The Bryner Bunch: Our Kauai Adventure with 8 Little Kids

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Our Kauai Adventure with 8 Little Kids

We have been dying to get back to Hawaii since our last visit and we were so excited to go with the Ropers this time, which meant 8 little kids under the age of 9 in tow! Yes, we are crazy, but we had a wonderful time!

This time we went to Kauai and Jen's amazingly sweet friend so generously let us stay in their beautiful time share at Koloa Landing.

The pictures hardly do it justice. It was amazing!

The kids can never get enough swimming!

Since we flew in a day earlier than the Ropers, we had some time to get groceries and prepare for the masses:) We started the day by going out to breakfast. Those little Hawaiian bananas are the best!

When we first arrived at the time share, the staff so nicely welcomed us with alohas and seashell necklaces. Sadly, the seashell necklace later turned into weapon when Logan lodged one directly at Dane's eye and cut his cornea. It was an accident and Logan felt terrible, but not as bad as Daners felt! I have NEVER seen him more miserable and in so much pain...it was heartbreaking:( He kept saying, "I got hurt so bad" and was writhing around in pain:(:(:( The closest "urgent care" we were able to find was about a mile away in the town part of Koloa. To our surprise, the doctor's office was in a house! Nervously we entered in, but were immediately comforted by their professionalism and friendliness. They were just about to close, but the doctor could hear Dane screaming in the waiting room and did not want him to be in pain anymore. The Doctor was so sweet, informative, and new exactly was he was doing which was soooo reassuring! He treats scratched corneas all of the time usually caused by sand and not seashell necklaces, but nonetheless, he took incredible care of our little Daners. Then he sent us across the street (literally!) to the cute little pharmacy (that I would die to work out!) to pick up his antibiotic eye drop (ciprofloxacin) and pain med (Tylenol w/codeine elixir). Less than a few hours, Daners was back to his old self and feeling much better! Thank goodness!

Once, the Ropers arrived, we all to a walk to the actuary just behind the time share at Poipu beach to check out the sea lions and turtles.

The kids loved spotting the turtles!

Beach time at Brenneke's. Such a great beach for boogie boarding. The waves were wild and the kids loved it!

Everyone loved the water except for Beau Beau! I think the waves freaked him out. He wouldn't hardly let the water touch his toes without bawling. He spent most of his time playing in the sand. He is so cute even when he is traumatized:) Poor guy:(

All geared up. Seconds later it was all off!

Jen was feeling adventurous and tried her hand at boogie boarding. I was so jealous that I couldn't go! Next time for sure when I am not prego:)

Jen caught quite a few waves and had lots of fun!

All of the kids were obsessed with boogie boarding and Benny was good at helping them catch waves.

Cute Casey bugs was loving the sand:)

Us at the Spouting Horn. Pretty cool!

Beau was obsessed with chasing the chickens and roosters. He was lucky that he didn't get attacked by the mother hen!

The kids scoping out the Spouting Horn.

Beach # 2 was at the Sheraton and Poipu beach, which ended up being most of our favorite beach. So beautiful!!!

This beach is know for surfing, so Jen decided to take a lesson.

Jen did great and was able to stand up quite a few times! She did amazing job and it was so fun to watch her!

The boards were like 50 lbs! Luckily Matt was able to carry it.

7 of the 8 kids fell asleep on the beach while Jen was surfing. It was a nice moment for the adults to catch our breath and trade off going to lunch in peace:)

Time to conquer the Wailua River and hike up to Secret Falls! With a tour guide leading our pack, we kayaked (5 miles round trip) to the trail and hiked (3 miles round trip) up to the falls. Again, we are crazy to do this with 8 babies tow, but we wanted to make long lasting memories and have and adventure. That is exactly what we did!

We made it through the first round of kayaking and made it to the trail. Thank goodness the tour guide paddled me, Jen, Beau, and Case's kayak or I don't think we would have made it! Ben and Matt did a great job paddling each of their kayaks full of kids!

Here I am carrying 2 babies. Beau on my back and baby boy #4 in my belly! 21 weeks prego:)

Once we arrived at the trail, we had to walk across the river to get to the trail. This felt shockingly adventurous to us (especially to me and Jen) to the point where we wondered what we got ourselves in to:)

Ben loved every moment of this adventure and was really in his element.

We got quite the looks from passerbyers, as you can imagine with all of the little kids with us, but we didn't care. We had a great time and thank goodness crossing the river was the worst part of the hike. It wasn't bad at all and would have been considered easy if we didn't have the kids with us. It was slick and muddy which was tricky with the kids, but we made it.

Such beautiful views!

This tree actually walks to different locations. Crazy!

We made it to Secret Falls!

The kids dipped their toes in and we ate our packed lunches just before it began to dump on us.

So beautiful, but the rain forced us to leave pretty quick!

Time to kayak back!

In the background, you can see part of Mount Waialeale which is the wettest spot on Earth.

We were getting dumped on, but the babies didn't seem to mind. Beau Beau even fell asleep! Kauai is by far the wettest island. The rain just comes and goes all day. Thankfully, it was warm most of the time.

We made it back safe and sound. We were quite the spectacle, but wouldn't regret doing it for a minute! Our tour guide was awesome and so patient with us. He actually is a professional boogie boarder...pretty cool!