This school year William will be a 2nd grader. How fast time flies! His teacher is still Mr. Castenada from the first grade.
First day of school Aug 16, 2021. This year Santa Ana district decided to start school earlier than previous years: usually the first day of school began after the Labor Day but this year it started before the Labor Day.
Unaware of this change, we planned our trip to Hawaii from 8/12-8/16, thus William missed the first day of school. Then when we got back, the school said William has to self-quarantine for 14 days, which means he cannot go to school until Monday 8/30/2021.
Not only school, TasKids where we have the ABA sessions, also demanded that everyone in our family to take a Covid-19 tests after 3 days we got back from our trip; and they resume sessions only if the test is negative.
We made appointment with Walgreens for all 3 of us on Saturday 8/21. Today is Monday but still have not received the results yet, I guess because we were tested on the weekend, it’d take longer to get the result back.
Our summer vacation this year was Honolulu, Oahu, and we were staying for 3 nights at one of the most beautiful hotel on the island, the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort. William is 7 years old now, he’s old enough not to cry and he loves to fly! The only issue during our flight from LAX – Honolulu is that he kept standing up on the chair and touched the lights on the ceiling and often times pulling down/up the food tray so strong that would shake the seat of the person sitting in front of him. Lucky for us it’s Danny seat so we were not yelled at. He did not want to watch any movie, all he wanted was looking at the map.
William only slept for about 30 minutes; United airlines did not serve lunch; I brought 1 lunchbox from home so that was William’s lunch. We were late because we had a bit of issue getting the pre-approval of covid-19 so did not have time to buy any thing for lunch; lucky for us aunt Eliza gave me a croissant, which I shared with aunt Julie.
Everyone is required to wear mask all the time, except for when eating.
We arrived at Honolulu airport around 11:00 AM, it took so long for the luggage to come out. Then we headed to the Budget rental car to pick up 2 minivans to fit total of 12 of us. Then we headed to Pho Que Huong at China town for lunch; the food here is good. After lunch, we stopped by Costco on the way to the hotel for some water and snacks. Aunt Eliza bought William a set of Beach toys! William enjoyed his churros while looking out the window: it’s his first time here at Waikiki.
Check in at the hotel took so long: about 1 hour! I already checked in via Hilton Honors app, otherwise it’d take longer because the general check in line was so long. It took so long because they required EACH adult to log in to the Safe Travel web site and show them the trip details.
But then when we got to our room, the view was spectacular; it was worth all the hassle! After a short break, we headed down to the Hilton Lagoon, William loved it here! We got lucky that someone gave us 3 floats because their trip ended today.
William loves this Hilton lagoon because it’s not deep.
Waikiki beach, in front of the hotel
Walking to Mc. Donald, Danny holds William’s hand.
Being a 2nd grader at Thomas Jefferson school, his class will be ended at 2:00 PM, which will conflict with his speech therapy at Providence Speech and Hearing center at 1:00 PM every Mondays with Ms. Gina so we decided to cancel the therapy.
We’ve been using tele-health for the speech sessions but because today is the last day, we wanted to see Ms. Gina for the last time in person and gave her some appreciation gift. William was so excited to go. Actually he had been asking to go to the office because he said it was boring to have the on-line meeting.
State of Hawaii demands that everyone is traveling to Hawaii that did not get the Covid-19 vaccine will need to take a Covid-19 test within 72 hours of the departure time; and they only allow travelers to enter the state with negative test result.
Thus we made a 2nd Covid-19 test for William on Monday 8/9/2021 at 9:45 AM (our flight was 8/12 at 8:30 AM so we could take any appointment on 8/9 after 8:30 AM to meet the 72 hours requirement). Out of 12 family members were going to Hawaii, only William and Victoria are under 12 years old and don’t have the Covid-19 vaccine yet. So today I drove both of them to Walgreens for the test.
I reminded William the procedure again, he was not scared at all.
This time the result came back quickly, the next day. I guess because it was not weekend.
It was negative for both kids. I was so relieved because I was afraid that the result would not come before the departure date: we have to log in to the Hawaii state website to upload the report before departure.
