Maui Wowie

Last week, we were fortunate enough to take 7 glorious days and travel to Maui for a vacation. This has been a trip that has been planned for almost a year, so needless to say, we were pretty excited when the time for the trip actually came.

I don't know if I may have maybe mentioned this, but Riley tends to be a tiny bit...over prepared? ...anxious? ...ready for a nuclear holocaust at any moment? We'll just say that he wanted to make sure there were no doubts that we would be ready to go as soon as that 6:00 am flight left for Maui on the 21st and that we wouldn't have to check any bags. With that in mind, he came up to me one Sunday and suggested we start assembling our clothes and other items we wanted to take to Maui. So I gathered some stuff, laid it out, and pretty much decided on what I was taking. This was January 2nd. As in, 3 weeks in advance.

The next day, I came home from work and Riley had packed EVERYTHING for our trip. As in, I could pick up my suitcase and start walking to Maui right then if I needed to. And given how early we were packed, I probably could have walked (and swam) and been there by the 21st. The only hiccup there was that my running shoes were already packed.

I guess we needed time to think over our packing strategy because 6 days before we left, we unpacked everything (well, everything I hadn't already been removing one by one as I needed them during the previous 2 weeks) and repacked again. All this preparation, however, didn't end up save us from frantically rushing around getting everything at the house sorted before we left: dropping off The Tyke with my in-laws, Dixie at the daycare, last minute cleaning. So by the time we left our house, my kitchen floors may not have been clean, but you better believe we had the most efficiently packed carry-on bags on the planet.

The trip itself was awesome. We just wanted to have a very low key trip with no schedule, and that is exactly what we got. Highlights of the trip for me were: going on a run along the beachwalk with Riley each morning, eating Huli-Huli chicken we bought from a guy grilling at Koki Beach in Hana (possibly the best meal of the trip), watching Riley get pummeled by a wave in Kapalua, trying to get our meth-addict waiter at Longboards to remember to bring me a straw, coming under fire in our hut in Hana as coconuts rained down on its tin roof from the tree out front (the PTSD from this caused us to sporadically yell "COCONUT!" any time we were startled for the duration of the trip), catching the sunrise at Hamoa Beach, and getting a chance to go to dinner and hang out with two of my siblings and their spouses (notwithstanding the weird dude hanging out in the hot tub when we all sauntered down there after we ate).

Even the horrible red-eye flight back from Maui couldn't undo all of the progress I made relaxing. I'm not sure when we will be lucky enough to make it back to Maui again, but you can be sure we will be all packed and ready to go in case that day arrives.