It's so nice to take a vacation. Since I left my old job 2 years ago, it's an amazing feat that I can take a vacation and not worry constantly about work while I am gone. Now that I'm back though, it's payback time! So much to do. Nick keeps asking me how it's going and whether I'm done and I keep telling him I have days and days to go. Luckily I can work from home while I'm home with Sam.
Poor Sammy, still not 100%. We saw the pediatrician yesterday, not much she can do. It's been 7 days since he's been sick. We're watching his fever, hoping that it stays down today or we're looking at a chest xray tomorrow. He keeps asking if he'll be ok to go to school tomorrow! Little guy is such a trooper.
Now for more Hawaii...
One of the highlights of our trip was the whale watching trip we took. Something I've had on my 'bucket list' for a long time. Bucket list - have you heard that term? It was a new one to me that I hadn't heard until the movie came out this year. Anyway, it's basically a list of things you want to do in your lifetime before you die. After whale watching, we decided to start a family 'bucket list' about all of the things we want to do as a family. And now I'm gettting off track, back to whale watching.
We were in Hawaii at just the right time (the humpback whales are now in their migration period from Alaska), so we decided to book a 2 hour sunset excursion on a 50 foot catamaran, total of about 50 people. It was expensive. More than we really had in our budget, but we looked at it as an opportunity of a lifetime. And it was an amazing opportunity and worth every penny.
I took so many pictures trying to capture the experience. I was really torn between just sitting there watching, soaking it all in and trying to capture what we were seeing on my camera, so I did some of both. I have a whole new appreciation for wildlife photographers, I don't know how they manage to capture the shots they do! I just pointed my camera, put it on a high ISO and shot and shot and shot. Although I did manage to get some pretty good shots, there are many, many, many more of just the flat ocean. I'll spare you from those :)
This will sound weird, but the best way for me to describe it is that it was an out of body experience. There we were in the middle of the ocean. In the middle of nature. In the middle of their environment and we were observers. Just observing them do their thing. We were fortunate to see one whale close up jumping breach out of the water (no worries, there are very strict laws about how close boats are able to get to the whales, when I say close up, we were probably 100 feet away)- close to 3/4 of his body was out of the water! I literally had tears in my eyes after seeing that.
This whale was playing. He kept thumping one of his side fins in the water over and over and over. Then he'd roll and flip his tail fin up and down in the water over and over and over and make the biggest splashes. Again, I can't even describe what it was like to see that.
We saw probably 80 whales in the course of 2 hours. The captain of the boat said that was unheard of. He's been sailing for years and never saw that many whales in a trip. At one point the crew put a large microphone under the water and we were able to hear a male mating call. Just like sounds in the movie Finding Nemo! Unbelievable.
Our 2 hour trip ended with a beautiful sunset on the water.
All I can say is if you EVER have the opportunity to do something like this, do whatever you can to make it happen. I'd do it again and again and again if I could.
