Hawaii Anyone????

Oh.... how we love Hawaii! I sure hope someone out there is planning on going this winter and can take advantage of this deal! I am signed up to receive most travel deals by email. This morning I saw this! Travel Alerts has flights from Vancouver to Honolulu, Dec 6-13 for $159 one way...add in all the taxes and fees and the grand total is $437.91!!!!!!!!!! The best deal I have seen in awhile(when we went 3 years ago we thought we got a screaming deal at $500/person!
 I went on both Westjet and Air Canada and was unable to get this deal on either site so I think you have to book through their site(it's with Air Canada). I am sure there are limited seats at this price so if you are going....you probably need to book ASAP...Drop me a line if you get it and I can enjoy your trip vicariously!!!!!

Just after I hit publish on this article I got this email from Alaska airlines! If you were to travel from Bellingham to Maui Dec 5-11 your total would be $356.40!!!! You can travel starting Nov 8th at this price.
My friend Steven, from Grocery Alerts had Facebooked me and asked if I had looked into Bellingham flights. If you live closer to the border it's always a great option to explore. Of course you need to factor in the driving and parking. Wish I lived closer to Vancouver!

Warm Places!

It is a cold time right now in Canada! When it's like this it's fun to think about warm places! It's even more fun to go there!(Thanks Heather for the beautiful picture!)
As I said in an earlier post we are headed to a warm place next year. We are going to the Hawaiian island, Oahu. How did we get to the point of going and totally prepaying it?
1. We planned it, 2 years ago
2.We broke it down into smaller monthly "payments" to our self
3.We tried to cut costs on the big things
A. Flights:We tracked that typically Hawaii flights go on sale in the fall. The website www.airfarewatchdog.com can be customized to send you alerts on your favorite destinations. We ended up getting our flights at $500 return all taxes in.
B.Accommodations:This is a biggy as we are staying for 3 weeks. We wanted to stay in a condo so as to help cut cost on eating out. We ended up renting through a referral from my brother (who goes regularly to Oahu). We were willing to stay outside of the main tourist area. Our condo, all taxes,cleaning, etc in is right around $100/night.
C. Car rentals:In a previous post I explained how we ended up getting our car, cheap.
D.Food:Food on the island can be pretty pricey. To combat this we will:
A) carefully menu plan, so to be able to sit down to an already made meal, when we get home from the beach!(and so we aren't tempted to eat fast food).
B)We will plan our meals out and use coupons from our Hawaii entertainment book(right now they are $19.99US no shipping).and the coupons from the free papers This Week Oahu(Hotel lobbies, ABC stores), The Best of Oahu, 101 things to do on Oahu,can all be found in The Midweek or Oahu Gold free newspapers.
C)We are told that convienence snack type foods are very pricey and as crazy as it may sound we are going to use some of our checked baggage (2 bags 50lbs each)to pack boxes of food stuffs.Things that we know will cost us lots there and since we can get them cheaply here, why not?(To see what you can and can't bring go to www.catsa-acsta.gc.ca/english/ )
D)I will prepackage some mixes that I know we will want to make.
E)Entertainment:We are planning on doing a few touristy attractions,they will be field trips for us(our learning program pays for it). Mostly we will explore the island as that is the kind of family we are. We have spent lots of time on google earth(which is amazing!)and we plan on having it on the laptop so we can see where we want to go next. Laying on the beach, thankfully, is FREE!!!(We plan on having a cooler in our trunk with all our lunches and snacks prepacked!)Again our Hawaii entertainment book will come in handy for eating out.
F)Gas:We are told that Costco is the best price for gas. We plan on bringing and using our gps to save us from being lost!and wasting gas!
G)Wireless:There are many WiFi free spots. www.wififreespot.com
Any comments, suggestions???