This time next week, we’ll be soaring high in the sky, somewhere between the west coast and the Hawaiian islands. Needless to say, we’re excited.

Getting the last finishing touches and shopping in so we can start packing. As you’d expect, after a long, cold winter here in Chicago and a wet and damp start to spring, its finally starting to warm up just as we’re about to leave. I’m actually sitting outside on our balcony on my laptop, and to my joy, the Dell XPS laptop I bought two months ago have a brighten screen to be used outside in bright sunlight. Sweet!

Part of me thinks this upcoming week is going to drag on, but I do think it’s going to fly by and the days are just going to fly off the calendar until that long, exhausting (although well worth it) direct flight to Kahului. We should know by about Wednesday what our budget is going to look like for our trip, which will be a good indication of how many additional things we’ll be able to do outside of what we’ve booked and paid for already. I don’t see us spending too much extra as we’ve done in the past, but you never know.

Most of my energy (from a blogging perspective) will be focused on our Ka’anapali Dreamin’ blog, as I keep track of our day-to-day activities like I did last year. In fact, I’ll probably go back through last year’s posts just to get a feel for what I’d like to keep the same or do differently. Either way, its going to be a blast.

I know it’s been awhile since there’s been activity here, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy.

Since the last post here, I’ve completed a web development certificate program at the Illinois Institute of Art in Schaumburg, we’ve completed our second trip to Maui, and I even put up an entire site called Ka’anapali Dreamin’.

So it’s been a little busy. The high school isn’t going to be having a team this year, so I sort of get the winter off. That will give me some extra time to add more to this website, specifically for the new Maui trip we just completed. Also, with the Ka’anapali Dreamin’ site, I was able to publish the blog as part of the main site and share the same look and feel, so that will be in the works for this site, and well as maybe a minor redesign.

That’s about it for now.

It’s official, Cindy and I have booked our next Maui trip for later this year. We will be staying at the Sheraton Maui Resort again, and this time we booked our trip through Foster Travel Service based out of Park Ridge. This trip is going to be for two full weeks, so we’re pretty excited.

Since we did quite a bit the last time we were in Maui, this trip is going to be more about relaxation and enjoying the scenario. We going to do another dinner cruise aboard the Maui Princess and one with the Pacific Whale Foundation. I received a gift membership from Nancy and Don for my birthday, so it’s definitely going to be something worth checking out.

Other than that, we’re thinking of doing maybe two luaus this time, and probably a few driving tours to parts of the island we didn’t see last time. We’re not sure if we’re going back to Hana or not, and another helicopter tour might be something we save for a future trip.

I’m hoping to take twice as many photos as I did last time (which was a lot), and I’m thinking about either buying a new video camera to bring with us, or taking along the one we have now (which by technology standards is a pretty old).

The best part about this trip is that we’ll be in Maui for our anniversary, so we’ll being doing something special for that, too.

I’ll post another update as we get closer to leaving and get a few events planned.

Until then…

Kris