Relaxing day at the pool

After the wild day traveling on Saturday we were blessed with a perfect day today! We awoke early and traversed across the island with all our luggage to finally embark on our ship the Pride of America. Donna, who was already aboard was finally able to catch up to us...or I guess that I should say that we finally caught up to her. We stowed our luggage and ate breakfast the headed back to the Westin for a day of sun and fun. We spent the day lounging at the pool, walking along the beach, and meeting nice people from all over! We met a woman from Albuquerque that was celebrating her 50th birthday yesterday, so we celebrated with her now that she has "joined the club". Her fun-loving husband and friends announced to everyone in the pool area that we were all celebrating the half century mark and we all sang Happy Birthday and enjoyed fruity drinks. After cleaning up and putting on the dresses that Kim made for us, we took in the Hawaiian culture at the luau. We drove back to the ship and crashed after a fun day together!

Hawaii here we come!

Let's just get a head start on Maui! What an adventure it has been to get to Hawaii today. We had our bags packed ( except Susan) and were ready to head out early for a 6:00 am flight to Chicago to catch a flight to Honolulu. Patty got an alert from American Airlines before midnight that said our flight was cancelled out of Little Rock because the plane was not there due to weather somewhere else. Oh no! She reached a very nice woman at AA and she said there were no connections or seats available to take 5 out of the 6 of us to Hawaii. (Donna was booked on a different airline through Dallas). Patty told her how we had been planning for four years to take this Hawaii Five-0 trip to celebrate our birthdays. She said she would do everything she could to make it happen. She was able to book us on a flight out of Memphis to catch our flight in Chicago. So about 1:00 am we are calling each other and making plans to get to Memphis. ( of course this made it almost impossible to get some sleep and Susan just stayed up all night to pack and be ready) Kenny Shipp was one of our Heros of the day by getting up and driving us across the state.
We arrived in Memphis about 7:00 am, ate breakfast and felt good about the rest of our trip. But no... Bad weather in Chicago caused our plane to be delayed and we were not going to make our connection. Back to the ticket counter, our next hero of the day works diligently to find us someway to get to Hawaii today. Nothing could get us to Honolulu, so he booked us on a flight to Dallas to catch a plane to Maui (we can meet the ship there). He is not sure we will make it with only a 15 minute window between flights, but it is all he can do. We call Donna and tell her she will have the cabin all to herself tonight.
Yes, we made it and I am typing up this blog post somewhere over the Pacific excited about seeing the beautiful beaches of Maui and staying at a nice resort with a soft bed for tonight!