Hawaii Day 1

 

Friday was travel to Hawaii day. It didn't feel like a long day until we were taxiing into Hawaii and knew we had to pick up luggage, the rental car, check in, and buy food.

Our entire trip from San Diego to Honolulu was from 10am PST to 11pm PST. We had a long lay over in Seattle but when you get to use airline miles (thanks again Maughans!) you don't complain. My parents met us at the Seattle airport (they flew out of Oakland) and then the 6 of us all got on the same plane to Honolulu. Even though we had 4 separate reservations (I quickly learned how to utilize every airline mile and special available...regardless of how many reservations I had to do), I made sure we were all in the same row. We basically took up an entire "row" 3 on one side and 3 on the other side of the aisle.

We flew Alaska whose only downfall is that they don't have movies on TVs for customers! You have to rent a portable dvd type player for $12. On the way there, the girls had nintendo ds' to play with and we did have our portable dvd player and my laptop. However, we quickly learned that the plane is really really loud and the portable dvd player doesn't get loud enough. My laptop was loud enough but didn't like the DVDs. Luckily the girls wanted to sit w/ my mom!!

When we arrived, we were greeted by a woman who had leis for each of us and helped us down to get our luggage and get onto the rental car shuttle. We wanted to take a pic of us all in our leis, but after looking at the result, all I can see is how exhausted I looked!

We got our luggage and ended up w/ a really nice minivan though I still love mine better! My mom and I dropped G and my dad and girls off and she and I headed to Safeway. First off, my gps didn't like its location and then once we got there we were so exhausted but luckily I had made a list b/c if we didn't have a list we probably wouldn't have remembered what we needed.

There was a nice guy that helped us a bit (even found us a few coupons). He was probably coming off his evening shift there (it was about 10pm Hawaii time or later by this point...thats 1am PST). As we were leaving my mom got the keys out and we realized there was no key! All that was there was the clicker thing (or I call the beep beep). When we got to the van, my mom figured out that that was the key. It was an electronic key. I personally think its kind of silly but oh well. I can't even imagine what it would cost to replace that!

I think we ended up going to bed about 3am PST time...Midnight in Hawaii.

Hawaii

I have pictures from Hawaii. I am going to edit them and put some up here (w/ a synopsis of the who, what, where, etc) and then put the majority on facebook.

blogging

I haven't written anything in awhile. Most people want to know about the girls, however, I usually write my blogs on my laptop and since photos and music are not allowed on this bad boy, I can write blogs, but no pics will be on here. I have finally written in a blog I set up a long time ago. Its a place I can write my opinion w/o using the family blog (which in theory should be about the family)

soundingoffinsandiego.blogspot.com

the definition of homicide

Tonight I watched a piece on the local news about a man who entered the country illegally, and after being "aggressive" (can't remember the word the news used) was tasered by the border patrol and later died of a heart attack. The news stated that the medical examiner had ruled it a homicide. Of course people automatically will think homicide = murder and there will be a huge outcry.

Of course homicide only means the killing of one person by another person. It has nothing to do with guilt, mental state, etc. Interestingly enough, they stated that the man had been deported recently after being stopped for a traffic violation and then discovered he was illegal (sound like something familiar in Arizona?) and subsequently deported.

Over the weekend, he chose to illegally cross the border again to reunite with his family. He was caught, later tasered, and died of a heart attack at a SD hospital. Of course it wasn't until the very last split second of the segment did they mention the man had meth in his system. I am not a medical expert so I can only wonder if the meth with the tasering by the border patrol caused the death.

In the end, I think it is just a reminder that we need to remember events like these occur because someone is doing something illegally. Obviously a family is w/o a father now and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I just think that if a person crossed the border legally, there wouldn't be an issue like this involving border patrol agents.