Hawaii - Oahu Part 1

Is this not the saddest vacation picture you've ever seen?

That is a picture of a poor, sick, sick baby Duke.  In Hawaii.  

Poor little guy still has sand on his toes.

We had a 6am flight out of Baltimore and at around 10pm the night before our flight I heard him start choking on the monitor.  I went to check on him and found him (and the bed) covered in throw up.  We cleaned him up and got him back to sleep, only to have the same thing happen a few minutes later.  Perfect timing, 5 hours before we are supposed to leave for the airport and i'm STILL NOT PACKED.  After determining that he was definitely sick, we called the Dr. and she told us we should still travel in the morning and to bring lots of plastic bags.  To make a long story short, we pretty much had the worst (and extremely looooong East Coast to Hawaii) travel experience of our lives.

We finally made it, only to have Duke continue to be very sick for about 5 days....and then pass it on to me.  Right around the time he started feeling better I was in the thick of it and ended up in urgent care with a steroid shot in my behind and a bag full of antibiotics.  So, our first week of vacation was pretty much a bust.  Not to mention Ritch was working every day, all day.  It's a good thing I brought a good book and also a good thing we had a second week in Kauai planned with my parents.  Thankfully we more than made up for our yucky start with a super fun finish.  

Here are some pictures from our time in Oahu over Thanksgiving week.

The view from our balcony....it was painful to sit up there and see what we were missing out on.

The view from a drive we took after we started feeling better

Aaaaaand somebody is on his way back to feeling like himself....

We had Thanksgiving dinner with our friends Mike & Brenda and their adorable daughter Kennedy who live on Oahu.  Mike is a photographer and took this family photo (which made the back of our Christmas card!).  Dinner was delicious and included a few special Hawaiian touches like mac salad, rice and cocoa puffs (not the cereal, the chocolate-y pastry puff) for dessert.  Brenda cooked the whole meal and it was delicious!!

Lots more pictures to share soon.

Love,

Chels