If someone offers to take you to Hawaii, you say yes!

Back in August Keith called me from work and said Daniel was taking all the executives and their spouses to Maui in September and he needed to know that day if we could go.  I couldn't believe it and immediately started brainstorming on who we could get to help with the kids.  I hate to ask people for help and it doesn't seem right to ask someone to sacrifice so I can have a vacation. A free trip to Hawaii was just the thing to make me get over that.  I called Tiff and she said, "If someone offers to take you to Hawaii you say yes, we will figure it out." She was so nice and willing to help and that gave me the courage to say yes.  I called Lindy and asked if she would be willing to come stay at our house during the week and get the kids off to school and Tiff would take Hallee and Wyatt over the weekend. It was surprisingly easy to get it covered and I was so grateful that they were willing to sacrifice for us!  They booked the plane tickets and the resort and Keith and I were so excited.  I think it was the next day that the fires in Lahaina broke out. A whole section of the island was burned and people lost everything.  It was so sad.  I can't even imagine how devastating that would be.  We heard mixed messages for a while that they didn't want tourists visiting and that they needed them to because their economy depends on tourism.  In the end the resort asked the company to reschedule the trip because it was too soon to have tourists.  It took them a while to reschedule and find a date, so I was starting to worry that it wouldn't happen. Finally it was rescheduled for November 27- Dec 4th.  I worked with Tiff and Lindy to get child care figured out and we were ready to go again. 

We stayed in the Grand Wailea resort. Wailea is about 30 miles from Lahaina and the fires. Tiff asked where we were staying and she was shocked when I told her and couldn't believe we were staying in the Waldorf Astoria.  Apparently it was $1500 a night.  This whole trip was like a total break from reality and a glimpse of the high life! We flew out Monday afternoon and arrived at our hotel a little after 10 PM.  I was sad that it was dark on our drive to the hotel so I couldn't see the island.  When we arrived at the hotel we walked into this beautiful lobby.  It was amazing and we were so excited to be in Hawaii!!

We left Salt Lake at 3:45 PM and by the time we got to our room it was after 1 AM Utah time.  We were so tired and hungry.  We had a connecting flight in LA and it was so tight that we didn't have time to get any dinner.  Everything was closed when we got there so I was excited to see a fruit plate and snacks in our room.  The fruit was so good! We were both exhausted and ready to sleep.

We were three hours behind Utah time, so we woke up early.  I went right out to the balcony to see the view and it did not disappoint.  I have so many pictures from the balcony because I just couldn't get over that view!

We were anxious to get down to the beach so we got up and got breakfast.  When we checked in the lady said, "Oh, you are in the Napua suites, you won't ever want to stay anywhere else." The Napua suites included a lounge where they served breakfast every morning, midday bites and then cocktails hors d'oeuvres and desserts every evening.  We would get a big breakfast every morning before we headed out for the day.  It was so good!  They have a fridge full of Aloha juices, they are so good. I would have one every morning and then take one or two back to our room. 

After breakfast we got ready for the beach and walked down.  I loved seeing more of the property.  It was beautiful everywhere you looked. 

I loved passing these dolphin statues and water fountains every time we went down to the beach.

We stopped by the pool and picked up towels and headed down to the beach. Barkle and his wife were down there so they took a picture for us. 

The beach was dreamy.  The sand was soft, the water was warm and the weather was perfect.  It was sunny and 80 degrees that day. 

There was a guy down at the beach that we would give a ticket to and he would set up chairs and an umbrella for us.  I was in heaven. 

Keith and I would go back and forth between the ocean and our chairs.  It was hot enough that after a while of sitting out you wanted to get into the ocean to cool off.   Amber and her husband where at the beach with us for a while. It was fun to talk to them.

We kept commenting on how amazing this was.  We stayed on the beach all day.

Everyday they had a sack lunch prepared for us.  They came in these cute little bags.  The bags came in very handy to hold all of our stuff when we went down to the beach or the pool. 

We got lost when we were looking for the lunches, but it was fun to see more of the property.

By the end of our stay we had the property figured out, but it was big so it took us a while to figure out our way around.

This is the view from the ocean. You can see the chairs and umbrellas behind us and our resort was behind that.  We stayed at the beach all day and I'm so glad we did because the next two days were very rainy.  This first day was perfect, no rain!

I was sad that we couldn't stay on the beach for sunset, but we had to get up to our room and shower and get ready for a dinner that night.  I did catch the sunset from our balcony.  The sunset was the cherry on top of that perfect view!

Keith and I got dressed up and headed down to dinner.  We had a group dinner that night at the resort. 

Keith and I were already sunburned.  We didn't check a bag so we had the only little sunblock we could find and it did not work very well. 

The dinner was amazing.  It was a buffet with lots of good food to chose from and open bar so all the pina-coladas we wanted for free! We sat next to Randy and his wife both nights.  His wife, Ashely, was really nice and easy to talk to, so that made it enjoyable. Our first day was amazing!