Our last full day of the trip I woke up feeling MUCH better. We had bought a good bit of Tylenol and it really did the trick in fighting off whatever crud I had. We went to breakfast and tried to enjoy the beautiful resort for our last day!
Views from our room!
With my pump schedule we had a good bit of downtime in our room and I’m thankful it was SUCH a beautiful one 🙂 We finished the final season of The Office and enjoyed lots of lazy cuddle sessions 🙂 When you have three kids (and one that’s a new baby!) at home you savor the little things that the freedom of vacation allows! I’m ALL about reconnecting with Zach on our trips and this one was awesome for that!
We went down to the pool to lay out and were pretty annoyed. The resort has a policy that you can’t reserve seats for longer than an hour but we saw A TON of Aflac towels on empty chairs. SUPER rude!!! We wanted to lounge and eat lunch by the pool but instead found tables to eat at since there were no pool chairs!
Finally, after Zach made several laps around the pool hassling people, we got a couple chairs and were able to relax in the sun and read our books. I finished mine (“If I Stay” SUPER dumb?!?! I totally hated it!) and then took a little nap while Zach read his.
Swagged out for the pool 😉
We went back to the room to relax some more. We knew the travel home was gonna be tough (the jet lag when visiting Hawaii is WAY WORSE when you get home than when you go there) so we wanted to rest as much as possible. Aflac always has a send off dinner the night before we leave to go home, and we have started a trend of skipping it. I hated to miss it because they always have some cool gifts (this time it was Hawaiian shirts), cool giveaways (they gave away ukuleles), and cool entertainment (Phillip Phillips performed) but Zach really wanted to have a chill night and I’m glad we decided to go that route. The resort was EMPTY because all the Aflac people were at dinner and we didn’t have to stay out super late on our last night! We had a great “date night” and it was nice to just have that down time together to end the trip. Ideally I’d eventually like to add a day at the end of the trip when we go on Aflac trips so we can enjoy their send off dinner and still get a relaxing “last night” dinner just the two of us!
They announced the next convention trip (Aunt Karen totally tried to trick us and said it’s going to be Bali haha she had us fooled for a minute!) and it’s a cruise to the Bahamas. Not to sound snobby…but it’s a hassle to get childcare and it’s hard to leave the kids and Zach and I do NOT like cruising. So we already know we won’t be going on that trip (I hope Casey and Jordan go and I already volunteered to help with Carter!). Crossing fingers that the trip the following year is San Diego as I’d LOVE to take the kids with us and go to Disneyland 🙂
We decided to get pizza again (it was legit!) and have a romantic dinner on the beach! Check out these beautiful views!
we even had some beach entertainment 🙂
We ended the trip with a little ice cream treat!
After our ice cream we walked around in the shops and Zach insisted on getting me a gift but he wanted me to pick it out. How sweet is that?!?! We browsed at a lot of jewelry. I really love the necklace I got in Ireland and like having jewelry as a way to remember our travels (we did get our traditional ornament too, of course!). Now that I have TWO daughters I need to up my jewelry collecting game so I have plenty of pieces to pass down to them!
We found this shop that wasn’t crazy overpriced and Zach picked out this beautiful starfish necklace for me. I LOVE it! It has two starfishes and a pearl on it and it’s very “Hawaii” and very “me”! I’m spoiled by my sweet, thoughtful husband 🙂
We had to get on a bus to leave for the airport pretty early the next morning. I took several photos of the views from our room to remember it!
Love being able to see Diamond Head
Pumping while traveling is always an experience. I wasn’t worried about how it would all work out on this trip but then when we first checked in they gave me a HARD time about keeping my cooler packs frozen for me! When I pump on trips I keep the milk in a fridge (this time we had a fridge in our room which was mega convenient) and I have the hotel freeze my cooler packs and then I take all the milk home in a big cooler (in my checked luggage) with the ice packs to keep it cold (it’s good with the ice packs for 24 hours). The hotel SHOCKED me when they refused to keep my ice packs! Thankfully the Aflac people are amazing and they helped me get in touch with the right hotel staff to hook me up. We stayed in our room as long as we possibly could the morning of check out and we loaded the milk in the cooler the very last minute before we left. With the long flight and lay-overs I was a little worried about getting it home within the 24 hour time frame but it all worked out (with a few hours to spare!).
This is what a nursing mom’s mini fridge looks like on vacation!
Leaving Hawaii! Some last pics I snapped at the airport!
Our flight home was the through the night flight. It went pretty well! We were exhausted but not as bad as we could have been. It took Zach a solid week to adjust back to eastern time! Since I had to get up in the night to pump anyway, it was easier for me to adjust. The hard thing for me was adjusting to missing so much sleep. I didn’t get a solid’s night sleep at all the whole trip, then the flight back I went almost 24 hours without sleep, then I came home still somewhat sick and dealt with the kids solo the day after we got home! Zach had to go out of town and I was solo for 4 nights!!! It was intense to say the least!
I was thankful to only have a two seater row on the flight home so I could FINALLY watch some movies! I watched The Fault in Our Stars (I had read the book and it was what I had expected…and I wasn’t impressed by it) and I watched Saving Mr Banks. OMG. I LOVED that movie!!!!!!!! If you haven’t seen it, it’s seriously awesome and is one of those movies that really sticks with you long after it ends!
We had a WONDERFUL time on our trip! It was stinky to get sick and the lack of sleep was hard…but it was well worth it and Hawaii is truly one of my absolute favorite places. Plus I got to be there with my absolute favorite travel partner 🙂
We were SO HAPPY to be home to the kids! We met them at school and they were excited! We had talked to them every day so we didn’t miss out on anything and it was so great to be back home with them all.
For their Hawaiian presents we got the girls the turtle $2.50 necklaces, each girl a flower hair clip, each kid a lai, Kye a tiki cup, a book about local wildlife (in which the main character is named Kai!), and some free goodies we got from Aflac (a luggage tag, each kid a box of Fruit Loops, some Hawaii cookies…and the favorite gifts? our name tags from the trip and our hotel room keys haha!).
My Hawaiian babies!
I’m so, so, SO thankful to Mrs. Charlotte for keeping our sweet children safe, healthy and happy while we were away. I’m also thankful for Zach’s aunt Cheryl who helped a ton, for Casey and Jordan and Courtney who all also helped keep Kye entertained! It all went very, very smoothly and allowed Zach and I to truly enjoy our time away together!
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