I am not exactly sure what to write about during this time . . . so I will take a break from the usual educational leadership posts and tell you about my family’s spring break vacation.

When I was one my parents took me to Hawaii, it was 1974.  They had gone a couple times before, and for my dad it was his favourite vacation spot.  At the time, they would tell me later, they committed to going every year.  Well, life happened.  They had two more kids, we all played sports, teaching didn’t make my parents rich, Hawaii got expensive and the next time we actually had a family trip to Hawaii was 28 years later.

My wife and I were going to be different.  Our daughter was born in January of 2002, and that summer we were in Hawaii – and we loved it.  We agreed we had to go back.  Well, life happened.  We had three more kids, they all were busy will sports, and Hawaii was definitely not getting any cheaper.  But with our oldest daughter now about to leave for university in the fall we were committed to making Hawaii happen – this might be our last spring break that we could travel as a family.  So we had all the plans made to go this spring break and then all the sudden  . . . well you know the rest of the story.

Or actually maybe you don’t.

My dad really loved Hawaii.  He talked about it all the time.   And since we couldn’t afford to go to Hawaii regularly, he would bring Hawaii to us.

So, every summer he would load up the Buick Skylark and with my mom and brothers and and we would head to downtown Vancouver on a sunny Saturday afternoon.  Our first stop would be European News on Robson Street (called Robsonstrasse by everyone at that time).  European News would import The Honolulu Advertiser News Sunday paper.  We would pick up the most recent edition available.  My brothers and I would also get to pick a magazine (I usually got The Sporting News).  Next stop would be a grocery store on Main Street that would stock freshly shipped pineapples.  So we would also pick up one of those as well as some Macadamia nuts.  Then off to home we would go and spend the rest of the weekend in the sun in the backyard, eating fresh pineapple, enjoying macadamia nuts, lounging in our Hawaiian shirts, reading the news from Honolulu and listening to Don Ho.  A true Hawaiian vacation.

So, here we are March of 2020.  I don’t really need to pick-up a newspaper, we can all look up Hawaiian news on our phones – so that part is easy.   Even with the challenging shopping restrictions we found a pineapple at Save-On-Foods and some macadamia nuts.  And it is not quite summer like when we did it growing up, but we are in the backyard enjoying our Hawaiian Vacation.  I didn’t try to talk the kids into Don Ho.

It might be our last spring break vacation as a family for a while – trying to make the most of it.

Hopefully you are all finding some joy in these challenging times.