roller coaster vacation planning

. . . Nope, not the kind of vacation where you ride roller coasters (though at one point that was part of the plan), but rather, when the event of planning a vacation becomes a roller coaster. Here's how it went down:

Once upon a time, about a year ago, Russ and I decided we were going to go on a cruise to the Caribbean. Neither of us had ever been, so we were excited to do our first cruise together. We started saving.

Fast forward about 5 months.

We had enough money to have an awesome vacation--we were thinking we'd cruise the caribbean and depart out of Florida. Since we'd have to spend all that money to get to Florida, we'd also spend a few days after our cruise doing theme parks. We were psyched! But then Russ got moved from part-time to full-time, and taking two weeks off from the start-up he works for just was not an option. I was sad, but we decided we'd just use the money to do other fun things.

We talked about using it to buy a tent and then taking a few camping trips in the summer (this past summer), but none of that ended up happening either. *Sad face*

Fast forward some more.

We had been married more than two years, and our only vacations not involving family had been our honeymoon and one weekend trip to Vegas. I didn't like this, and I told Russ that I really wanted to do something, just the two of us. He agreed, and we tossed a few ideas around, landing on Disneyland for New Year's Eve 2014. Russ did that with his sister the year before he met me, and he always talks about how much fun they had, so I wanted in on it. We started making loose plans to travel to California, do Disneyland, and meet up with my blogger friend Laynah. I was super excited for all of it!

 But somehow not excited enough to actually purchase tickets and get things done. So I just kept planning on it, without actually booking anything. Well, whaddya know, ticket prices went up, and we weren't willing to pay that much to get to California.

Simultaneously, we heard that airfare to Hawaii was really good right now. We checked it out, and lo and behold, it was seriously amazing. Tickets to Hawaii are usually around $900, but we found tickets for $430! While that was more expensive than the California option, it was an amazing deal for the Hawaii option. But we could only afford that kind of ticket if we had a place to stay. My dad has some connections in Hawaii, so we checked on that, but it was a no. My parents have friends who have a house in Hawaii, but it turned out that they had recently sold it. I was sad, but not bummed; I knew it had been a long shot, so I wasn't too concerned that we couldn't go. But then my mom asked her neighbor about their house in Hawaii, and they said we could stay for free! I was pumped. By this time, prices had gone up to $515, but that was still reasonable, considering we had a free place to stay.

We had just one more thing we needed to do before we could book--ask if Russ could miss work at that time. Russ's work Christmas party was that night, and Russ was asleep that morning when I was looking at tickets again, so I forgot to book then/waited til that evening to really consider booking. Big mistake. By that evening, all of the good prices and good flights were gone. Prices were up $300 each and flights had 22-hour layovers--something that just doesn't work when you're trying to only miss 5 or 6 days of work. So just like that, our amazing trip was out the door.

I was devastated. I seriously could not stop crying because it just wasn't fair! It had been completely within reach--in fact, the website still said the low price when we went to book that evening--and then it was gone. I cried a lot that night (Saturday) and then some more the next morning. I was seriously emotional about it (I'm kind of hoping I was only that emotional because it was that time of the month . . . because my emotions were literally ridiculous).

And it was over. Until this morning, when I started writing this post. This post wasn't going to have a happy ending. It was going to be a vent session, ending with that last paragraph. But then I decided to check one last time, mid post, and tickets were back down to $513 and normal layovers!! So my friends, the roller coaster of planning a vacation ended on a high note--We're going to Hawaii on New Year's Eve! Seriously I am soooo happy right now :)

If you've been, what are your favorite things to do on Oahu? I usually do Kauai, so other than Pearl Harbor and the PCC, I'm pretty clueless about Oahu! Gimme all your good ideas :)