Day Four in Hawaii: Breakfast, Boogie Boarding, and Benihana's

We had breakfast at a great restaurant on the beach.  It was the same one where we had dinner on the first night.  The morning was perfect.  While Damien was making table reservations, I was busy taking more pictures of the kids.  How they still smile for me, I don't know.  They are patient kids for sure.  Or, maybe they just know how much I love pictures of my sweet babies.  Can you blame me?  These pictures make me so happy.  Just look at them!

Breakfast was going great.  We had each ordered our drinks and meals and were enjoying the tropical weather.  Some of the kids ordered pancakes and waffles, but Matthew ordered All Bran cereal.  I tried to tell him that it wasn't going to be too sweet but he still went with it.  Once breakfast arrived, everyone dug in.  Everyone was pretty quiet and just eating when Matthew grabbed my arm and said, "Mom, I'm going to barf." 

We sprinted to the bathroom and as soon as I opened the bathroom door, Matthew got to the toilet and did his thing.  Poor guy.  But at least he made it.  I cleaned him up and walked with Matthew through the restaurant as if nothing had happened.  Even Damien believed we were in the clear.  When we got back the table Damien said, "So we are all good?"  I shook my head no and said, "He threw up everything in his stomach."  I looked around at the palm trees, felt the sun on my skin, and listened to the waves crash on the beach.  Surely, we aren't going to be dealing with the stomach flu in Hawaii, right?

Matthew seemed to be feeling a lot better after his episode in the bathroom.  I kept asking him if he felt okay and he said he was fine.  I chose to take his word for it and press on!  We didn't have a lot of things on tap for today.  We wanted to do more swimming and boogie boarding in the ocean.  The kids wanted to make sure we got over to the swimming pools and hit the water slides again.  Matthew wanted to go to the Lagoon and skip his new water ball around.  All of these = no problem.  After hours of fun, we opted to head over across the street and off the hotel's premises to the one and only McDonalds. It wasn't a good sign that Matthew wasn't feeling like eating anything.  We were now on operation NO SHARING in our family.  Poor Matthew.

The kids really took a nose dive in terms of being tired at McDonalds.  We decided to just go back to our rooms and rest for a while.  Sun, swimming, and possible stomach bugs can really take a lot out of you! 

So, when I am feeling sick to my stomach- the last thing I want to do is eat.  Too bad for Matthew that we had reservations at Benihana's that night!  The rest of the family was so excited!  Yummy!  Dinner actually was great.  The kids did well and loved all of the fanfare that comes with that place!  The waiters in the vicinity kept messing around with Emily by pointing a red laser and having it hit her hands, her drink, and her food.  The whole time she had no idea who was doing it!  Pure comedy.

We were almost through with dinner when I stopped mid-story telling to Damien.  "Oh my gosh!  We never went back to the pool after lunch and got our things!" I said.  When we went to McDonald's, we had left our things on a poolside chair.  We didn't want to carry everything over there and the chair we had was in prime waterslide viewing position.  When the kids got exhausted at lunch, we completely forgot about everything that we had left!   We walked back to the hotel with urgency after we realized all that we had left sitting there up for grabs.  We had left Matthew and Emily's life jackets, two boogie boards, two sandcastle kits, two blow up rafts, our swim bag, all four sets of goggles, and the kids clothes that they had worn down to the pool that morning.  Seriously?  How did we not remember to go back for it?

When we got to the concierge and explained our predicament (it was now 9:20 p.m.), they called the pool area and told them what we had left.  I am not kidding when I say that in a matter of minutes, a young man brought all of our things to us in a nice tidy bag.  And that, my friends is one reason that staying in a nice hotel rocks!!  Once we had our things in hand, we rolled our full bodies back up to the rooms and everyone crashed.  Man, this vacation thing is exhausting!  One more full day before we go home.  The kids are already dreading it.