Surprise aloha

I was just getting kinda close to getting caught up and then we went and left the state for a week!

Surprise!

This vacation was actually rescheduled twice and I was super super skeptical it was even going to happen this time (due to all the covid prevention steps we had to take to get there)!

Backstory: we went to Maui as a whole family (with my parents and sisters and their spouses) back in 2014 for my dad’s 60th birthday. This year, we were attempting to repeat it for his 65th! Alas, Hawaii was not open for visitors in July. Or August. But on October 15th they changed the rules, removing the 2 week quarantine *IF* you got a negative covid test within 72 hours of departure.

And lucky for us, our flight was on the 20th. Making us some of the very first people to arrive on the island in SEVERAL months.

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I posted answers to a million questions I was getting on my IG stories, so I won’t go through it all again, but the main points were

• I felt pretty safe flying (which says a lot because my baseline state is being complete level 10 germaphobe). Masks and hand washing are the way to go.
• Getting tests sucked and I will never do it again because of Miss V’s reaction (this was her second time going through the ordeal thanks to the first trip we didn’t take and it went worse than the first, which was also very very bad).
• Most of the island was still shut down, but that is changing as we speak. While we were there, the restaurants were gearing up for tourism again. I bet by November lots of the restaurants will be reopening (for take away or outdoor dining).

Anyway, even though it was not exactly the normal Hawaiian vacation, it was still a nice change of scenery for us all.

And I got to ring in my 38th year with a beach front sunrise run, so it doesn’t get much better than that!