Aloha!

Maia at the beach the first day. She is not amused.

Andy was lucky enough to have a conference in Honolulu, HI over Memorial Day. Maia and I tagged along, and we made it our first family vacation. Maia traveled like a champ, and slept and played for most of the flight over. There was only one 20 minute period where I thought we had made the worst mistake of our lives, but after a lot of walking up and down the 767's aisles, she fell asleep.

We stayed in Waikiki, equidistant from the convention center where the conference was and world famous Waikiki beach. Our first morning, thanks to jet lag, Maia was up at 4am, so we caught an early breakfast at Duke's Canoe Club right on the beach. After breakfast we decided to introduce Maia to the ocean. Andy held her up and was getting ready to dip her feet in the water when a larger than expected wave came up and soaked all three of us. I snapped the picture just as the wave was rolling out. Its a shame you can't see her face in it, because she looked so betrayed!

That afternoon, even though we had not slept, I was determined to hit the beach. We loaded up the stroller with towels, hats, the baby cabana, beach bag, the baby, etc and headed out for the 10 min walk to the beach. We got there, got set up, slathered on more sunscreen (Maia had about 3 layers on at this point), and walked Maia out to the water. She hated it. She hated the water, she hated the sand, she hated the bright sun, screeched and howled and cried until she almost turned blue. This is when Andy and I remembered the golden rule of traveling with an infant- if an activity is not working, don't force it hoping it will get better. Retreat! And retreat we did. Luckily, we were right next to the US Armed Forces Recreation Center, which is a resort on the beach for servicemen and women and their families. The facility wasn't open to us, but their beachfront bar was. A fruity umbrella drink for us and a bottle for Maia, and all was well.

The rest of trip was a blast. There are 100 stories about traveling with Maia (including having random Japanese tourists take her picture because of her big blue eyes) and with Andy (having the reality of fatherhood sink in as he had to choose between the last two rental cars- a Ford Mustang convertible or a Mercury Grand Marquis). Things here are very busy, but hopefully we'll have a chance to post more stories about our trip.

We have posted our pictures on our Fotki site: http://public.fotki.com/rlr244/maia-lauren-puckett/hawaii-vacation/