California here we come! The White House goes to Disneyland and Aulani - Update 10/2

If I recall correctly, the CMs at the Olelo Room can speak some Hawaiian and will teach guests a few words and phrases if asked. We had appetizers at the Olelo Room a couple of times while listening to the Hawaiian music. It was very relaxing.

Not only do you take good night time photos, your daytime photos are pretty good, too!
 
If I recall correctly, the CMs at the Olelo Room can speak some Hawaiian and will teach guests a few words and phrases if asked. We had appetizers at the Olelo Room a couple of times while listening to the Hawaiian music. It was very relaxing.

Not only do you take good night time photos, your daytime photos are pretty good, too!

Thanks, but these were all just quickie shots with my cell phone. I am appalled at all of my lazy food shots. (I do some stock photography with a fair amont of food shots that take a lot of time & planning. Guess I was just really super lazy and ON VACATION when I took all of these....plus DH and DS didn't want to wait on me to take pics of their food b4 they could eat!!) LOL

We started to go back to the Olelo room one nite for dinner but when we got there we found out they only had appetizers. DH & I would've been OK but DS(17) was famished!! NOT substantial enough for him. This lack of affordable meals after 5:00 was our biggest complaint with the whole resort.
 
So glad you made it to Hawaii safely! To backtrack on your DL trip, loved how close you were to the parks by staying at VGC. I moved to So CA two years ago and bought an annual pass last year but only got to visit 4 times :( I have yet to go into any of the hotels (I know...shame on me. I only live about 35 mins away). It's fun to just walk back and forth between the Parks, isn't it?

So sorry to hear your son lost his retainer. It's hard to be be mom all the time and let kids take responsibility on their own. (I raised 5 kids and there were times they wished they listened to dear old Mom after all lol).

Aulani Resort is beautiful! Would love to stay there some day....can't wait to hear all about the rest of your trip!
 
Joining in and excited to see more! I have seen you post on the Aulani threads and we're going to Aulani in 2 months, so love getting a preview.

Can't believe all the things you had to deal with for this trip, though. The cancellations, your son's health, then a hurricane when you actually go... :eek:

Glad you made it safely, though. Hope it was a good trip, despite the storms.
 


So glad you made it to Hawaii safely! To backtrack on your DL trip, loved how close you were to the parks by staying at VGC. I moved to So CA two years ago and bought an annual pass last year but only got to visit 4 times :( I have yet to go into any of the hotels (I know...shame on me. I only live about 35 mins away). It's fun to just walk back and forth between the Parks, isn't it?

So sorry to hear your son lost his retainer. It's hard to be be mom all the time and let kids take responsibility on their own. (I raised 5 kids and there were times they wished they listened to dear old Mom after all lol).

Aulani Resort is beautiful! Would love to stay there some day....can't wait to hear all about the rest of your trip!

Joining in and excited to see more! I have seen you post on the Aulani threads and we're going to Aulani in 2 months, so love getting a preview.

Can't believe all the things you had to deal with for this trip, though. The cancellations, your son's health, then a hurricane when you actually go... :eek:

Glad you made it safely, though. Hope it was a good trip, despite the storms.

:welcome: :welcome: I am working on my next update. Hope to get it added tomorrow maybe. We were away over the past weekend so I lost some time to work on anything. It is mainly the pics that take a lot of time to sort thru & edit. I have them all on my desktop so I have to be home to work with them.
 
Wonderful trip report. I was noticing that your view from your VGC studio was similar to our room. We were in 3510. Do you remember your room number?

Good to know about Monkey Pods. We will have to check out in October.

I am looking forward to your next installment.
 
Joining in!!! What view did you request at Aulani? How did you like the studio? Did you do laundry while there?
 


Wonderful trip report. I was noticing that your view from your VGC studio was similar to our room. We were in 3510. Do you remember your room number?

Good to know about Monkey Pods. We will have to check out in October.

I am looking forward to your next installment.

Thanks - You know, I think we were in 2510 at VGC. :thumbsup2

Joining in!!! What view did you request at Aulani? How did you like the studio? Did you do laundry while there?

Because we had only booked an IV this time I requested the highest floor available in the long wing of the Ewa tower overlooking the Starlit Hui lawn. What we got was the 16th floor in the short wing of the Ewa tower. So we got the floor part but not the building part. I keep telling myself if it wasn't for that darned hurricane we might have gotten in the other building. But the resort was completely full with people who extended their stays so the villas were in limited supply. And no, I didn't do any laundry at Aulani. Only the 1 load at VGC.
 
I am going to go ahead & combine days # 5 and 6 together because on Saturday (Day # 5) we woke up to some light rain lingering from Iselle in the morning and we kind of didn’t do a whole lot for most of the day. We really just laid around & watched TV. Not what we wanted to be doing on our first day in paradise but the forecast was only going to improve after this. We toasted some bagels for breakfast and just sort of sat around getting settled into our villa for the week. Another Dis’er, Lovetotraveltx, was also overlapping our stay at Aulani but she was checking out that day. She texted that she had a few items she could pass on to us that she couldn’t take with her to Maui so I went to her unit to meet up with her and say hi and to pick up her leftovers. (Thanks, Natalie!! DH loved the “Shrimp Chips”!!)

The rain never seemed too heavy, just enough to keep things wet all morning. It stopped around mid-day sometime but remained pretty overcast for awhile. It was very humid out (but that’s normal with tropical storm systems). Eventually the sky started looking lighter and we started getting a few peeks of sun. We decided to change and get ready to go down to the pool. But first we must find something to eat for lunch and then we’d hang out at the pool. Luckily I hadn’t planned on DOING anything in particular that day. We stopped at the hotdog stand place (Mama’s Snack Shop) to get some lunch and then we went on to find chairs. By this time we were already finding out just how crowded and full the resort was and how hard it was going to be to find 3 chairs AND an umbrella together. We eventually settled on the long wooden deck area in front of and below Ama Ama, facing the beach and lagoon. That was the only area left with any open lounge chairs – but there WERE several available down there. We decided going forward for the rest of the week that this would be our go-to spot if we couldn’t find any chairs closer to the pool. There were several umbrellas and a small table in-between every chair there on this deck. And of course a lovely view. But by afternoon it would be a spot that got the hot afternoon sun with not many trees around. But once we plopped down we finally started to feel like we were in Hawaii.

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Meanwhile, we were supposed to go to Pearl Harbor the next day (Sunday) but the National Park service had closed Pearl Harbor for 2 days due to Iselle and we didn’t know until late that night if they were going to re-open it or not on Sunday. They said they had to do inspections to be sure it was safe. I kept checking the recreation.gov website all day on Saturday. Surely they would re-open, right? They kept us in suspense tho until later that evening. FINALLY late that night they announced on the website that it would re-open. WHEW!

Dinner was at Ulu Café later that night. No pics. Just sandwiches and flatbread pizza. Pretty good. Ulu Café was the only casual onsite restaurant open for dinner after 5:00 so this would be the first of a few meals there. On the way back up to the room we took the long way back to the room and stopped to look at a large wall mural on the way to the elevators (near the pricier gift shop). We discovered a hidden Mickey in one section.

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Sunday morning we woke to our first Oahu sunrise!! YAY the sun is OUT!! It’s going to be GORGEOUS today!! We were up really early because we had our plans to go to Pearl Harbor and Waikiki that day and our PH tickets were for 8:45 which meant we needed to BE THERE an hour before (at 7:45) so we needed to leave Aulani around 7:00ish...I purposely booked Pearl Harbor for Sunday to avoid some of the famous Honolulu rush hour traffic that we would’ve hit if we went on a weekday.

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This would be my 5th trip to Pearl Harbor. I might have skipped it this time except we were also planning to go to the USS Missouri because we wanted to take DS17 to both. He was only 9 the last time we went there and since he’s a senior in HS and has now studied US History and World History we thought it should be something he sees again so he can remember it better now. It is such a beautiful place and is always such a moving experience. They do such a good job of making you feel like you were there that day. Going over to the Arizona memorial makes it all so vivid. It's so eerie to see the oil still seeping up to the surface.

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After the Arizona we took the bus over to the USS Missouri. I think we went thru the Missouri a little faster this time than we did in 2006. It’s really fascinating to see how they live on these ships. I couldn’t do it that’s for sure! I don't think I could sleep in those bunk beds.

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We also went thru the USS Bowfin (submarine) quickly too (we had not done this on our previous trips). It was an even tighter space and the doorways in-between chambers were hard to navigate. I could just imagine how many times I would trip or bump my head or elbow if I had to live on a sub!! By 12:00 or 12:30 it started getting really hot on that sub as it sat there in the sun so we decided we were done looking around and ready to get out of PH to go get some lunch. Here are a few pics from inside the Bowfin sub:

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After we finished up at Pearl Harbor we drove on into Waikiki to spend the afternoon. DS decided to start collecting Hard Rock Café t-shirts after we visited his first one in Barcelona on our Med cruise in 2011. He also ALWAYS orders their “local legendary burgers”. Doesn’t matter what’s on them. That’s what he orders. So we were going to go there for lunch to get his burger & t-shirt. I had looked them up on their website prior to going and knew we could park right across the street in the Hawaiian Bank parking garage and they would validate our parking ticket for 4 hours for a flat $6. This would eliminate having to pay hourly rates and having to drive around looking for a cheaper lot.

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DS's local legendary burger had a big honking slice of grilled pineapple on it:
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I had a pork BBQ sandwich topped with onion rings
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DH had the fish tacos (I don't think they looked half as good as the ones I had at Monkey Pod)
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After lunch we walked the few blocks over to the beach so we could get our token pics of Diamond Head and grab a family selfie (this trip will be known as the selfie trip as it was becoming our trademark thing to do). The access sidewalk to the beach was right next door to the Outrigger Reef hotel. We had stayed there before on a couple of previous trips so it was a familiar area. I always forget just how narrow Waikiki beach is in places. Still haven’t quite figured out how it got to be the world’s most famous beach. It’s also kind of steep right there. The tide was coming in and while we were standing there trying to get our pics it washed right up around us and almost washed our stuff away (following what everybody always says we didn’t leave anything in the rental car and had a backpack and our shopping bag from the Hard Rock with us). The water ran all the way back over the sidewalk and into the little sidewalk access from the street. (You can see how narrow the beach is here in my pics.) Now our feet were all wet & sandy and there was no place to rinse off. Good thing were just planning to head back to Aulani after this.

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The Starlit Hui was scheduled for that evening so we decided we should try to go to that if we were going to catch it. While we were getting ready to go I looked out the window and HOLY COW I saw THE biggest moon ever glowing outside!! It was amazing. It was another one of those rare “super moons” and the sunset was reflecting off of it turning it into an orange ball. I had to take some time to get a few pics before we left the room. So we got down there to the lawn right around 7:30 and got our straw mat & found a place to settle near the center archway. The lawn was filling up fast. Good thing we got there when we did. It was a nice show, not as elaborate or as long as a “real” luau but it was free and well done. I think Aulani could easily expand it into a full out luau if they wanted to. But maybe they don’t because that Paradise Cove one is so close?!

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After the show we thought we could get some dinner at either Off the Hook or the Olelo Room but that’s when we first discovered that the Ulu Café was the only place that had a dinner menu. The other places were only offering appetizers. How silly to have a resort THIS BIG and only offer 1 casual dining option. I still can’t get over that one. They could keep more people onsite for dinner if they had another option. So back to Ulu Café we went. DH & DS get a little tired of me & my camera addiction so they went back to the room after dinner while I walked around Aulani by myself to get some night photos of the resort and to look for more opportunities to catch the super moon.

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We'll have to look for the mural with the hidden Mickey when we are at Aulani next month. I don't think there are very many hidden Mickeys at Aulani. A CM said they emphasize menehunes over mickeys.

Did you run into any issues with getting towels at the pool? I remember before your trip someone reported that they were only allowed one towel per person.

Did your son check out any of the teen programs at Aulani?
 
We'll have to look for the mural with the hidden Mickey when we are at Aulani next month. I don't think there are very many hidden Mickeys at Aulani. A CM said they emphasize menehunes over mickeys.

Did you run into any issues with getting towels at the pool? I remember before your trip someone reported that they were only allowed one towel per person.

Did your son check out any of the teen programs at Aulani?

Happy to report no problems getting any towels!! There were plenty to go around and no limits but there were lines in the mornings to get them. We found the towel hut over by the newer infinity edge pool to have less of a line than the one in the center of the resort. That one was RIDICULOUS. Some mornings at 8:00-8:30 they had like 4 lines going with about probably 8 people per line at that one!!

DS did 3 or 4 teen activities. I don't think he was as impressed as he was with the teen clubs on the DCL's we've done. The ones on the beach in the afternoon repeated every couple of days. One of them was more like a work-out type fitness thing. He didn't enjoy it at all - they had them doing pushups in the hot 3:00 sun / sand. Reminded him of his dryland practices at swimming. It wasn't a very fun activity. He WAS going to go to something one evening that was from like 9 - 11:00 but that was the evening we went to Makahiki and after we ate he said he was too full to go so he blew it off!! :rotfl: The activities we saw on the beach never had more than probably 10 kids at a time. I think they need to beef up their teen events. They need to do some stuff that is more social oriented.

We found very few hidden Mickey's. There was one in picture in our bathroom too. And yes, lots of menehunes.
 
Yay for some nice weather, a chance to feel like you're really in Hawaii, and Pearl Harbor opening back up just in time! :cool1:

We have a very similar Pearl Harbor schedule to yours, just a half hour earlier (8:15am). Also on a Sunday and planning to leave at 6:30am. Did you find traffic was indeed quiet on your Sunday?

What a cool moon! And I love the nighttime shots around the resort. So pretty! :cloud9:
 
Can you be my TA? :) Wow you have it down! For our Waikiki portion of our visit I'm trying to figure out how to get to Pearl Harbor and some other local attractions without driving. My DH does not like to drive in unfamiliar territory. Are there shuttles from some hotels to visit these sites?
 
Enjoying the pictures and TR! The super moon and night pictures are amazing!

I was excited when I found the hidden Mickey on the mural. Very cool.

I waited to long reserving Pearl Harbor tickets. Only times left were afternoon for the week of Thanksgiving. We are going the Wed before Thanksgiving at 12:30. I was thinking of going to the Aloha Swap meet early before getting to Pearl Harbor. I may re-think that b/c DH and DS want to tour the Missouri and Bowfin. Might be to hot after the Arizona tour.

Our DS will just turn 13 a month before the trip. DH and I would like to plan the spa, something for couples, but I was worried about what DS would do? At 13 he will have to do the teen activities I guess?

Can't wait to read more.
 
Can you be my TA? :) Wow you have it down! For our Waikiki portion of our visit I'm trying to figure out how to get to Pearl Harbor and some other local attractions without driving. My DH does not like to drive in unfamiliar territory. Are there shuttles from some hotels to visit these sites?

I'm sure all hotels offer some excursion or shuttle service for their guests. When we stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki they had several tourist things we could sign up for.

Aulani offers several excursions and shopping shuttles for those who don't want to drive themselves. Go to the main Aulani website and click on Activities. It will give you an idea of some of the offerings and prices. Also, the website shows there is a telephone number you can call to talk to someone about the offerings.
 
Can you be my TA? :) Wow you have it down! For our Waikiki portion of our visit I'm trying to figure out how to get to Pearl Harbor and some other local attractions without driving. My DH does not like to drive in unfamiliar territory. Are there shuttles from some hotels to visit these sites?

You can arrange to go thru Aulani - for a PRICE or you can go online and book a tour like thru Robert's Hawaii or something https://www.robertshawaii.com. (We have used them before for stuff on previous trips - but since we navigated our Med / Europe trip on our own we felt confident in planning this trip on our own). We truely didn't find it hard to drive around anywhere. We used the GPS app on DH's cell phone (Verizon). The only time we really had a problem with the signal was right by the car rental place at the airport - when we had to drive on a road that was under another highway. But before we left home I had printed out directions to / from just about all of the places we knew we wanted to go so we had backup in case we lost cell signals. We did Pearl Harbor on a Sunday. Zero traffic at all going that morning. Only took about 30 minutes or so from Aulanai. Likewise, it was not hard to get from Pearl into Waikiki. GPS is a wonderful thing!! :thumbsup2

Enjoying the pictures and TR! The super moon and night pictures are amazing!

I was excited when I found the hidden Mickey on the mural. Very cool.

I waited to long reserving Pearl Harbor tickets. Only times left were afternoon for the week of Thanksgiving. We are going the Wed before Thanksgiving at 12:30. I was thinking of going to the Aloha Swap meet early before getting to Pearl Harbor. I may re-think that b/c DH and DS want to tour the Missouri and Bowfin. Might be to hot after the Arizona tour.

Our DS will just turn 13 a month before the trip. DH and I would like to plan the spa, something for couples, but I was worried about what DS would do? At 13 he will have to do the teen activities I guess?

Can't wait to read more.

I'll bet you can do the Missouri & Bowfin first then do your Arizona tour. AND it may not be quite as hot in November as it was in August?! Our DS is 17 now so he may be more independent than yours at 13. Seems like the teen activities were scattered about and not all day. And most activities were short (45-60 minutes). I will write more about them in my next post. Would you trust yours to just hang out at the pool alone to ride the slides for awhile? Or maybe he would just check out a movie and watch it in the room?!
 
So after our busy, busy day on Sunday we didn’t have anything planned for Monday other than to finally take a full day to lounge around the pool & beach. Turned out that the 2nd hurricane, Julio, was going to pass north of the islands and not really give us any effects to worry about. The northern (other) side of the islands were supposed to have higher than normal surf & rip currents etc. but that was it. Nothing else to worry about!! WHEW!! Our surf lessons were scheduled for the next day so I wanted to touch base at some point that day with our contact there to be sure we were still “on” for those.

We had finished off all the bagels we’d bought at Target so we didn’t have anything in the villa for breakfast so we got into our bathing suits and went down to the pool to scout out some lounge chairs before heading to the Ulu Café for breakfast. WOW. It was already crowded (at 8:30) and the weekend was over (we’d heard that Aulani is the busiest over the weekends with locals using the resort). We had just about decided we’d have to go back to that deck area in front of Ama Ama when we spied a handful of open chairs & an umbrella in the back row (of about 7 rows) as you head down the stairs to the new infinity pool area. So we snagged 3 chairs there with our “stuff” and hurried over to the Ulu Café for breakfast. Knowing that there is a 1 hour chair policy enforcement we didn’t want to diddle dawdle around too long over there.:scared: I forget what DS got but DH and I both got some flaky spinach croissant type of thing. They looked better than they actually were. :( Breakfast took about 30 minutes then we hurried back over to “our spot”. We really didn’t DO anything all day except for hang around the pool. We did the slides & lazy river a few times. The infinity pool was so close we gravitated there more than the other big main pool whenever we just “wanted to get wet” to cool off. This pool was very cool looking but the infinity edge was a big draw for massive crowds – especially as the day wore on. It wasn’t too crowded in the mornings but by afternoon – YIKES!! People tended to congregate on the infinity edge and never leave. And there were so many little kids in their floaties & life vests. Where were their parents? I couldn’t imagine what the resort had been like BEFORE they added this extra pool area. GOOD GRIEF!! We also ended up buying the refill mugs for all of us. Initially we were only going to get one for DS but we quickly realized if we were going to bring our own “beverages” down in our cooler that we’d still need to blend in with the masses. And EVERYBODY appeared to have the mugs. Plus they would help keep stuff cold AND DH couldn’t have his glass beer bottles out anyway so we needed something to pour them into. So cha ching. $18 each or so for those. (Just what our kitchen cabinet needed – more Disney refill mugs!!)

Here are a couple of cell phone pics taken from "our spot". One looking toward the Ewa tower and one looking directly behind us toward the new infinity pool area. You can see in that one looking toward the Ewa tower how many rows of chairs there are. We actually really liked being in the back row, out of the way.
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At some point that morning we talked DS into going over to the beach on the lagoon to do a teen activity that was listed in the daily Ewa. It was a “boot camp” thing or something which ended up being like 45 minutes of push-ups & lunges on the hot sand. I guess there were about maybe 6 kids there altogether. Not a huge draw for the kids. And it was NOT the fun activity we’d hoped for. It was like his dryland trainings for his swimming. We felt bad that we’d talked him into doing it and hoped he knew he could just quit if he wanted to. But he stuck it out. It was sooo hot. I couldn’t believe they were doing this stuff in the hot sand. At this point we knew we’d have a hard time talking him into doing anything else with the teen group.

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I took some time at some point to walk around to the left side of the lagoon to get a few pics out by the farthest point of the lagoon, by the beach. Well, it was pretty rocky out there on the ocean side. Not really a beach so much. Anyway, it’s very pretty over there.

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I went up to the room around Noon or so to charge my phone & make us some turkey & gouda sandwiches & brought them down to the pool to eat for lunch (the Target there had their brand of pre-sliced gouda! My Target at home does not carry that and I LOVE gouda.) We had only bought a small jar of mayo when we got our groceries and as I was going up to the room to make the sandwiches I was thinking to myself "Boy I wish we had some Grey Poupon too" and just THEN I just happened to pass a room service tray sitting in the hallway to be picked up. :rolleyes1 And YES, you know I did!! :rotfl: LOL. :lmao: I stopped & looked around to be sure nobody was watching me & I scoped it out and sitting right there in the corner of the tray was a brand new miniature unopened Dijon mustard jar!! It must be there JUST FOR ME!!! :rotfl2: ROFL. I mean WHAT a coincidence, right?! :cool1: Anyway, it was the perfect touch for our little gourmet sandwiches!! :laughing:

Later that afternoon we DID talk DS into going back over to the beach for another teen activity. He went reluctantly and I sort of spied on them from a distance 'cuz I wanted to see what they were doing (and he never tells us anything). This time it looked like it was more fun. They divided into small teams and gave them color coordinated bandanas to wear so they could play like Survivor type games. I stayed to watch the first one which was to put coconut shells on top of a boogie board and then they had to carry them in a race down the beach and around a catamaran and back without dropping them.

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We stayed down at the pool ALL day. I mean until like probably 5:00. Then we went up to shower and DH & I went back to Target to get more breakfast stuff for the rest of the week. We picked up some frozen waffles & syrup. Oh, and some more beer.::yes:: I forget now what we had for dinner. If I was to guess I would say Ulu Café but I really don’t remember (and I didn’t take pics of it, whatever it was so I have no memory)!! Ooops! Oh well.

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ETA: I know where we ate!! This was the night we ate at Makahiki!! For some reason I took like 3 cell phone pics there of my food but they didn’t download whenever I downloaded all of my pics!! I will try to figure out how to get them added!! We decided to go there that night because A) we were tired of Ulu Cafe and B) there was a teen activity from like 9 - 11:00 that DS wanted to do. Looked like more of a social thing. So we decided in the interest of time that we'd stay onsite rather than walking down the street to the shopping center. THEN after all that, DS decided he ate too much and he was TOO FULL to go!!! All he wanted to do was to go to the room to lay down!! :headache:


OK, so these are the pics I took at dinner at Makahiki that night. They are some of my worst work EVER!! I am so embarrased by how bad they are but you can see we all ate PLENTY!!

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Pretty pics! Nice relaxing day :goodvibes How did your son like the teen activities? Hope he at least enjoyed the second activity - if I was a teen, I would definitely not have enjoyed the boot camp esp in that hot heat!!
 
Sounds like a really nice, relaxing day (except for boot camp)! :cloud9:

I love that you came across the little dijon mustard like that! :lmao: :thumbsup2
 

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