Maui, Part 1: It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

I repeat.  It was the best of times...

It was the WORST of times...

Is that a wheelchair, you ask?  Why yes.  Yes it is.

And that is a blue, full fiberglass leg cast.

Paradise.  First day.  Miles breaks his leg.

The other one.

Here's where I wish I could bust loose in draculike laughter (that's a word in the Book of Lindsay), but I cannot.  For I tell you the truth.

The following is how we got to this point.  And I will tell you now that our Maui recap will be documented in two separate posts - for the events are too many to tie up in one entry.  

We flew direct to Maui on Wednesday, November 7 (the kids were dreams on the 8.4 hour flight btw - I was totally falling for the whole "paradise"theme before we even got there).  Thursday we woke up excited.  First thing after a banana and cereal breakfast we packed ourselves down with loads of beach paraphernalia (provided by our condo which was awesome) and headed to Baby Beach which was only a few blocks from our digs for the week.  Baby Beach was the perfect beach for Miles and Knox thanks to coral reefs that blocked big waves.  It is essentially a big sandbar and you can walk out for yards and yards and never get more than about waist deep.  The kids had a ball with their first ocean experience.  There were even a few friendly dogs running around that they were loving.  

This is one of my favorites that I took that morning. 

Sorry for the barrage of photos, but this is only the start.  Consider yourself warned and abort now if you must.

So after a bit we get a call from Margarita who wanted to know if we wanted to come up to their rental house and hang out with John (her husband) and Cairo (their baby boy).  Did I mention that we were technically in Maui for the wedding of one of my best friends?  Congrats to Tiffaney and Chase!  More on that in part two.

So we wrapped up at the beach and headed to Lahaina Pizza Company for lunch.  It's a cool place right on Front Street and the upstairs is open with great views.  We went all crazy and ordered pepperoni pizza and salad which was delicious.  Miles loved the salad.

Knox loved the salad dressing.

Then they noticed the sound equipment behind our table.  And thus, the dog and pony show commenced.  

After lunch we drove ten minutes up into the West Maui Mountains to the the multi-million dollar rental house with the $100M view.

It started off great.  We were all having fun swimming, sitting in the hot tub, and posing with baby C.  Double chin alert!  Not me, the baby.  C'mon!

I don't know if you can tell from two of the pictures above, but this infinity pool had a large shallow area with probably 7-8 inches of water.  Then it dropped down much deeper.  Miles and Knox were having the time of their lives standing in the shallow and jumping into the deep.  Over and over they would jump and squeal for us to "watch this" each time.  So at one point, Miles gets out of the pool completely to go wipe his nose on a towel or get a Wheat Thin or something, and he goes fast-walking back over to the pool (we try to have a no running policy of course) and he jumps into the shallow as if he expects he's gonna go deep and pop back up like he and Knox had been doing.  He just collapses and starts wailing.  "My leg!" he cries.  But we don't panic - Jeremy tries his best to comfort Miles and asks for Miles to let him have a look.  But he only cries harder and begs for him not to touch it.  So we don't.  We set him on the side and give him some space to recover, asking if he can wiggle his toes, move his ankle, etc.  He eventually pulls it together enough to point to his shin area as being the spot of pain.  Jeremy and I offered each other a sideways glance.

For you see, we've been down this road already this year.  In March, Miles was kicked at school while playing soccer (or so the story goes) and fractured his right tibia.  They call it a toddler fracture.  You can read about our first experience here.  This time, he was complaining about his left leg.  On one hand, we were thinking, "What are the odds?"  But on the other hand, he was acting exactly as he did in March - not wanting to bear weight on the leg, wincing and crying if you touched it, and just refusing to even try to walk.  Kids at this age don't usually fake an injury, but we were hoping that maybe he was having memories of the other broken leg and was just scared.

It was getting early into the evening and we had to be at the rehearsal dinner soon, so we decided to give it the rest of the night before we rushed into having it looked at.

The rehearsal dinner was at Longhi's, also on Front Street in Lahaina, and it was great.  I was so stressed out with worrying about Miles and what might be wrong with his leg that I only managed these three pictures.  Not even one with the bride to be.  In the words of Knox and Miles, how sad.

Miles actually wasn't too downtrodden at first over the earlier events, but he started melting down before we even ordered, saying that his leg was hurting.  I was literally in tears at the table, mingling with no one, just trying to get it together before someone noticed that I was beginning to lose it.  I felt so bad for Miles and knew he was in real pain.  Marge, Tiff, and Bree all knew what was going on, but Jeremy and I decided it would be best for he and the boys to duck out and go back to the condo.  It had been a long day.  I stayed at the dinner so that I could speak to Tiffaney's friendship in my life and share in many toasts to her and Chase.  That part of the evening was really lovely.

And that was the end of day one.  I'll recap the rest of the trip in a second post.  Everything goes up, up,  way up from here.  I mean, relatively speaking of course.  We did have a kid with, we would eventually learn, a broken leg.  But we didn't let it get us down anymore, and Miles was a trooper for the rest of our days in Maui.  As was Jeremy I have to say - he had to carry Miles everywhere.

Thankful to our loving God for my husband and two wonderful boys this Thanksgiving Day.