aloha!

Friends, it's real early in the morning. 1:37 Hawaii Standard Time, to be precise. I'm wide awake long before I need to be, but I guess that's how jet lag works. But let me back up...

We got up way too early yesterday to get to Midway and get checked in and get settled. It was so early that we didn't bother buying any breakfast, which turned out not to be such a great idea. The first leg of our flight got us to Oakland around 9 local time (I have no idea what time zone that was) and we had about 90 minutes before our next flight departed. When the Oakland flight landed, I got a very bad headache, so we went in search of coffee, food, and water thinking they would help. Half a breakfast burrito and two sips of coffee later, and I learned that those things, in fact, did NOT help. Not gonna lie; by the time we boarded our second flight, I was a mess. I was sweating and shaking and 90% sure I was going to throw up ... or worse. I had taken some ibuprofen and some sinus medicine during the layover, so once we boarded the second flight, I made myself go to sleep for a few hours, then I woke up and drank a coke and ate some wheat thins and felt much better. Liam was my seatmate for all of this, and he was a total champ at keeping Mike updated (Mike, Henry, and Max were seated together, but far away from where Liam and I were) and making sure I was ok.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I started feeling better just in time for us to catch our first glimpse of MAUI! That's right, we made it to Hawaii! I always thought of this as a dream destination but so far out of reach that I would never get here, but we saved our points, got creative, and here we are. And the best part isn't even that I'm here. The best part (so far) was seeing how excited Liam got when we were finally approaching and he got his first glimpses of the islands. I had been a little unsure about the boys' level of enthusiasm for me dragging them on yet another trip, so it made my heart happy to see him so excited. He had the window seat, so all these pictures are his work.

Once we landed and found the rental car place and waited for half an eternity to collect our minivan, we still had three hours before we could check in to our condo. Three. Hours. Keep in mind that by this time we had been up for ... oh, I don't know ... ever, I think. We went and got groceries, found a place to get some food, and ate in a random parking lot with a view of a volcano. Like you do. But at last it was finally 4:00 here (which our bodies interpreted as 10:00), so we checked in, got all our stuff in, took some showers, and then I went to bed, so I couldn't tell you if anything of note happened after about 7:00.

But it's fine! In 15 minutes or so (it's 2:00 a.m. now, I've been writing for a while), it will be time to wake the family so we can drive up to the summit of Haleakala for the sunrise. I love a good sunrise, and this one's supposed to be fantastic, so stay tuned. At any rate, it's a really good way to put our jet lag to use.

P.S. I've downloaded the Hawaii package for my Merlin bird ID app, and I have a laminated fold-out brochure of common birds and good birding locations. So far, we've seen a ton of common mynas, one cattle egret, and about a dozen ... chickens. Everywhere. Crossing the road even. Needless to say, they don't obey commonly accepted traffic rules.