a breath of fresh air...

Hawaiian air that is. My wonderful parents watched our little sweeties while Stephen and I took a trip to Maui, HI. I was so nervous to leave my girls. Well, at least to leave Jovie. I knew that Pear would blend right in with my family. She and Libby (my 4 year old sister) are almost like sisters. Libby is much nicer to Pear than a sister may be but Pear is just as feisty, brutally honest and comfortable with Libby as she would be with any sister! (In all honesty, she can be down right mean towards her. We are working on that.) On the other hand, prior to this Hawaii trip, Jovie had never been left for more than 5 hours with anyone! Not only had I never left her for more than 5 hours, she is still very much a "mama's baby" and hardly even let my parents hold her. But, we spend a lot of time at my parent's house and she is very familiar with the grounds, her sister, my parents and my siblings so I thought it would be okay.

We arrived in Maui on Friday afternoon and after getting our car and groceries, we headed straight to the beach! Ahhh. How therapeutic. The beach is endless, the water warm, the air clean and blue skies rested above us. We went on a Lava/Snorkeling tour with Blue Water Rafting and I would have to say it was probably the highlight of our trip. The captain was a little on the daring side and he drifted the boat into a lava cave, took us snorkeling on the backside of Molokini (known to be an "expert only" snorkeling spot), and let us snorkel to the edge of the reef on Molokini (I wasn't energetic enough to make it that far but Stephen did and he said it was extremely scary and amazing). We spent a lot of time relaxing on different beaches, reading, eating, snorkeling and walking. It was a wonderful time and I'd like to go again next week! If only money grew on trees, eh?

I missed the girls terribly by our 3rd day. I asked to talk to Pear on the phone several times but she was always too busy. One time I did get to talk to Jovie on the phone and I can still hear the little "eh, uh, eh," that she nearly wrenched my heart out with. I teared up and couldn't talk to her again the entire trip because I missed her so badly. We arrived home around 2am on Wednesday morning, got a couple hours of sleep and then went to pick up the girls. Upon walking through my parent's door, Jovie was very excited to see me and just snuggled with me for a good 5 minutes. Then I got a big hug from Pear and it was as if we never left them! They weren't mad, they weren't upset, they weren't even cranky! They were simply happy to see us.

What a great vacation.