Maui - Day 4

Yep, more of the same.

Our mornings are very relaxed when we're on vacation. The kids wake up first (why they feel the need to get up at 6:00 every morning is beyond me!) and turn on PBS Kids (Maui has extensive kids' programming on PBS). I take the little one's diaper off and let her watch TV with the older kids while I go back to bed. I admit it, not qualification for parent of the year, but at least I get to sleep some more. When Mike and I are ready to get up, we do breakfast for everyone, which is generally Cranberry Almond Crunch cereal. I don't know why, but this is the cereal we eat while on vacation, and only while on vacation. Sometimes we'll have bagels as well, but it's mostly just cereal. Mike and I have tea and juice, too, and it's always our personal challenge to find a decent loose-leaf tea in other places. We lucked out this time and found one at the gelato shop across from the Paia Fish Market our first day, so we were set for the week for tea. Then everyone gets into bathing suits, we do the ritual sunscreening, and then head down to the beach and pool. We generally manage to get ourselves out the door by 9:00.

Today was our son's turn to go snorkeling. Mike took him out the same way he took our daughter out yesterday, on the boogie board, so he wouldn't have to swim that far. He could swim that far, but he's a bit intimidated by being far from shore, so this way he was comfortable and able to enjoy looking at the reef. They actually saw a turtle this time, which was very exciting for our son. He thinks it's neat to check out the reef, but he's not that impressed by just looking at the fish, so seeing a turtle made his day. He swam around out there quite a bit before they headed back in. The girls played in the sand and our older daughter snorkeled in the shallow water right by the shore. I snorkeled after the boys came back in, but the turtle was gone by then.

We went back to the pool for a while and then went up for lunch. We had a bunch of random food in the fridge, so we just did that for lunch instead of dragging everyone out again to eat. The little one was falling asleep in her seat, so she went down for a nap pretty quickly.

Our son was given a big packet of work to do while we were gone, so each afternoon he took it out to do several pages while the little one napped. He is amazingly independent and did more than I would have expected without being nagged or complaining. It was actually really impressive to see him work so diligently on his own and he had no problem finishing all of the work he was given.

After nap, we went back down to the pool to watch the sunset and let the kids swim again. It's amazing to me that they don't have gills by the time we leave with the amount of time they are in the water! We left after the sun went down and had pizza delivered for dinner. Our son was so tired that he barely ate and then went straight to bed.