Aruuuuuba

Dad's been teaching the girls that you need to say Aruba like an old fashioned horn (or for Mags and Lynz like that nature call from Pathfinder camp!)

But then I heard people on the plane doing the same thing - so it must be a thing?

It was an early start this morning. I didn't have to be up until 6am but woke up at 5:15 anyway!  Finally at 5:40 I just got up and had a shower and woke Jay and the girls up at 6 o'clock. We were out the door by 6:25am to go pick up Trevor and on our way to the airport.

We did enough flying last year that we got the minimum status with Air Canada that we can use priority boarding and check in and have access to the lounge...it wasn't until we got to the airport and realized we were flying WestJet (which we knew obviously) and that it flies out of a different terminal and so no lounge for us. Luckily we all packed in a back packs for the trip so we didn't have to check any luggage because the bag drop area was a complete zoo being the second day of March Break.

This is my back pack, I got all my clothes for the week, the toiletries for me and the girls, half the sunblock (because I got 6 travel size at Costco and asked Jay to bring 3) my sandals and a beach bag inside. 

Once we got through security Jay and Trevor lined up for Tim Hortons while I took the girls to the gate. We only had about 45 minutes before boarding by the time we got there. Tim Hortons took 35 of those 45 minutes so Jay was beside himself by the time he brought us our bagels.

When we boarded the plane the seats were way better than we thought they would be. We booked just regular seats (or I did, but I've heard grumbling for months that I didn't get exit or anything (which the kids can't sit in anyway!)). But they had a lot more leg room than we were expecting. And we booked aisle-middle for each of us with a girl in the middle for more leg room for us..but when we got on the plane the window seat beside Jay had a kid in it and the window seat beside me had a man in it and I figured they were together so offered to have Sophie move over so she was also sitting with Jay and then the kid moved over to sit beside me and his Dad. The Mom was up maybe 4 rows and I wonder if the kid would have been more behaved or eaten better if he was sitting with her. He ate a bag of mini kit kats, a whole kit kat and 2 packages of Pringles on the flight. Then when the Mom came back and he said he was starving she brought him back a toblerone bar, and not the regular ones but the giant ones you get at Christmas and said "only 2 or 3 pieces". Oh my god. The flight attendant at one point told him to use his manners when he was talking to his Dad and when I asked him if he would like a piece of gum on landing because his ears were bothering him he said "I hate mint". Ok then.

Anyway, it was a pretty uneventful flight until Paige passed out twice. The last time she passed out that happened too, she went down once while I was straightening her hair over Christmas, got up and said "oh no, not again". This time she passed out, woke up, grabbed Jays arm and said "Daddy I passed out" and then did it again. I think she didn't like what he was watching on his iPad (X-Men). Afterward she is always tired and sometime nauseous and the airplane movement didn't help so she was sick a couple of times but a real trooper.  I didn't realize Jay has never seen them pass out, so he got that treat on this flight - he read his book the rest of the flight until Paige fell asleep. 

Immigration was so busy. They called out the families with kids under 6..I said "my girls are 8, but she is sick, is there any way we can move up?"  Good thing Paige looks like death warmed over after she's had an episode!  It was still a really long wait through immigration. Just when we made it through and were on our way out I saw the duty free store in the baggage area. Jay's day was already shot, why not get some cheap booze!  We got a bottle of Ron Zacapa for $54, two bottles of tequila and a bottle of 'every day' rum for the week.

We left baggage claim, looked for the Jay's Car Rental person and didn't see them so I called and they directed me where to go. We waited 5 minutes for them when the shuttle arrived. Everyone was waiting for Jay's so there wasn't enough room in the shuttle, but another family with older kids let us go first (again I think because Paige looked so awful and maybe because Sophie and Jay looked so surly). We offered to split up and send just me to get the paperwork started or a couple from each group but they insisted we go first and stay together so we said thank you and took the win. Later, at the check in counter the same guy, when I was asking if we need a GPS said "you can't get lost in Aruba" (which is total bullshit).

We had directions from the airport (not from the car rental place) and Apple maps couldn't find the address or anything in Aruba for that matter. My directions, which were vague at best, used all landmarks because street names aren't marked. So I googled Pizza Hit to try and get us to a landmark but there were two so my confidence wasn't high. So I asked Jay to pull over, called the house rental office to try to get directions but by then we didn't know where we were because he said he can't really give us an address as a landmark because nothing is marked (which we know) and said it can be frustrating (which we also know thanks). Finally Trev found the address on the waze app so he and I switched spots as navigators and I enjoyed the scenery in the back seat, an upgrade if that drive was any indication!

We finally got here and it looks just like the pictures.

Trev's room

See the girls smiling and getting along?  So nice. No, that's because they are Face Timing Myah!  They are smiling at her. 

(I made Jay get off the bed so I could take the photo)

Jay and Trevor are going to go out for groceries. The rep who met us here said to take a right, another right and then a left to get to the grocery store...ok this should be fun. At least she had told us it was called Super Food because when we got lost that's what I googled!  (I suggested maybe it didn't make sense for the two of them to do the shopping since I know what I want and am likely doing the cooking.). Also the gps on my phone is all weird. The grocery store was 900m away but it told me it was going to take 18 minutes to arrive.  We shopped and got all the essentials for mornings, snacks and dinners with a plan to eat out for lunch, except for tonight we will go out to dinner because we took off 45 minutes late so we didn't land until 4pm and didn't get out of the airport until 5pm even though we didn't check bags.

We got back to the house by turning at the medical clinic sign and then turning just after the big white house.  We will have to watch our landmarks when Trev isn't in the car and I'm downloading waze now. We unloaded the groceries and set out for dinner which we were told anything we could want would be "just beyond the grocery store by the big hotels". Well it looks like nothing is beyond the grocery store but we go that way anyway, we can see the big hotels to our right but the road doesn't look like it will get us there and so Jay pulls over to make a U-Turn after a minute - but Trev and I think it might be premature and so he keeps going and after a T and a left we found a strip of restaurants and the street all lit up with white lights around the bases of all the palm trees and went for Italian after asking someone who had a take out box if it was good. 

This is about the time I said to the girls that whenever they want a photo just ask, that I'll have to be Maria this trip since we didn't bring ours!

The food was really good - the sangria was amazing (like Urban Pantry's). But dinner was expensive. $180 USD for the 5 of us (we got 4 pizzas, 3 beer, 2 sangria, 1 Pina colada, 1 virgin piña colada and 2 pineapple juices and a burrata salad that we shared). We didn't even walk down the whole strip we were so hungry and had decided in the car that Italian might be easy even after Sophie whined "I don't like Italian". "Honey, you like pizza and pasta?" "Yes". "That's Italian" "oh". We have decided we're not sure about Aruba - it's very very built up, but we haven't seen a lot of it yet so will explore a little tomorrow. We have a Jeep so Jay has found some offroading we can do at the North Shore.   Jay and Trev are supposed to go kite surfing tomorrow but they looked up the email they have and there is no location to meet the guy at and nothing on the website. So they are going to wait until morning and try to call to get more specifics.

Trev and I split two pizzas, both were great and we have leftovers now for a dinner!

When we came back to the house after dinner, following the landmarks we picked out on the way to the hotel area, we started with the most important thing and made a pitcher of sours to enjoy on the patio. I just had one since I had two sangrias at dinner and Trev had a couple. We brought the yeti cups and the lime squeezer (yes I packed them in my back pack!  Everyone had to pack their own yeti if they wanted it so we all have one) 

Bed (10:37!!) after spending 44 mins writing the blog on my phone because I didn't bring my computer on this trip!