I am going backwards and adding more about arrival day, day 1. So DH and I got up at 4am. I awakened the boys around 4:50. They were so tired, I felt bad. But they quickly remembered why they were getting up and they were in a great mood! Yay! We headed to my parents house and was right on time at 5:30am. Got loaded fast and made a quick stop at the doughnut shop. Mmmm, doughnuts!!
Got on the road and there was no traffic! Awesome! We had decided to park at the OAK airport. I found a coupon for $8 off a day. We didn't want to worry about catching a shuttle and being dependent on someone else to get us to the terminal on time, especially with 4 people who had never flown before. Walk to the terminal was super fast and before I knew, we had checked our two bags. Yes, we only had two checked bags for 6 people
We got through security without a hitch, and I have to say the employees at OAK were so helpful, and really put me at ease. We quickly found a Starbucks, grabbed some water and caffeine then headed off to our gate to eat our yummy doughnut breakfast.
Our flight was super smooth! No issues at all, except for the grown woman who screamed in fear at the descent in Honolulu. Scared DS6 briefly, but I told that everything was ok and distracted him with the view from our window.
When leaving, the pilot of the plane thought I was a stewardess with Alaska! LOL. He was convinced I was!! I must have a twin! When the flight crew heard the boys had not flown, or my parents, they were shocked and gave them wings. SO cool!
Like I said above, we waited quite a LONG time for the shuttle. It was so hard to wait! All we wanted to do was get to the resort! We were joined by another family and had a quick, traffic free trip to Aulani. Check in was chaotic, we got our lei's and necklaces, etc, but never tried the fruit water. SO many people! I was expecting a huge line, but it was not bad at all. Check in was fast and room was ready and upgraded to island gardens view. Yay! DH put the charging on our room key, which was so convenient (he had said before he didn't want to do that. ) My dad put the charging on their room keys too, and it worked out great. Front desk CM said I needed all room keys to get towels/wristband, but we never found that to be the case. They would check one card, then ask who else was with us and didn't see their room keys.
We got to the room and it was gorgeous! So pretty and a great, peaceful view. The cleaning looked like the maid was maybe interrupted as it was mostly clean, but some odds and ends left behind. I called the next morning to ask for a full cleaning and linen change just in case.
We promptly hit the pools/beach!!
We got the boys finalized at Aunty's and got their wristbands. Totally easy process after doing the online registration. We could not find my parents. We split up and never met up with them again. I felt so bad. We finally saw them later that night. We decided we were hungry and ate at off the hook. I think we all had the burger. Yum! My drink with dinner at Off the Hook!
At some point we went to island country market. I wanted to check way more stuff out but DH was in a hurry for some reason! We ended up just getting milk and some beer and cider to tide us over until Costco Wednesday. I had brought Cheerios for breakfast until then. And I had also packed a ton of snacks. Fruit rope, protein bars, goldfish, beef jerky. The beef jerky did not last long and I forgot to buy more at Costco. Oops! The rest of the snacks we hardly touched, and I was shocked because my kids usually eats ton while swimming, but I think they were having too much fun to eat!