Hawaii saga #10: Christmas chaos and Christmas joy!!

I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas!! Our Christmas morning was fantastic....little A said it was "the best Christmas ever!!!", which is the way every year should be like!
I'm a little surprised they enjoyed it so much this year...as it was really laid back, with only very small toys that would fit back in our luggage. The boys both loved ALL of their presents...even though we spent so little on them, and I'm thinking next year we should down-size too, since they were just as happy with what we got them this year.
We had big plans for Christmas traditions on Christmas eve. We thought it'd be great to go skating in the afternoon, then come back to the apartment and sing songs, act out the nativity, eat some Christmas baking etc.....well.....NONE of that happened.
Our Christmas Eve was quite the crazy day....we spent 2 hours on a bus to the aquarium, which we luckily got into for free because Roo got squished in the automatic doors, and they felt sorry for us. A loved that place, and listened intently to all the little stories there were, and watched the seals, fish and octopus....he loved it!!
We hadn't realized that going to the airport to try and pick up our rental car would be such an ordeal...it looked so close on the map, but took an entire 1 hour and 45 minutes to get too, or to not get too, as you'll see.
 We passed an enterprise rental car, really close to the airport and thought that it was our stop, so we stopped there and walked back several blocks, only to find out it was closed...and the bus was long gone. The sign said that the airport was only a few miles....so I figured we could make it to the next enterprise just by walking.
That was not the greatest idea....we had a few bags, one being really heavy, and were lugging around our car-seat as well, 2 boys and a little umbrella stroller. We walked for about 20 minutes to Alamo, and convinced them to drive us to enterprise on their next shuttle.
Bedraggled and tired we finally made it to enterprise after 2 hours and 15 minutes of total travel time from the aquarium....I was so relieved to finally be there....only for them to tell us that 0our reservation was in fact at alamo....seriously?? Like where we had just came from....so another shuttle back to alamo, and we finally made it to our rental car.
We hadn't realized the day would take us as long as it did...so we were completely exhausted by then (I think it was around 5:30 pm), and the kids, and both of us, hadn't eaten since breakfast...so the kids were completely crazy!!!
We drove downtown, and found the Hardrock Cafe, which we figured would be a nice dinner....after paying for parking, and walking there, we realized there was a wait for dinner....which we did, because we didn't see a better option.
So, finally, at about 7:30, we got our dinner....with kids screaming and crying with sore feet and tummies...we decided to skip the ice-skating, and well pretty much everything we planned for that night...we we were all exhausted and grumpy.
We drove the 1 hr home, and put the already-sleeping babies in their beds, with no Christmas songs, stories, or the nativity....so much for that idea! Oh, and no baking, because our oven was still broken.
I was super tired, but managed to stay up and wrap the presents, and get things ready for the morning....and immediately went to bed.
The kids didn't wake up super early, so that was great...and they were just SO happy! They each got a "lazer gun" that lit up and made super-loud noises...so that was a great idea, ha ha.
They really loved all the little toys, candy and pez we got them....and played for an hour or so before we went to church.
After church we spent several hours packing and cleaning to leave our little apartment, to go to a hotel in Maui.
Our landlord was supposed to meet us at 2, as we were leaving to the airport, so we woul get our damage deposit back. Unfortunately, he must have forgot, and we spent 15 minutes calling him, to no avail.
We got in the car to drive off, and he called...of course. It was great, because we got our deposit back, but we also had to wait for him to drive over...and by the time we got out of the parking lot, it was after 2:30. We drove as quickly as we could to the rental car place, and had to stop for gas...we barely made the shuttle from the rental-car place.
As we were going through security, we heard them call our name to say that the plane was already boarded....I left my shoes and bags and ran to the gate with the kids to tell them we were here. They waited a few minutes for us to get our things....and we all made it with about 2 minutes to spare.
Maui is awesome!!!! I'll have to do a separate post about it, as it seems to different from the first island we were on, Oahu.
Overall we had a great Christmas Day, and a super great time on Oahu...we loved every minute of the warm weather. :)