I will stop, I promise, Photos from Maxwell's camera

Doesn't everyone wear Spiderman pajamas in Hawaii?

more (and some underwater) pictures, cause that is how I roll

Maxwell practicing diving, which is too scary for me.  I am a big floating chicken.

I asked Mark "are you ok?"using the hand signal of putting a fist on top of my head, and here is his reply.    The water is about 70 degrees, which is pretty warm if you are hanging out on the beach, but it can feel cold pretty fast is you are super skinny like Mark and submerged for a long time.     The wet suit works well, but I still worried about him.    When we were signing the liability release for this boat trip, one of the hazards was hypothermia, which made me nervous, but not as nervous as the part on the parasailing release, that said "dangers include having seawater forced into your orifices"   YIKES!  The whole time I was in the air I couldn't get that line out of my head, talk about unpleasant!

My very sick little girl.  It started with Freyja, and then one by one several other girls joined her and after a while I was running around serving ginger ale & wiping the brows of four vomiting gals.    Mark said "only you Heidi!"                One teenaged girl was crying because she threw up on my feet and I told her "it's ok, I'm a mom!"  To the right of me there is a slide, for the adventurous to get into the water, the rest of us, scooted in from the back of the boat.

The coral looks really close to you, when in reality it is about 30' down on the ocean floor.  I was spooked by the notion of cutting my feet on it.

Maui,maui, bomaui, MAUI

So it has been over six YEARS since our last vacation, and I blame myself.

I am pretty picky about what constitutes a vacation for me.

Mark is no picnic either, with his  workaholic nature and weird sleep issues. 

Really, it is a wonder we ever leave the house.

When we just had Maxwell, things were pretty simple, drop child at moms place in SF, and continue on in plane to Mazatlan, a place we both love a lot- what's not to love?

World class beach, cheap eats and cocktail service on the beach with cute little frond huts to sit beneath.  PERFECT for two nervous nellies looking for a little sun and solitude.

When we had the princess things became complicated. 

She is a very high needs child and we both felt weird about leaving her, not to mention Mark's job had become a sort of octopus that made getting away pretty impossible.

We both had crashed pretty badly by January of this year, needing a break in a very big way.

I want us to go on a real holiday for spring break!   

I demanded.

Ha!

Said life.

I want to go to Mexico with the kids in March! 

I pleaded, but the airfaires were absurdly expensive, there is a travel advisory (and while I personally and am not deterred by drug gangs cutting each other's head's off, I don't feel good about exposing the kids to it)  and besides, Mark had to work and so did I.

At some point we were getting really stressed about vacations and lack of vacations and I hired a travel agent to find one for us, which Mark took as a sign of weakness, like I was giving in, but I took as a sign from GOD, that the time to get the hell out of Dodge was NOW.

So a very sweet hippie woman from Eugene found us a great condo and booked everything and off we went.

Maui felt a little cliched to me, but once we were at our little condo, which was not even close to a touristy place, with it's private beach and lack of a bar, then I felt better. 

This was not a restful beach holiday, this was an up at 5:00am (LOUD birds & time difference) and hike, swim, snorkel, go, go, go! type of deal. 

I returned tired and bruised up, but it was fun. 

We're baaack!

 On the PLANE!

On our little lanai

The apartment

The grounds of the complex

The beach on the grounds!

Our beach, complete with reef for snorkeling!

and tide pools

a little cloudy, but who's complaining?

the reef is directly behind me, the water drops off there and you can see tons of fish, including creepy neon eels!

Suited up for the sun!

 Once again, blogger has wasted a perfectly good hour of my time, by eating my photos and mucking up my posts.  Here is some of our Maui vacation.  I am too irritated to try to fix the rest.

The world's largest banyan tree takes up four city blocks!

It is impossible to capture the size and this tree!

Lunch at the very touristy "Cheeseburger in Paradise", which offered a terrific view.

SHAVE ICE!

At the old Prison in Lahaina

I decided that we could handle a level "4" HIKE to a waterfall, inside the rain forest.  Have I mentioned we aren't really outdoorsy people?

The rain forest is cold, and muddy and very RAINY, but the plants are amazing!

Freyja is saying "My mother made us hike down a VERY steep cliff face!"

THIS! is what I was looking for!!! Spectacular!!

Check out my sexy Portuguese fisherman's shoes, that are useful for climbing on wet mossy rocks!

The water is ice cold and right behind me there is a drop off, which is deep. We swam out and under the waterfall.

Maxwell being very brave!

Round two, this fall is much less cold, but no one will come in with me, since getting down to the falls required a super scary hike down a very steep rock wall.  They were all a little cranky, but I was ecstatic.

Mark about half way down, helping some other folks to the ledge.

Way steeper than it looks!

The next day Maxwell and I went parasailing. I hate boats and speed and heights, but he really wanted to do it...

then he got a little freaked out.

but it was too late, we were committed.

Mark said "they had 800foot and 1,200 foot, for nearly the same price, so I got you the 1,200 foot rope!" Gee thanks!  Going up! and UP, and UP!

Miss F waiting for our return

We lived!

Freyja was very proud to have only "cut off daddy's head" in this photo!

The next day we went snorkeling out in the open ocean, off this big boat, at the reef off Molokini (look it up, it's famous).  Freyja got hella sea sick.

Rocking her wetsuit, prior to the seasickness.

Maxwell going in... 30' of water.  It was incredibly cool and amazing and I can't even find the words right now to say how excellent it was. 

Miss F with Captain Doug

A turtle, at the aquarium, just like the ones we saw on our snorkeling trip.

Maxwell wiping out on his boogieboard. 

My view from my book.

On our way out, to go home.

This little guy crashed on our patio

Our super silly rental car.