We are now at Friday, February 8th. Some crazy woman (oh right, that was me) booked us spa appointments for 8 AM the night after we went to the Pirate/Princess party. We are up at 6, since we have to be at the spa 15 minutes early, and we head to the shower, get dressed, and head out the door. Look how quickly we got lazy – now that we have the truck from the in-laws, we drive over to the spa!
At the front desk, we check in, and the girl takes us down to the women’s locker room, shows us where the robes and slippers are, and tells us where to get changed. She then invites us to go up to the lounge, where they have tea, ice water, fruit, and mints. Brighid and I change very quickly and put our stuff in a locker. We ooohhh and aaaahhh over the locker with Minnie’s things in it – so cute! – then we head up to the lounge. Walking in these slippers is not easy. The smalls are too small for my feet, and the mediums are just big enough that they want to slip off.
I want to take a short detour here and say that I did not see any accomodations for plus sized women. The robes were one size fits all, and while I did fit, I know that 4 months ago, I would NOT have fit. This is not to say that they do not have larger robes somewhere, and I should have taken the time to ask for them, but they were certainly not out anywhere that you could grab them.
After a long enough period of time in the lounge for me to grab a cup of ice water and Brighid to eat a banana, we are invited into the room where we will have our manicures and pedicures. Conchita is my technician and Ana is Brighid’s. Let me tell you, they were AWESOME! They were super nice, and incredibly friendly, and we had a really nice time chatting with them. I don’t think I’ve had a manicure since I got married (okay, maybe I have, but I can’t remember them), and it was so nice and relaxing, and my nails turned out looking really good. Then it was time for our pedicures. I have NEVER had a pedicure, and I learned a valuable lesson. Do not shave your legs the day of your pedicure. Apparently, they don’t like to exfoliate your legs after you’ve shaved. Conchita did do my exfoliation, but she was very gentle.
The smells during the pedicure make you SO hungry! They did a peppermint pedicure, and the scrub they use to exfoliate is a maple sugar scrub. I made the comment to Conchita that it was like sitting down to a breakfast of Candy Cane pancakes. The music is soothing, and the chairs that you sit in to have your pedicure vibrate, so you really can relax. Totally loved it. Totally have to hit the lottery so I can do it more often.
After the really relaxing morning, we headed over to the Polynesian for lunch at Kona Cafe. I’m not crazy about the atmosphere at this restaurant, but I do love the seafood chowder, and everything else everyone else has ordered, they’ve really enjoyed. We laughed and had a great time at lunch, and I really hope it was a small glimpse into how my relationship with my daughter will be as she gets older. I had a great time with her.
Oh, and a little tip about parking at the Poly. Again, chalk this up to the fact that I am geographically challenged, but if you can’t make up your mind which row you want to choose to park in, you will find yourself with no option but to leave the parking lot and come back through security to start over. And when you do that, the smart alec security guard will say something to you like, “Your twin sister just pulled through here a minute ago.” Then your teenage daughter laughs at you and calls you names. Of course, you can threaten not to feed her, but she is laughing so hard at the fact that you just tried to make the Kona Cafe a drive through, she will not notice she has not eaten until later, and you will eventually have to feed her or risk going to prison for child neglect.
We tried to decide what to do during our Kona lunch, and it seemed like a movie was a good plan, especially since Brighid wanted to do dinner at Raglan Road. We looked up on our wonderful Smart Phone (thank you, dear, for the wonderful piece of technology) the movie schedule for Pleasure Island, and we decided to play it by ear. There were a few movies playing in the next hour or two, so we figured we would just see whichever one was closest to starting when we got there.
As it turned out, one of the movies I have been anxious to see was starting in about 20 minutes when we arrived. We bought out tickets for The Pursuit of Happyness, and headed in, where Brighid got a small popcorn. How someone in a size 0 jeans has room for a bag of popcorn after the lunch AND dessert she just ate is amazing to me. We wait the 20 minutes until showtime chatting and having a nice time. The movie was good, but not great, and we had been expecting great.
We are done at the movies about 5 o’clock, and our ADR at Raglan Road is at 8:15, because Brighid really wants to see the Irish entertainment. Brighid forgets that I am an old woman with three children, and as much as I WANT to make sure she gets to stay for the entertainment, which starts at 9, there is no way I will be able to keep my head up that late. She is a bit disappointed, but we head over to Raglan Road and take a table outside. We meet Philip, our waiter, and this is probably our best meal of the trip – not so much for the food, but Philip was phenomenal. He spent lots of time chatting with us until they got really busy, but even when the place was packed, he still kept coming back, making jokes, and chatting as much as he could. Ask for Philip next time you check out Raglan Road. He was awesome.
Dinner goes until about 7:15, and we decide to head back to SSR and check out some DVDs. We’ll get all cozy in our jammies and watch the movies. We pick up some pretzels and cream cheese to snack on, and we are in the room, in our jammies, about 8 o’clock. About 8:20, I wake up to see Liam Neeson has been killed, and Leonardo DiCaprio is now all grown up and siding with Daniel Day Lewis. When did this happen? Obviously, not even the appeal of all those cutie patooties in one film could help me stay awake, so I head into the bedroom and leave Brighid to watch the movie. I wake up again about an hour later, and Brighid is asleep too. Well, she never claimed to be a Leo fan.
This is the kind of day I was hoping to have on vacation. We had two really nice meals, with lots of laughing and joking and sharing stuff. We were relaxed and having a good time everywhere we went. We met a super nice CM in Philip, and saw a movie that no way in this lifetime my husband would have gone to see with me. This is what the mother daughter trip was all about.