This is a very long overdue post! It took me a while to put up all our Hawaii pictures because I was playing around with several different photo sharing websites. In the end, I decided to go back to using Picasa/Google Photos.
Anyway, it's been just under a month since we've come back from Maui and boy, do we miss the Hawaiian sunshine! The trip started off a bit rocky in that Alaska wasn't able to seat the 4 of us all together so Scott go to sit with Evie while Nora and I sat together in the back of the plane. Thankfully, both girls were pretty good on the flight.
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| Happy and on our way to Hawaii! |
We weren't planning on going to Hawaii this year, but lucky me, I won a trip to Maui through work! It's an annual award that's given to top employees - you get nominated by peers and then the leadership team selects who gets to go on an (almost) all-expense paid trip to Maui for you and a guest for 4 nights at the Sheraton Kaanapali. T-Mobile did a fantastic job with this trip - everything was thought through and taken care of. When we landed, we were greeted with leis and whisked away on a bus to the Sheraton.
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| There was so much Magenta at the Sheraton that Evie nicknamed it T-mobile Land! |
The hotel was ok, but I can't really complain since it was paid for! It was great that they had a kiddie pool for the girls to enjoy, a nice soft sandy beach in front (although the waves were a bit too big for the girls to play in the water) and a great walking path along the water that led to the nearby mall with enough shops and restaurants to give us something to do when we weren't doing water activities.There was also a free shuttle to Lahaina, which we took one evening to go visit the Banyan tree and have dinner. We took advantage of the Concierge desk, too, and had them book us a trip to the aquarium one morning while Scott went golfing at the course across the street.
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| Group selfie at the pool. |
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| Sparkly afternoon play |
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| Oohing and Aaahing at the Maui Ocean Center Aquarium. |
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| Evie's uniform pretty much the entire trip. |
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| Dinner in Lahaina |
T-Mobile also sponsored several events that we went to. We were able to pick one "activity" that was paid for and Scott and I picked a bike down Haleakala, the inactive volcano on the island that is the highest point on the island. I'm not much of a biker but I thought going down hill shouldn't be too bad! Scott thought it was easy-peasy but I thought it was scary! It's 17 miles of going down steep (for me) switchbacks on a 2 way road going on average 20 miles an hour. There was no time to look at the view on the way down; I was too busy trying not to crash! Our group started off with 8 riders but our guides made 3 get back in the van because they didn't think they were skilled enough to do the ride. Not sure how I passed the test, but I'm really happy I did it.
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| Getting fitted for helmets before the ride. |
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| At the top of the mountain! We are way above the clouds! |
And then, of course, were the required T-Mobile dinners we had to go to. There was the Awards Ceremony, where Evie and Nora got a kick out of me going up on stage. I'm pretty honored to have won - it felt like a lot of winners (199 of us!) but when compared to the size of our company (55,000 FTEs), that's a very elite group to be amongst! Plus, I got to meet folks from every dept, from Finance and Accounting to Network Infrastructure (building out cell towers) to Customer Care to Retail.
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That's me getting my award!
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This photo cracks me up. This is us before the dinner,
trying to take a professional photo.
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On the last night, we went to the T-Mobile Luau where guess who got picked to go on stage and hula with the dancers? Yes, that's right - I got to thoroughly embarrass myself by shaking my booty in front of my colleagues. At least Evie was excited I got to go on stage! She went up, too, when they asked for kids to come up on stage to learn how to dance. Now she has all the hand movements to go along with her hula dance.
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At the Luau, we got a table in the back that
gave us a great elevated view of the stage. |
After 4 nights at the Sheraton, we said our goodbyes to Kaanapali and made our way south towards Wailea Beach where the best part of the trip was still to come!! More in the next post. :)
Here's a link to all of our pics:
https://goo.gl/photos/X5q2KBsqGydgrUSRA
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