The World Of Woodbury: Here We Go! To Tahiti!

And after a whirlwind 3 weeks of Christmas events, traditions, baking, and last-minute buying, planning and packing... we were off.
We left Friday afternoon when Ethan got off school and took a short flight to L.A. accompanied by Taylor's parents and his sister Barb and her fiance Clint.

Waiting to take off. The kids were very zoned into their new ipods.

Miles manages to make himself comfortable just about anywhere. It helps that he's still tiny- and that we bring him blankies and "goggy" along.

In L.A. we sat around for 4 hours, ate dinner, and met up with the rest of the Woodbury clan- Mack and his fiance Sam (who flew all the way from New York) and Arty and his wife Esther (who flew all the way direct from London). Then we all boarded an 8 hour flight to Papeete, Tahiti. Yep, 8 hours! Overnight. We left at 10pm LA time and landed at 4:30am in Tahiti. Amazingly the whole city seemed away when we got there. (Apparently they all are! They all wake up at the crack of dawn and get their work done since it's cool, then they chill out/relax/nap most of the middle of the day and then are up when it's cooler in the evening). Who knew?

The kids did pretty well on the flight. Miles slept almost 6 hours before they woke us up for breakfast. Please tell me what the point of that is? We board the plane at 10 pm. They feed everyone a full dinner at 11pm, cleanup and finally turn off the cabin lights at 12pm. Then you sleep for maybe 4 hours then they wake you up 2 full hours before you land to feed you AGAIN and then have time to clean up and sell you duty free products. ANNOYING! Luckily Miles passed out as soon as we took off, slept through dinner, and then was content to eat breakfast at 3am and then play his ipod. Taylor was in another row with Ethan and Isaac who didn't sleep as well (they're not as compact and don't lay out as well in the tiny seats) nor as long as Miles. So we were all in rare form when we landed and were greeted by traditional Tahitian singers and dancers. Yep, you guessed it, I didn't bother to take a picture on 4 hours sleep. Plus it was a bit of a shock to go from 25 degrees to 85 literally overnight. I can't even remember how many layers I removed before I could finally breathe. Humidity!

Thankfully Tahitians are very family friendly and every time we stopped in a line, they pulled Taylor, me, and the boys out and scooted us to the front. How fabulous is that? Taylor's siblings and parents gave us dirty looks every time but at 4:30 in the morning on 4 hours of sleep, I'll put up with a few dirty looks and just smile back.

All our bags arrived- a small miracle with 13 people. We loaded up into 2 monster vans and were delivered to the Intercontinental hotel. The original plan was that we'd arrive at 4:30am and since we couldn't board the cruise ship until 1pm, we'd just go find an IHOP (who really thinks they have IHOPs in Tahiti?!? ) or just hang out on the beach/tour around a little until we could board. Thankfully I put my foot down and insisted that if we were taking overnight flights with 3 little boys, we needed somewhere to sleep during that 8 hours of empty time. Gratefully, Taylor's dad obliged me and we got to our hotel rooms, took these lovely pictures...

That's Moorea in the distance.

Yep, still in our pajamas straight off the plane.

Admiring the sunrise and views of Moorea at 5am! And then we passed out for 6 hours! Our room only had 1 queen sized bed and hard wood floors so we made do. Taylor, Miles, me, and Isaac all slept on the bed and Ethan slept on the floor rug. It didn't matter- we were that tired!

Once we woke up feeling much better and changed into shorts and t-shirts, we ventured out the explore the hotel. It is amazing! I don't think I even need to say more, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. Isaac out on the bridge with Grams.

Sam, Miles and Grams.

We explored some more and hammocks hanging all over the place. Miles and Isaac tested out a few.

Then we found the tropical fish. There is a little lake in the middle of the property that's actually fully open to the ocean- so not really a lake. Tropical fish swim in and out at will and Miles was enthralled watching them. The clear water was amazing.

Could you just stay here forever?

I mean seriously?

Miles and Isaac with more hammocks.

And then we happened upon the fish/turtle pond which ended up being the boys favorite place. The turtles actually went after the food the way ducks normally do. Honestly!

We saw a few other kids feeding them bread earlier and after lunch we brought some with us. See they were on the rocks but as soon as the kids started throwing bread, they jumped in and it became a turtle vs. fish free for all.