On Thursday, June 16th, we headed on a charter plane from SFO to Kauai for Grace’s McK West Coast retreat. The trips are bi-annual, but they skipped a year during the downturn, so this was the first trip in 3 years. This was our first time back to Kauai since our honeymoon.
The event was held at the Grand Hyatt in Poipu. Grace was on the clock from the minute we got to the hotel, so the kids and I had fun by ourselves for the first day or so. We had a great time by the lagoon, which was zero entry and the only relatively safe place to have them play by the water. We had a nice cabana for a couple days and were out there all day with them.
On Friday, Olivia and I tried out the water slide. She just barely made the height minimum and was brave enough to go down after me so I could catch her. I wasn’t sure how fast she was going to come down so I stood back a bit and she went under briefly before I could catch her. I got an earful about it and she said she would never, ever ride the slide again.
On Saturday, I convinced her to give it another try, which was good and bad because we ended up going down it about 37 times. It did not, however, get old, even for me. We had a sitter each evening so we could attend the retreat dinner and events. After Grace being at the firm almost 7, there are a lot of familiar faces, many of whom I only see at these multi-office events. At the same time, there were so many new faces and we made a lot new acquaintances.
On Sunday, after just barely getting settled in, we were headed home. Last time, the event was held in Maui and we spent the following week at Hualalai in Kona with Olivia. This year we didn’t extend our trip because we have another big one coming up next week. The kids were amazing on the long flight home – thank goodness for iPads…
Hawaii, we’ll be back again soon.
