Saved by Rice!!

So most of you know that Josh's cell phone got dropped in the ocean when we were in Hawaii, it was only a few weeks old, i was pretty darn mad!! Well he has been able to get it to work for a short amount of time then it would freak out and stop working, or start calling people on it's own or something weird. He had to go back to his old cracked screened crappy phone, and was on our case constantly about getting a new one, which, with all the crap he has been pulling lately i was NOT giving in, not even for a second! Well the other day he came home from school and got our big ole Costco bag of rice out and started pouring some in a little baggie, not to mention all over the floor. I know he isn't going to make dinner, so i get after him, what are you doing? He said someone at school told him to put his cell phone in a bag of rice over night and it would totally dry out the inside of his phone, I was like whatever, cant hurt. So that night i looked it up online and found that other people were saying that this worked, so i was kind of excited to see the next day if it worked or not. Well IT WORKED!! He was one happy kid and so was I, I wasn't going to be tortured by the question, "when can i get a new phone" anymore!! Yea!! It has been about a week and the phone seems to be working fine! I have always loved rice, but now i have another reason to love it!! Thank you, Thank you!!

Happy 80TH Birthday!!

Sunday was Charlie's (Doug's dad) Birthday, his 80Th!! I sure got lucky when i married into Doug's family, i inherited the nicest in-laws a girl could ask for! Doug is the youngest of 5 boys, and i know that all of Doug's wit and charm come from his dad. He is a hard worker and loves his family unconditionally. I have never met a nicer man. He is always thinking of others,and makes those around him feel special. We celebrated his birthday at The Olive Garden, my kids love their grandpa and spending time with him, i can only hope that they grow up to be like him someday! Happy Birthday!

Maui Day One

April 11th we headed off to the airport to go to Hawaii!! We were so excited but for some reason i was getting all stressed about it, when packing and stuff i would get this crazy feeling that we wouldnt have a good time. I have the magic 8 ball on my computer and every time i asked it if I was going to have a good time, it would say things like, Outlook bad or doesnt look good. I did this more than any adult should and i started thinking crazy thoughts! Well we arrive at the airport and check in and made it threw security, which usually we dont all make it without some sort drama, and headed to our gate. We are on the people mover thingy ( our family calls it the lazy man's dream) and i was chatting away with Doug and the boys not looking forward when all of a sudden Doug says, "heads up!" well my brain cant compute fast enough what that means and it is the end of the ride and next thing you know me and my carry on are down on the ground! i break my fall with my knee and hand and i am completley embarrassed and mad that they didnt let me know until last second! My hand is hurting, my knee is hurting and my face is so red i could crawl inside a hole! I forgot to mention that my period is due any second, so i am PMSing pretty hard and I kind of got pissy with Doug for letting that happen. He felt bad, he didnt realize the end was near until it was too late. So we get to the gate, i pop some Tylenol and i settle down try to remember we are on our way to Paradise. We get on our first plane, it is a little one and I end up sitting with Tyler, it was only for an hour so it wasnt going to be too bad. Well drinks start being served and Tyler gets a Sprite and then decides he needs to go to the bathroom, so being such a tiny plane and all, manuvering pass me he dumps his sprite on my lap! Remember i am PMSing and i am not too happy with the fact that not only am i freezing cold and wet from his drink, but that when it dries i will be all sticky and we still have a 5 1/2hour flight after this one! At this point i am thinking, that stupid magic 8 ball is right! Our flight was a little late and we only had 30 minutes till our other flight left, so we didnt have time to go to the bathroom and get cleaned up or anything. We made our flight though and all was good. Then i had to do something i swore i would never do, I had to go to the bathroom on the airplane, I held it as long as i could, but I had to do it, and it wasnt as bad as i thought it would be, but i was sad that i now cant say i have never been to the bathroom on an airplane, dumb, i know, i am just weird like that i guess! We arrive and my spirits are back up again, we are in Hawaii and vacation has offically arrived! yeah!! We get all checked in and decide to get in our suits and check out the pools and the beach. Josh has been texting his girlfriend non stop the whole day and is happy as long as he can talk to Sami. This is when i am sure we are not going to have a good time at all, Josh drops his cell phone in the ocean on accident!! There goes the good mood, Josh is pissed, i am pissed cause we just bought him that phone a couple of weeks ago and he has gone threw more phones than i have had in my whole lifetime! At this point I am sure this vacation is going to be the biggest waste of money I have ever spent!

Day 2~ Easter Sunday

It is amazing what waking up to the birds chirping and beautiful weather does to change ones attitude! We woke up to a bunch of kids outside having an Easter egg hunt, my kids are all too big to do that anymore, kind of sad:( We got up and decided to check out the gift and craft fair that was going on in Lahaina. It ended up being kind of lame so we decided to go check out Front street. We ended up eating lunch there at a place called BJ's Pizzeria, it was okay, but lunch for 5 for $100. I would have thought it would be awesome!! We walked the shops a little and then headed back to our condo to just chill out on the beach. It was really relaxing, the kids were really good, the water was a little too calm by our beach so they decided to bury each other in the sand, it kept them busy while Doug and I just layed out and relax...Heaven!!!

Day 3 ~

Today we were scheduled to go on a whale watch in the morning. When booking this, we talked about Doug writing us all a prescription for motion sickness and that is about as far as we got with that, just talked about it. that morning we talked about it again, but we figured we would be fine. Well as soon as the boat started, i could see on Doug's face that he wasn't liking it at all! Tyler had the look of fear on his face, Josh, Haden and I were fine. Well as soon as we stopped to see our first whale and we started snapping pictures, all of a sudden Doug was gone, i figured he found a better place to take pictures, so i dint think too much about it. Then a whale got too close to our boat and we had to turn off the engines and just float for a while until it was far enough away that we could start up again. Well the water was kind of choppy and we were moving quite a bit, then the lady on the intercom says, if anyone is feeling the effects of us drifting and isn't feeling too good, come down to the bottom deck and someone will help you, Tyler pops up and heads down, without saying a word to me, so of course i follow him, he isn't feeling good, we go down there and there is Josh, he says, i am not feeling too good. I ask Where's Dad? He says, "In the bathroom barfing" oh great! So i hang out with all the sick Os's and next thing i know Haden is joining us, he isn't too bad, but wants to be with the family, next thing you know, he isn't feeling too good either, so pretty much everyone but me is sick, and being around all those sick people plays tricks on your mind. But we managed to still see the whales, which was awesome. I was worried we wouldn't see any, since it was the second to last day of the whale watching season. This was a two hour trip, so poor Doug was pretty much sick the whole time, but he controlled it well, at least he wasn't puking off the side of the boat like some of them where!! After that we were all hungry and found a place called Cool Cats to eat at, they had the best burgers ever!! Everyone was feeling better after eating which was good, except for the fact we just dropped another $100 on lunch! I am starting to see a pattern here! We decided to head back to the condo and chill again by the beach, my favorite pass time!!

Day 4 ~

Today we went to visit my friend Stacie who just moved to Maui 6 months ago. She was in my bunko group and is a ton of fun to be around! Stacie lives in Kihei, so it was about a 45 minute drive there. She took us to Makena beach aka Big beach. It was a nice big beach with lots of sand and the waves were a little bigger. It was fun chatting seeing her, I miss her a lot, in fact our bunko group fizzled out when she left! Stacie and Emily have both told me about Little beach which is a nude beach right next to big beach just over some rocks, I had a hard time believing her, so she told me and Doug to go for a walk while she watches the boys to see for ourselves! Sure enough as soon as you get over the rocks there is a sign that reads, No Clothes beyond this point! I couldn't believe my eyes, there were all kinds of naked people and none of them should be, all old and fat, I guess when i envisioned a nude beach i thought of all these beautiful people, so not the case, what an eyeopener!! After playing at the beach for a while we decided to go out to eat. Stacie wanted to take us to the Seawatch at the Wailea golf course and eat there where there is the best view of the golf course and the ocean, so beautiful! After we ate we decided to head back to our condo. When we pulled into the parking lot the sun was just going down, so we grabbed our cameras and headed to the beach to watch the sunset, it was so beautiful! I am in love with the Maui sunsets!! After the sun went down we took a walk along the beach and then headed to the hot tub to soak our feet.

DAY 5~

Today we decided to check out some other beaches. We found a beach called D.T. Flemings,it was a great beach, the waves were better for boogie boarding which made Haden very happy, he loves to boogie board.I did get a great photo opportunity, all of a sudden a whole group of lifeguard came up over the rocks from a distance and of course i had to have my picture taken with them! That doesn't happen everyday!! It started to get really windy and the sand was pelting us pretty hard so we left after a couple of hours. Doug had a Tee time with(Dr. Jackson who happened to be in Maui at the same time)at 2:00. So he dropped us off. Stacie decided to come our way and take me and the boys to The Whalers Village for lunch and some shopping. We decided to eat at place called Leilani's it was right on the beach, very beautiful and the food was really good, I was thinking it didn't cost as much either until i realized it was 80 bucks and Doug wasn't with us!! We did some window shopping, it is kind of hard to do any shopping with three boys tagging along, but it was fun chatting with Stacie, i knew i wouldn't get to see her again this trip, so i was kind of sad.