Phew... We Survived

Well, it wasn't how WE had planned it to go, but it went pretty well considering. We got to the airport in plenty of time as we're supposed to be to see almost nobody in line at check out or security. The security was great. They were even overly helpful. Then... the plane ride from Seattle to Maui. The first hour: Great. The second and third: Decent. Hours 3-6 got a little more difficult. We were expecting him to fall asleep at this point. But it seems we forgot that Nathan 'napped' for 20 minutes on the way to the airport in the car. So as far as he was concerned, he'd done his nap. Shoot.

Honestly, if you asked the people in our neighboring seats how Nathan did, they said that he was 'great'. They all said how great he did and how proud we must be. He really didn't cry or yell much. It was more so that Beth and I needed to get over the mental hump that he wasn't going to fall asleep. The cure: More movies. Nathan watched about 3 1/2 hours of movies on our little personal DVD player. We just bought it two weeks ago with this (and future) trips in mind... and it turned out to be what saved the day for rows 32-37. Wiggles and Elmo were the hits. What did parents do before portable DVD players? I'm glad I'm a parent in today's technology.

The only 'bad' part was that with his carseat thingee in the plane seat, his feet perfectly stuck out to the chair back of the seat in front of him. So needless to say, he pushed it with his toes and moved the chair back and forth for a lot of the flight. We apologized to the lady in advance before we left and told her we'd buy her a drink. She took us up on the offer. :) But was very nice about having her chair rattled for 6 hours.

By the time we landed in Maui, he was done. Unfortunately, our trip wasn't. We had an hour layover before a 30 minute flight to Kona. In this hour, we found him wandering off in many areas he shouldn't have been in, like behind the deli counter at the restaurant with all of the workers. (They made a terrible sandwiches, by the way). Then it was off to the plane again, where he reluctantly sat in his seat, and as soon as the plane pushed back - promptly fell asleep. It was 10:30pm by his internal clock on a 20 minute nap for the day. Ugh.

Nana and Papa were at the airport to pick us up and Nathan was thrilled to see them. Beth and I, we were thrilled when we saw the bed we could collapse in.

But, we made it. We're here and enjoying sticky, humid air. Geckos crawling in the room around the bed. And soon... Kona Coffee.

It's always worse for the parents, I'm sure. And it got stressful. But so far so good here. We're enjoying this little part of Paradise.