Aquarium and Flying Home...or Not

Sunday, December 1st

Sunday was our final day in Hawaii, but we had to check out of our hotel by noon (we were flying out in the evening), so we had to plan our day accordingly.  We took our time having breakfast and getting packed and out of the hotel.  We stopped for lunch and then figured the aquarium would be a good place to "waste" a few hours. It was not "wasting" by any means, I just didn't know how else to word it ;)

Maui Ocean Center Aquarium.

Love that you can see Aiden checking out the fish :)

I totally want this little spotted fish :)

Yucky moray eel.

Sea horses.

Aiden discovered that he could light things up when he pushed these buttons.  It was very hard to pry him away.

Do you see the two fish in this one??

Here's a close up of the coral one.

Flounder - their eyes are so weird!

Sand eels.

Octupus.

Another moray eel.

Loved this neon fish :)

Touch pool.

Baby hammerhead.

We were pretty impressed with the aquarium!  Aiden broke a turtle trinket in the gift shop that we had to pay for.  Thank goodness it was only like 8 bucks.

By the time we got out, it was starting to get dark, but we still had a few hours before we needed to make our way to the airport, so we went a little further down the Road to Hana and stopped at a lookout to watch some surfers.

There were some paddle boarders as well.  Trent and Kent were kind of regretting that they never rented paddle boards to try out.

Aiden was content to just play with the steering wheel ;)

We got to the airport a few hours early and had some dinner.  We were planning to take a redeye (I was kind of dreading it, but we were hoping that Aiden would sleep the whole time) around 10:30. We got on the plane, waited like 45 minutes, they let us get off, we waited another 45 minutes in the airport, only to hear they were canceling the flight for mechanical issues.  DEJA VU ANYONE?!  We had issues flying here!!!  And then they couldn't even fly us out until Tuesday afternoon!!  It was Sunday night!  We were so incredibly irritated with U.S. Airways.  Thankfully they gave us vouchers for a hotel and for meals (had to stand in a long line for those) and we finally made it to our new hotel around 2 in the morning, and that was only because Tanis and Kent were kind enough to let us go ahead without our suitcases.  Somehow they maneuvered all 7 suitcases and made it there at like 3 :/  Poor Aiden was all out of sorts :(  All he wanted was to be home in his own bed.

Everyone was giving us a hard time saying, "Oh man, you got stuck in Hawaii, how terrible", but really, we were all packed ready to go!! And it's especially hard when you have a toddler to worry about.

Anyway, we slept in until like 11 on Monday.  Tanis was so amazing and spent much of the morning trying to get everything situated to fly out on Tuesday.  Then we just took it easy and hung out by the pool.  The beach was closed due to a SHARK ATTACK that morning!! Crazy! We found out later that the man died :(  So scary.  This is why snorkeling makes me so nervous!

Makena Beach Resort.

Tuesday we had an awesome breakfast and got checked out of the hotel and made our final trek to the airport.

Aiden and Daddy got to feed the koi fish before we headed out.

Aiden got very good at rolling his own suitcase.  In fact, he would insist!

We had a quick layover in L.A. and made it into Phoenix at 1 in the morning.  Thank you to my dad for picking us up, only to turn around and bring my mom back to the airport a few hours later to head to Germany!!

Big thank you to Tanis and Kent for inviting us to experience our first trip to Hawaii and for your generosity!!  Trent and I definitely plan to go back - maybe just the 2 of us (in other words, without kiddos) - and when I'm not pregnant ;)