Relaxed...Finally

A few people have wrote to me and asked why I stopped posting my daily vacation blogs. The answer was simply, I became relaxed. It took 4 days, but I finally was able to sit down by the pool and enjoy a few hours of nothing. Boy was it a great time.

I can honestly say that this was perhaps our best vacation we have had in Kauai since we've started going there 10 years ago. The kids are old enough now so they don't need to be entertained and are fun enough that you want to be their to enjoy their moments.

There were things that I missed that we have done in the past, but not missed so much that I couldn't have a good time. I think the only thing I would change about my trip would be that I would cut down golfing down to 1 day. I don't know that I needed the second day. Sure it was fun and I did much better the second day, but I didn't really need it.

If I had to pick the most fun time of the week, it would have to be Tuckers birthday BBQ. Every year, we usually take everyone to the Taco Bell in Lihue and then to a movie. This year, we had a BBQ at the pool. Gina's Father, affectionately known as Papa to everyone, BBQ'd a whole beef tenderloin and what seemed to be 3 dozen chicken thighs. They were so gobbled them up. As a matter of fact, we gobbled up everything. Here's a pic of the kids having a munch at the BBQ.

Tucker had a lovefest with Taylor, but Ryan was sure to make sure that nothing got out of hand.
Here's a pic of the pool where we spend most of our time while we are here. You can see why.

Ryan didn't want to go home, but unfortunately his puppy dog eyes didn't work this time.

As I get more photos and remember more stories, I'll post them. I don't want to forget this trip. It was a blast.

Brought Down by the Man!!!

So today, I was up at 6:00am so I could golf at Kauai Lagoons. I was really looking forward to drinking those awesome bloody marys and paying 60 bucks for the drinks that I owed from Nick losing at Bocce Ball. Golf was fun and as usual, I sucked on the front 9. On the back 9 I had a respectable 45. My drives were on fire and my putting didn’t suck. It wasn’t great, but it didn’t suck.

I got down to the pool around noon and it was time to BBQ. I brought down the BBQ stuff, the pre-mixed mai tai’s, margaritas and beer. We were all set. I went to go swim with the boys in the big pool for a few minutes, when my wife came down and said, “We were brought down by the man!!!” Basically, the head of security came over to our table and said we couldn’t have any outside alcoholic beverages in the pool area. Damn!!! Just when I thought we had won the battle, we got nailed. So the quick thinking of my highly successful family members opened up all the pre-purchased Marriott Drink cups and poured in all of the beer. We drank those fairly quickly, then it was on to the Mai Tai’s and Margaritas. The waitress, bless her heart, came over and said. Just don’t make it so obvious, they won’t come search you…. LOL Wahoo! Someone is on our side. Of course we feel bad for her since we aren’t buying drinks. The good news is that we are giving her 100 bucks just for us hanging out in her area and looking away when needed. We are going to try and be more discreet tomorrow.

We ate dinner tonight at the Hukilau Lanai. It’s a simple, but nice restaurant in Kapaa. We discovered it last year and fell in love with the food and the price. The food is much better than average and they have a wine list with 20 wines under 20 bucks. Since I am a cheap wine connoisseur, this is perfect. Tucker had the Sashimi Nachos for dinner? Sound odd? I thought it did too. They had Sashimi and some sort of caviar on won ton chips. He really likes sushi, so this was perfect. I think the wine did Gina in for the night. We got back to the rooms and she was toasted. At one point she laughed continuously for 15 minutes. I doubt she will even remember.

Tommorow, Aug 6. Is Tucker’s 7th Birthday. We plan on having a BBQ by the pool tomorrow for his birthday and then playing Lotteria (Mexican Bingo with a drinking game twist for the adults.) It should be fun. Although we already gave Tucker his b-day present, he said that what he would really like for his birthday is a massage? WTF? He’s only 7. What in the hell is there to massage?

Winning the battle against the hotel and the geckos!

So I think we are winning the battle. We brought our pre-mixed drinks down to the pool, beer in a cooler and someone went to Hamura Saimin to bring back lunch. The cost of lunch for 22 was 80 bucks. Take that!

My brother in law thought it would be fun to play Bocce Ball on the lawn by the ocean this afternoon. Picture this, a lawn with rolling hills of green. I have a picture of the boys on this lawn in my Facebook profile. Anyway, it made for an interesting terrain. He may have discovered a new game. So my oldest son, Nicholas was the chosen one to play with my father-in-law and 2 brother-in-laws. Of course you can’t play unless there is some kind of stakes involved. Of course these stakes involved rounds of drinks at golf tomorrow. Lucky for me, Nick lost and I got to buy 3 rounds of drinks. I took over for him and was able to get a round back, but sheesh!!! Don’t bet unless you know the true value of a dollar…or should I say 60 dollars…

Normally we go out to eat at the more popular restaurants on the island. We usually make reservations first thing in the morning and negotiate to our desired time. From the looks of things, we aren’t going to need to do it this week. It’s quite dead on the island and when I asked for a prime time dinner spot at Scotty’s BBQ, they said, “Sure, no problem.” I even called back to make a change and they said, “Sure, no problem!” To give you an idea of this place, last year I called the same day and got stuck with an 8:30pm dinner reservation. We were able to get 7pm this time and there were still empty seats in the place. Oh, and unlike the hotel, these guys didn’t raise their prices 33%. They did raise them, but the drinks were still the same price as were the kids items.

Last night when we came in from dinner there was a gecko in the entry way. We spent about 15 minutes trying to catch that little sucker. We debated on keeping it or not, but in the end we decided to put it in the bushes outside our room. Nick tried to be gentle and coax it out of the glass. He called to me and said he was having trouble and that the little guy didn’t want to leave. So being the gentle person I am, I put a piece of paper in there and dug it out from the glass and flicked it 15 feet past the bushes. He was free now!!!

Of course the young ones were kind of freaked out that a gecko was going to sleep with them the rest of the night.

Mas Tequila

Well the battle for cost savings is in strongly in our favor. A large group of us went to COSTCO to purchase, breakfast foods, lunch stuff, snack and alcoholic beverages. The total for 6 families was $401.50. That included 2 cases of beer, a gallon of Rum, some mixers and a gallon of tequila….Ooops! Did I say gallon? I guess it might have been a gallon had I not dropped it in the lobby when I opened up the hatch of the mini-van. Yes, that’s right the tequila bottle busted when it hit the cement. The good news is that I saved the Rum with my foot and the mixers were in plastic bottles.

Because of my swift movement in saving the rum, I decided that I should be the one to go and buy another bottle of tequila. So we took all the food down to our room to divvy up and I went to the local ABC Store to pick up tequila. There were a couple different sized bottles, but none the size that we purchased at COSTCO. I did, however, see what appeared to be larger sized bottles in the back of shelf. I reached back to get the bigger one and as luck would have it, my elbow clipped the front bottle and I knocked it off the shelf. Yes, that’s 2 bottles of tequila broken within a matter of minutes. My luck was just awful. Anyway, I apologized, bought some extra stuff, along with the tequila and made my way back to the hotel.

After all the beer was put into our mini-fridge and the food was divvied up and sent off to all of the rooms, I went down to the pool. I had to share my story about the second bottle of tequila that nobody knew about at this point. They were already laughing at me because of the first bottle of tequila, but the second one had them thinking that I should be nowhere near glass. My brother-in-law said, “Look out, those things usually come in three’s. “ Great, just what I needed.

I went into the big pool with the kids while Gina went up to the room to get some lunch for herself. About 30 minutes come by and Gina comes back down to the side of the pool. She is spotted with large patches of blood. She is bleeding from her arm, her foot, her chest and her hand. It looks as if she had been in a bar fight and won… (The winners never have anything on their face.)

I jumped out of the pool wondering what happened and in typical Gina style, she says, “I’m okay, it was nothing.” Excuse me; blood dripping from your arm at an alarming rate isn’t nothing. She then elaborates to tell the story of how she got up to the room and opened the refrigerator and a bottle of beer fell out. It hit the linoleum floor and baseboard just perfect enough that it exploded, hitting her in the arm, chest, hand and foot. Yep, it’s was all glass and cap shrapnel. By the looks of things, it hit her pretty hard too. So there was my “Number 3.” Gina jumped into the pool to have the chlorine clean out the wounds a little bit, and then some big Hawaiian dude came over with plenty of band-aids for her wounds. She now has a couple of large bruises, but it appears she will be okay.So the good news is that there haven’t been any more broken bottles as of yet…

FYI, I am almost relaxed and on Hawaiian time… But not yet!

33% Increase, WHAT??????

I am often amazed by the thinking of managers of service establishments. I can almost understand that if costs go up, those costs are passed on to the consumer. Sometimes there is no choice but to increase the prices if the costs have put you in negative territory, but an average of 33% increase across the board is a little extreme.

This week as our family is on our annual trip to Kauai, we have discovered that we will be making quite a few changes to our normal daily routines that we have experienced for the 10 years.

For the past 10 years we have been coming to the Kauai Marriott in Lihue as part of a large family timeshare group. There are now a total of 22 of us that come every year. We are to the point that this is pretty much a second home for us, albeit only one week per year. We know most of the service staff, we don’t need a map and can pick a good restaurant based upon it’s chef/cooks better than most. There is a certain type of normalcy that takes out the initial awkwardness that accompanies a trip into unfamiliar surroundings.

Our first day here, Saturday, gave a us an initial awkwardness that left us feeling a little bit like, “This is not our place.” Our first day is normally a rush to get to the relaxed state that we like our weekly vacation to be in. We get off the plane, rush to the hotel, put on our swimsuits and go down to our pool. We usually sit at the same place around the same time each year. We order drinks, some with extra shots, to take out that stress that air travel tends to put on a lot of people. This year our flight arrangement was different, so we weren’t able to get lunch at the Honolulu airport, so we figured we would just get it down by the pool. We have our favorites.
Anyway, we get down to the pool, to our table and order food. We didn’t even think to look at the prices, we figured that they would be a little more expensive than normal, but about the same as last year. When my food came, I thought something was a little bit different….NO FRIES!!!!! I asked where the fries were and she said, “Oh, that will be 3 dollars extra for the side of Fries.” I said, “WHAT!” Then I looked at the menu and was completely baffled at the prices of every item. It appears that there is at least 25% increase on most items and if you want things that you’ve come to expect from your meal, expect to pay extra…. Like fries!

A cheeseburger with fries used to be $9.00. It is now $12.00. If you want fries, add $3.00. That’s over 50% increase for the same thing we have gotten for the past 10 years. THAT’s INSANE!!! A Mai Tai used to be $7.50, now it’s $9.75. As I kept looking at the prices, I couldn’t help but think this is not the place we were used to. A quick look around the usually crowded pool area, there were many areas of empty lounge chairs, a sure sign of the economy, gas crisis and Hawaiian air travel problems over the last year. Another sign that should have clued me in was that our room was ready upon our arrival….early. It's never ready until 4pm like they state. My father in law was offered a Presidential Suite upgrade and a largely decreased price. It was obvious that they were hurting a little because of economy and all that’s accompanied it.

So if you manage a service oriented business that is hurting like this, what should you do? My first thought would to be to take care of the people who are at your business and make them not want to leave. For me, it would seem that reducing the prices slightly so they buy more. Apparently, the manager isn’t thinking along the same lines and for the first time, these price increases will have us going to the grocery store to buy snacks, drinks and lunch food. So the $1000.00 per week we normally spend by the pool will be down to about $300.00….at the most. So they may have increased the prices by 33%, but we have decreased our spending by more than twice as much. We are not alone with this either. Our whole party of 22 is doing the same. That’s 5 families decreasing the money spent here. That’s $3500.00 that we won’t be spending at the Lihue Marriott this year.

The good news is that Duke’s, which is next to the hotel managed to keep their same prices. A quick look at the online menus of the restaurants on the island seems to indicate the same thing. We will be happy leave the hotel for food elsewhere.

That ring around the back of the head

Gina finally convinced Tucker and Ryan that it was time for a haircut. It's been quite a few months and their hair was quite long.

As she was asking them the type of haircut they wanted, it was no surprise that Tucker wanted his layered. Ryan, on the other hand, had no clue there was more than one type of haircut. Gina tried helping him with his decision. "Do you want it like before? Do you want to keep it longer? Do you want it short like daddy's?" Ryan quickly responded, "Yes, just like daddy's," with a big smile on his face. He then looked up at her and said, "I want it just like daddy's with the ring on the top of his head," referring to my lovely bald spot.

Damn these kids can always make me laugh.

Tiny Swords!!!!!

I absolutely love the innocence of a child.

Lately, I've been doing some sewing, (yes with a sewing machine) to recover our outdoor furniture. During the sewing process I use pins to hold the material together before I launch it into the machine. When I take the pins out, I put them in a bowl beside the machine.

The other day Ryan, my just turned 5 year old, comes by and asks, "What you doing dad?" I tell him what I'm doing and he checks out the sewing machine and looks over at the bowl with the pins. All of the sudden, I see his eyes get real big and a devilish smile on his face. He yells over to his brother, "Tucker! Look what I found, TINY SWORDS!!!!!"

This kid cracks me up

License for Parenthood

Quite often I am asked for advice on being a parent. One might expect that I should have some pretty good advice to give on raising kids, since I am raising three of them. Unfortunately, that's not the advice that I'm asked for. The advice that I'm asked for usually revolves around lives changing due to kids entering the picture. Huh???

My first thought is, "and why did you choose to have kids?" It completely baffles me.

The way I look at things is that you don't take action unless you want change. When you wanted kids, did you think your life would stay the same? How about when you got married , had a significant other or got divorced for that matter? When you make changes to your life, expect life changing events.

From my perspective, when you get married, you are telling yourself that the person you are marrying will come first in your life for the rest of your life... Until death or divorce do you part... That is until you both decide to have kids. Then, you both made the decision that your children will come first in your lives until you die. (Sure you can dance around that a bit, but that's my plan.)

This means that you cannot just up and go out to hang with friends. You need to consider the impact that it has on your spouse and kids before you decide. Assuming the impact is minimal and your spouse wants you out of the house, you then need to contemplate whether or not a nice nap might be a better solution for you... Of course, you choose to go out with your friends because of how fun it used to be, completely forgetting that when you wake up the next morning... "You are on!!!" There is no time for hangovers or catching up on sleep. You blew it and missed out on "YOU TIME!!!!!" You then wonder, "What about me?" It is then that you look back at those commitments you made to change your life; to put others in front of you. It is then that you should smile and be thankful that you have those people in your life...forever.