O'Hana

We arrived at Joel and Lacey's house around two or three o'clock in the afternoon.  We stopped in Macon, Georgia, the night before just to break up the trip.  When you travel with an eight week old baby, you try to be super laid back and have no expectations of arrival times and such.  After hanging out with the Ball's for a little bit, we changed clothes and got ready for our dinner reservations at O'Hana at 9:40 that night.  O'Hana is at the Polynesian resort, so we let the kids play on the beach while us adults relaxed in the lounge chairs and caught up for the longest time.  There wasn't a beach movie playing on this particular night, like there was on our last trip.

Hadley has been convinced that we weren't going to take a "big" vacation this year, with Merritt being so small.  In fact, we intentionally waited to tell the kids our big plans just to make sure Merritt stayed as good and healthy a baby as she seemed.  

We love Ellie and Chloe so very much; they are unbelievably precious girls.  I'm so glad Hadley has them as role models to look up to.  Chloe is just a year older than Hadley and I will get to have Ellie in 4th grade this year!  Everywhere we went for the entire week, people assumed these four were siblings because of their very blonde hair.  In fact, if one of us adults happened to have all four at one time, we would get strange looks followed by, "Are they all yours?"

Joel and Lacey had been preparing us for the amazing food at O'Hana for some time, but you can't really even imagine it until you see it.  Servers dash between tikis and tropical greenery to bring skewers of sweet and sour chicken, oak-grilled shrimp and steak to your table, as well as dumplings, stir-fried vegetables, lo mein noodles and salad.  Did I mention you can have all you can eat, too?

On our trip down to Orlando, the kids watched the movie "Lilo and Stitch" several times.  In the movie, one of the characters says, "O'Hana means family and family means nobody gets left behind."

At O'Hana guests also enjoy games during dinner, including coconut races in which children armed with brooms sweep coconuts across the restaurant’s hardwood floors.  Hadley and Canaan probably wouldn't have gone on their own, but having Ellie and Chloe around makes our kids feel much bigger.

I mentioned that our reservations weren't until 9:40 that night.  This made for a couple of tired littles.  But the fireworks out the glass windows, overlooking the lagoon were magical, to say the least.  And the food was beyond worth the wait.  I really cannot even describe how incredible the food was.

Then came dessert.  Chocolate cupcakes for the kids and bread pudding with banana caramel sauce for the adults.  Yep...there are really no words for how amazing the bread pudding was.  Worth every dime, I tell you.

We couldn't have kicked off our Disney trip a better way if we wanted to.  Hanging out on the beach, storytelling and games at dinner, and food to die for.  Plus, the company was the absolute best.  Oh, I can hardly wait for the rest of this trip!