Hawaii Family Vacation: Aulani!!

 Heaven on Earth.  Seriously.

Check-in was a breeze and the kids loved the stickers and bracelet and pins and all the swag they got.  The lobby smelled so good.  I'll have to find a candle with that scent.  We immediately went to the room and after gushing over every little detail, we got our bathing suits on and headed down to get towels and wristbands.  We had no issue finding chairs considering it was after 4pm.  We enjoyed the water slides before they closed for the day and swam in all the different pools and lazy river.  Our favorite was the infinity pool with the grotto.  

My parents went to dinner at the sit down restaurant "Off the Hook", while we opted to stay in our bathing suits and grab something at the cafeteria style shop they had, "Ulu Cafe".  The food wasn't that great at the Ulu Cafe, but that's pretty typical for Disney quick-service like that.  We bought one refillable mug for pop and juice.  We watched the sunset from the infinity pool and swam until we were tired.  The kids got Mickey ice cream bars and we went back to the room to shower and get ready for bed.  They were doing a movie on the lawn so we set up chairs on our balcony, made some popcorn, and enjoyed watching Tangled.  Sean and I even saw a shooting star!

The next morning we woke up and went down to Off the Hook in our bathing suits to get some breakfast (Mickey waffles and the most delicious french toast!).  We saved our chairs and enjoyed the pools most of the morning.  We got Dole Whip and shaved ice.  My dad went down the dark water slide.  We met characters like Minnie, Pluto, and Stitch.  It was just a great morning!

My parents took the boys early afternoon over to Pearl Harbor while Scott and I opted to stay the resort.  We relaxed, shared a lunch at the adults only pool and some adult beverages.  The kids enjoyed seeing Pearl Harbor.  We met back up for dinner at Mekiko's across the street for Mexican food.  It was pretty good!  We came back and of course the kids wanted to swim again, so we swam until it was time to go to bed.

Take me back!  I wish we were there right now.  It was so much fun!  But, we checked out Saturday morning early after getting a take-out from Off the Hook so we could have Mickey waffles one more time.  We went to the airport in Honolulu to turn in the minivan and take our short flight (45 minutes) over to the Big Island for part two of our Hawaiian adventure!