Ha-why-ya

Jay and I just spent a week on the beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii! The title is in honor of my Granddad who pronounced Hawaii as "Ha-why-ya". My dad always responded by saying "Fine. How are you?"--my Granddad did not think this was funny...but he was not known for his sense of humor. :)

Anyways, back to our trip. We always try to do some type of vacay in September or October because Jay's business usually slows down a little bit and it seems to be a good time for me because everyone that I work with takes vacation between June and August. We had originally hoped to go to Costa Rica but we didn't get our passports in order so we decided to visit Hawaii. I'm so glad we did because it was amazing and quickly rose to my #1 vacation spot! 

We stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua which is on the northern side of Maui. It's tough to beat the Ritz when it comes to hospitality and quality. Here was the view from the lobby down to the pool. 

I'm going to break the pictures up by each day so that I can keep an accurate account of our trip. A lot of the pictures were posted on Instagram as we went but Hawaii is pretty enough to see these pics more than once!

Day 1: 10.19.13

Our travel began in Lubbock to DFW, DFW to LA and finally to Maui. Tech was playing West Virgina that day and all Jay cared about was being in a spot that allowed him to stream the game from his iPad. It was close to half time when we landed in Dallas so we grabbed a bite to eat at a pizza/wine bar and Jay plugged in. It was pretty entertaining because he was yelling the whole time and had no idea how loud he was. This included a few very loud expletives...so I had to offer a public apology of a couple of times. 

We got to see Tech win right before we took off to LA. Once the game was over and we started looking around we realized that Dick Van Dyke was sitting one row behind us across the aisle. He didn't look too good...very old and he was rocking a TV Land letter jacket. We tried to get a picture of him without being super obvious but it didn't turn out so well. 

We had a long day of travel and finally landed in Maui about 10:00pm HST which is 5 hours behind us in Texas. We were completely exhausted and it was pitch black outside so we just checked in, ordered room service and passed out.

Day 2: 10.20.13

We woke up at 5:00am the next morning due to the lovely time change. Nothing was open yet so we waited for the sun to come up over coffee on our walkout porch. These were our first looks at Hawaii! 

From there we went to breakfast and down to the beach! The beach was only a 3 minute walk from the back of our hotel and we planned on spending the whole morning there but...the tide was up and the waves were pretty high for non-beach dwellers like Jay and myself. Jay's first big wave rolled him and took his new Maui Jim sunglasses with it. My first big wave rolled me and then a second one hit me as soon as I came up for air...I was pretty sure that I was dying so I headed for the shore to play photographer. 

Jay likes to get his guns up no matter where we are! Bye sunglasses!

Thankful that I survived the wipeout!

We spent the remainder of the day by the pool with tasty beverages and then had dinner at an awesome restaurant called Merriman's. 

Day 3: 10.21.13

Day 3 was gloriously spent by the pool. It went something like this...lay in the sun and read, swim to cool off, dry off, order a drink and repeat! I went through 4 books on this trip. More about those later!

This little peach sat by me and asked why I wasn't brown? Haha! Poor white me! I burn and then go right back to being white. 

That evening we went to a traditional Hawaiian luau. The concierge said it was a 'must do' but personally, I wasn't very impressed. The food was supposed to be really good but it was just average and the drinks were bad. The performance was interesting but really long. The best part was at the end when a guy twirled fire. 

We met a great couple from Austrailia and they have us the low down on how things go over there. The amount of time they get off from work is unbelievable! 12 month (6 months paid) maternity leave, 4 weeks of paid time off and 17% higher pay when they are on vacation...what?!?  I can't imagine how they get any work done but they said it works really well. ...And that was the end of Day 3. 

Well, I'm exhausted and have to get a lot of stuff done to start the week back in the real world. I'll end it here tonight and pick up with part 2 tomorrow!

xo- hill