January 28, 2015: Well, now that she’s almost 2 weeks old… it’s time to start planning some travel! What you see here is the elaborate plan for getting from the Big Island, Hawaii back to San Diego for a conference.  Traveler 5… whoa.

Traveling with 3 kids has certainly changed our style a bit.  No red-eyes. Minimize layovers. And of course, the fewer points and dollars out of pocket, the better.  We booked IND-SFO-HNL-KOA-LAX/SAN-ORD roundtrip for only $315 per passenger. If you went and priced our exact flights on United today, you’d be looking at $4,100 per passenger. If you added in a few more layovers you could get it down to $1,100. We win :)

We’re going to do IND-SFO-HNL in 11 hours with a 1.5 hour connection. From here we’ll stay the night in Honolulu to take our next flight, fully aware what “one more flight” might do to us all. :)   On the way back, we’re going to fly KOA-LAX nonstop to avoid another connection back through HNL, and then drive the two hours to San Diego rather than make a connection.   And on the way home, we’re going to do a SAN-ORD nonstop and drive the rest of the way home from Chicago rather than make a 2 hour connection and a late night flight.  We know that the kids will do better in a van after bedtime than on a plane.  Small changes that allow us to still do what we enjoy - see the world as a family!