Hawaii was amazing. But really, it was so good to get back home. I loved being away and having a vacation from all my mommy duties, but I missed Stryker tons! Not too much that I drove our fellow vacationers crazy with talk about my little man (feel free to comment if I did), but every once in awhile I'd think about him and wonder how he was doing and if he missed me. I did at least talk to him every day, even with the 5 hr time difference. Stryker did great with my parents. He loves my dad!!! I got tons of comments from different people how Stryker was "Poppy's buddy" and always wanted to be around and held by his grandad. I got stories every day about what they did and how he was doing. When we finally went to pick him up, Stryker looked at Mike and I with a confused look on his face. Almost like although he knew we weren't there, he didn't realize we left him. After that he was really clingy and fussy for a day or two. But now, he's back to normal and I have my brilliant, sweet little man back. He amazes me how smart his is every day. And Stryker is trying to be really helpful now and help me with laundry or the dishes. It also panics me a bit though, because I have to grab everything from Stryker as soon as he touches it so he doesn't break it.

Although I missed Stryker, I'm so glad we didn't bring him with us. There were kids on our plane, and if traveling all day is hard for an adult, I don't how those other kids made it. Plus, we wouldn't have gotten to do any of the stuff we did if we had our kiddo. It was wonderful! We did lots of hikes, which hopefully satisfies Mike's desires for hiking for another few years. We even hiked down to a waterfall and I got to swim in the pool of the falls. That has always been a dream of mine, so it was great to come true. My favorite was that the people from above who were looking at the waterfall from the overlook would see me a wave. It looked like it gave some people a trill to see people way down there.

We did so much in Kauai that there is no way to list it all, but every day was filled. I loved it, but it kinda sucked that we were always on the go. It wasn't a typical beach relaxing vacation. However, I got to live out another dream and learned how to surf. We took surfing lessons one day and it was great! Our instructor was wonderful and I managed to get up about every other time. Some lady commented how great I was doing. Then once we were done, the lady and her husband came up and told me how I looked like I'd been surfing much longer than a first lesson and how inspirational I was. I'm not sure why they singled me out of the 4 of us learning to surf to say how great I was, but it still makes me smile even now.

Someday we will go back to Hawaii, but will try a different island since we saw almost everything we wanted to see on Kauai. But that will be many years from now when Stryker is old enough to enjoy it.

Current Mood: giddy