Married With Cats: Spring Break! (and other stuff)

Man, a lot has happened since the week of Adam's birthday!

First of all, our cousins came into town for their spring break, which was awesome. It's so fun to see the four kids and how they get along and how they play or how they don't get along. Basically, everyone loves Ellie and wants her full attention, and with Adam starting to drop his naps, he was a real pisser to everyone. But he was slightly less of a turd to James than he's been in years past? So that was good.

They had a good parade in preparation for Olde Ellison Bay Days, and they did a lot of Easter egg hunting. We also had a party for Jackie's grandson over at her house, which resulted in my kids swimming in the hot tub in their skivvies, and ended with an enormous dance party. Two thumbs way up.

Then we went to bed early on Sunday night, because the car arrived to pick us up before six am on Monday morning, for our big spring break family vacation to Hawaii. There were twelve of us in total going, on three different flights (so much for coordinating!) Twelve of us in total, including Auntie Sara. We had an uneventful flight, and then a fairly quick shuttle ride out to the Disney Aulani resort.

We spent five days without really ever leaving the resort. They had tons of pools, and a beautiful beach in a quiet cove. We were sharing a suite with Kristen, Jeff, Lexi and Judd, and our friends Todd, Sara Jo and Whitney were four doors down the hall. It worked out well! Three of the kids slept in our living room on pull outs, Kristen and Jeff had their own room, and then in the room with two queens, Tim slept with whichever one of our kids was not in the living room (the boys and girls traded off on sleepovers) and since it was a family vacation, I slept with my sister, like it was 1988. It worked out pretty great. The kids would get up early-ish, since they don't understand time zones, but then we would plug them into a movie on the iPad using Jeff's five way splitter (amazing!) and they'd eat cereal and relax until the parents got up, hunter-gathered coffee and breakfast, and then every day we were down at the pools before 10am. The boys swam until after lunch (and then had to nap or die) and the girls stayed in the water for up to six hours at a time. They were FISH. The great thing is that we had so many adults that we could do shifts taking them down the lazy river or slides, and other than the one big pool (which we only went in once) they could touch pretty much everywhere we went. The beach was also fairly placid and calm, though on day one Ellie and Adam did swim out to the bouys and back with us (Adam rode on my back on the way in, which was the toughest workout I've had in awhile.)

Then most days we'd be back and showering around four. The kids had a couple of engagements in the daycare, which allowed the adults to have a cocktail or two (without kids, don't get us wrong, we were definitely ordering booze by 11 most days. SPRING BREAK!!!) One night they were able to stay through supper, and we went to the Four Seasons next door and had an excellent meal in their fish restaurant.

We couldn't have asked for better company or more fun as a group. However, the resort itself left a ton to be desired. We paid a premium to be there during a peak time, and the service was subpar at best. I had more than one person tell me something wasn't available or working because "it's spring break." Oh really? I wondered why my kids were here with me. We just weren't able to take advantage of everything we paid for, which was a big disappointment. Not to mention, all five kids broke out in rashes from the chemicals and pee in the pools. I was glad we hadn't come before Easter or stayed another day longer - they'd wrung just about all of the fun out of the resort that they could.

I also wish we might have done more touring around, but we were out at the resort, not really close to anything. We did manage to walk a few doors down to a really fun luau on Wednesday night, and all of the kids got to go up on stage and dance, which they thought was awesome. It was a super fun night, and a nice change of pace. And thankfully across the street was a grocery store and an ice cream place, so we could feed the kids a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches and ice cream.

In the end, a great trip with great friends and a great family. I was so proud of what great travelers the kids were, and definitely loved the few moments they'd leave their friends alone and snuggle with me on a tube down the lazy river. And of course, if the kids' spring breaks match up again next year, we'll get some good commune living spring break going!