Oahu Day 1 | One Day at a Time

Skipped the last few days of school for the kids, gonna meet up with Ah Ma and Ah Gong in Hawaii.

Not a fun wake up time. We had our alarms set for 3:30am. Our original booking was for the flight leaving at 10am, but stupid United randomly changed all their flight schedule so now we are leaving at 7:15am. Blah.

Wish traffic was light like this all the time in Austin.

Holidays means not taking chances with parking. Reserved offsite parking lot.

Shuttle was already waiting for us when we arrived, easy peasy.

Kids are very excited to go to Hawaii. They just have a concept of Hawaii, but somehow they are so excited.

The baggage check line looks semi busy. Good thing we only have carry on and we’ve got digital boarding pases. Went through Clear(the regular line was short too) and we were past TSA check point in probably less than 3 minutes. That was too easy. We could have easily woken up much later…but would have stressed more.

Kids wanted books to read. So we got books for them to read, and now I’ll need to carry around heavy books for the rest of the trip. Sigh.

But I mean, it’s awesome that they like reading.

Of course, Salt Lick breakfast tacos every time.

Must have coffee. It’s so early and I’m so sleepy.

Yum, bbq sauce.

RL looking her best. A boot because she fell down the stairs 2 days ago and really bruised her leg and toe. X ray confirmed no bone break, so that’s the good news. And she left her jacket at home as we left so she had to buy some last minute long sleeve shirt at the airport. Representing ATX.

Flight is on time and first leg is 4 hours or so to SFO.

They are excited to travel.

A little groggy out there this morning.

I actually didn’t even watch any shows on this leg of the flight. I was so tired, just tried my best to sleep, but the girls kept on waking me up for random things. We are hungry. Can we have more snack. I am thirsty. Do you have more snacks?

I can’t imagine how painful it must be to fly without ipads for kids.

ipads are amazing.

Earth is amazing.

About to get to SFO. Our plane needs the flaps washed.

So there’s compost and recycle, but nothing for regular trash. They claim that everything that’s sold in the airport can be recycled or composted…but this being an airport, people are bringing in trash with them that can’t be recycled or composted. Then what? I guess into the wrong bin it goes. There’s no regular trash can, I looked.

There’s allegedly an Centurion lounge that we can go to. Pay $60 and we all get to eat and drink as much as we want. We only have a two hour layover, and we are walking from one terminal to another, so we’ve gotta hurry.

We are all tired and hangry. The walk is going longer than expected, they are doing some construction here….ugh.

We gave up on finding the lounge, it was a high stressed mess. No one was happy walking with our heavy bags, RL had a bum leg, and little KL complained nonstop about how his duffel bag was too heavy. So we gave us, went to our gate, and found some Mexican food to eat. The food was actually very good and hit the spot.

Good timing too. Right after we ordered food, the food line got a lot longer.

Little KL must be tired, he’s not eating much and he’s complaining a lot.

2 hours of layover came and went super fast. onto the next flight to Honolulu.

They handed these out to the kids as we boarded the flight. The strip was just a textured strip…yeah, right. Like that will help calm my crazy kids.

My screen randomly reset itself. It runs on Android. What’ odd was that some other screens also reset on the plane, but it seemed like it was random on which ones were reset.

Once that plane lands, we’ll take off.

Away we go to the middle of the Pacific.

I sat with the girls on the leg from Austin to SFO. Now it’s RL’s turn to sit with the girls.

Little KL was being as crazy as he could be during the first part of this flight. He’s gotta be tired. I told him to watch one show and then it’s quiet time for a nap. He fought it and fought it and fought it, but finally did manage to fall asleep.

Little punk when awake, very cute when asleep.

6 hours for this flight. It feels so long.

Bollywood movie for my second movie, Satyaprem Ki Katha. Started out like a normal Bollywood Rom Com, but was actually a modern one about sexual assault in India. Would recommend. Also watched the 4th Bad Boys movie, would also recommend.

Finally reached Hawaii. That was a long travel day with the kids. Look at that beautiful teal colored water though!!

Looks cute, but he’s trying to annoy me while I’m trying to finish the last bit of my movie before the plane lands.

Let baba finish his movie please!

Even Hawaii has beach erosion issues.

Air Force base.

Cool, F22.

Cool fact. On both legs of our flight today, the captains were both female. Girl power.

Leaving terminal to the baggage claim where ah gong and ah ma are waiting for us.

Kids storming ah gong. It’s been over 2 months since they’ve been in Taiwan and the kids have missed them. Ah ma was seated and waiting in another area so didn’t get a welcome photo of her.

7 people means two taxis from airport to hotel. RL rode with the girls and I rode with the rest.

Seatbelts in taxis are never quite that easy.

Honolulu has a lot of traffic. It takes about 30 minutes from airport to hotel.

Banyan trees I think.

Arrived at hotel for check in.

Long line, except this turned out to be the wrong tower of the complex. So now gotta go check in at a different building.

The Lagoon Tower of Hilton Hawaiian Village is where we are staying at.

We are all tired from traveling. Checking in is taking longer than we’d like.

Focus.

Focus! Didn’t even care that we were just a few feet away.

Got leis for free from the tour desk. They lured us with free leis to give us a spiel about booking tours. I guess semi worth it just to get leis for the kids.