Day 362: Happy New Year — Into The Unknown — Puu Poa Beach
It’s 2020!
What a decade. Margaret and I got married 10 years ago Jan 16. Two kids, two company acquisitions, countless good times with friends and family, and one crazy year of travel to cap it off. We are so ridiculously fortunate… I don’t have the words.
In 2019 we visited 100 places across 29 countries and yet I mentioned to Margaret this morning that it’s possible 2020 holds more unknowns than 2019.
Sounds silly, but at this time last year we knew where we would be sleeping for much of the year. Yet here we are in 2020: We’re home in DC Jan 5. New York on Jan 10. We have an Airbnb in Fidi booked through Jan 15, but beyond that don’t know where we’ll live or how we’ll generate income.
As I type this the kids are downstairs playing Frozen II’s “Into The Unknown” on Spotify. It’s an appropriate theme song for the coming days and weeks.
Today was another slow morning. It’s tough to beat jet lag when you actually have no reason to get out of bed. I was texting with my brother — he’s in Florence, Italy with the whole gang plus Lolo and Jacqui. They are fighting the same jet lag right now, but will be reversed coming home while we’ll double down on our west-to-east time change.
I did a little body weight workout in the pool area and then we decided to head down to Puu Poa Beach at the bottom of our street.
It was a longer walk than we expected. At one point we started down a long steep hill and as if on cue James asked, do we have to walk back up this hill? He’s learned that some walks are a loop and some require retracing your steps. We gave him the bad news.
Puu Poa is the beach next to the super luxe Princeville Resort (formerly part of St. Regis). It’s a nice little beach, protected from big waves and shaded by big trees. Downside is all the holiday tourists from the resort… and the walk back up the hill.
We considered staying at one of these resorts this week and are so glad we didn’t. The Princeville Resort looked lovely and yet it only cemented these feelings. I’ll happily trudge up a hill with beach chairs, toys, umbrella and towels knowing that we’ll eventually arrive at our private and peaceful little house.
On the way down to the beach James made me promise to help with a sand castle.
Margaret hung around for a bit but then walked back home to make lunch and put in some more work on her book project.
The kids had fun — in and out of the water and decorating our castle.
I eventually encouraged them to pack up and head home, knowing that hungry kids making that long steep walk would be unpleasant at best. I told them they could earn back three iPad minutes if they made it without complaint, which we eventually did despite one incident of tears.
Back at the house we had lunch, read, played games and watched 72 Cutest Animals on Netflix. We made Mac and Cheese, salad and grilled hotdogs and veggie burgers for dinner. After dinner Margaret and the kids introduced me to the card game Seven… and I won!
We finally finished The Hobbit before bed.
