To celebrate, they graciously offered to take us on a trip! All of us! To someplace amazing. As I am a keen vacation planner, I volunteered my services, and pitched a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii, figuring that it's far enough away that we would all be present and engaged, and its very much like a foreign country, except without the passport/currency/language issues. OK, maybe a few language issues, but as my husband and I lived on Oahu for 3 years, we can mostly get by in pidgeon.
So I found us a house, got everyone's buy-in, booked airfare for 8 (!) (this is to-date the pinnacle of my travel agenty feats) and we were Hawaii bound! Carolyn, Art, Sally, Chris, and on the other side of the aisle, the boys, Oliver and Louis. The 8 of us spanned an entire row!
The flight to Honolulu was long, but not unbearable, really. Hawaiian Air does such a lovely job with their food service -- gobs of fresh fruit! Yay! When we got to Honolulu to make our connection to the big island, the anniversararians found a lovely lei greeting, courtesy of Sally's parents. So thoughtful!
Welcome to Hawaii!
And then we had a couple of hours' layover. We lollygagged for a bit, then most of us hit a restaurant for lunch.
BROTHERS! We left our luggage with these two, who weren't up for dining. DO NOT leave your luggage with strange folk. And yet, we all did just that.
Hey Honolulu! Nice to see ya! It's been, what...16 years? Dang. How did that happen.
Diamond Head! I lived at the Diamond Head side of Waikiki, on Lemon Road in a one-bedroom apartment with a lanai, just steps from snorkeling. Ah, to be young and in love, and living in freakin' Waikiki again!
After a quick flight, we were on the ground in Hilo! We picked up a black minivan and black towncar. We made a hilarious trip to the grocery store where Carolyn, Sally and I each got a cart and with our lists, filled them up to the best of our ability, meeting up in the deli at the end to make sure we didn't have 6 pounds of coffee and no creamer in sight. we bought $700 in groceries for 8 folks (Hawaii dollars) and made the 40 mile journey to our gorgeous house on the water near Pahoa.
Welcome to Hawaii cheers!
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