was so stressed out about her not eating. I kept trying to force her to eat her turkey patty, but all she wanted were pickles. Finally, as a last ditch effort, I slathered her meat in ketchup and she reluctantly ate it. I get so nervous when we travel about Lauren getting enough nutrition with her food allergies.

After dinner we stopped in at Hilo Hatties at the mall but everything was too expensive so we went back to the hotel to regroup, grab the stroller and head out to explore Waikiki. Accross the street from our hotel was the beautiful Hilton Hawaiian Village, so we explored around there and then made our way to the beach to watch the sunset. It was about 7:30pm in Hawaii (9:30pm at home), so we made our way back to the hotel and settled in for bed.