So our flight to go home was at 1 in the afternoon. We had some fun on the beach in the morning and got to Honolulu airport an hour and 15 mins before our flight. And we had checked in the night before. We checked in curbside and they couldn't pull up our confirmation number. They then told us it was too late to check into our flight and go stand in line at customer service to see if they can help us. As we stood in the hour long line our flight took off. Without us on it. The next flight out to Portland was the next day and we could only do standby. It was a full flight. They would only let us do one standby flight for free so we really wanted to make that flight. We needed to be there four hours early. We had already checked out of Aulani obviously so we called them back and we were able to get a room for that night. The kids were ecstatic and Weston and I were pretty ok with it too. We checked in our rental car already so we took a taxi back to the hotel. Meanwhile Hunter had a bad case of swimmers ear which I was just hoping to go to the dr asap when we got home. By this point it was bad so I went back to the hotel with Haylee and Hudson and Weston took another taxi to urgent care. Our view this time had a much better view and we had fun swimming and hanging out at the beach some more!! Before we missed our flight I went for one last run along the beach at our resort. I did this almost every morning and loved every minute of it!! The palm trees! The palm trees were my favorite. I loved all of them!
Soaking up all the beach we can get before leaving. So we thought.......
Hudson loved watching the fish in the snorkeling area.
This is our new room with an ocean view. We almost felt like we were starting our second vacation. It's weird checking out of a hotel, doing the whole airport scene and then coming back to enjoy some more vacay time.
That night, we had a campfire on the beach while reading campfire stories, and ate dinner watching the sunset. We were bound and determined to get on a flight the next day so this was really hopefully our last night there, as sad as it was to say goodbye to Hawaii again. The next morning we got to the airport at 7:30 for our 12:30 pm flight. We waited and waited and waited. The plane was finally all boarded, when they told us sorry no seats. We would have to book a flight at our own expense and there wasn't a flight available for two more days. After telling us that they also mentioned all of our bags and car seat were on the plane going to Portland and they can't get them off the plane so bye bye all of our stuff. At this point Haylee was crying because she was scared. Hunter was standing on a chair yelling, "We are homeless, mom are really homeless?" And Hudson found a bird in the airport and was chasing it around. Weston and had made friends with some guys who also missed their flight the day before and were trying to fly to vegas. I was just mentally making a list of all the things we would need to go buy at target to survive the next two days. Then I went into determined mode, marched right up to the airline people and let them know don't you dare leave us stranded here for two days without our luggage. You messed up by putting them on a plane we were not on so please fix this. They worked out a few things and let us try another standby flight leaving for seattle that same day. Luckily we did get on that flight. Three families missed that flight that day so lucky us, we got their seats. We got in at midnight and then rented a car and drove back home. Pulled in at 4 in the morning. Almost 24 hours with zero sleep and three kids. Crazy, crazy but we had the best trip ever and are still dreaming about it!
Haylee was so happy to be on a plane and flying home! Thank you Hawaii for being beautiful and helping our family make some amazing memories!
