Monday, May 6, 2013

ryenne and daddy's early morning hot date

 
Before we left for Hawaii, Ryenne decided that one thing she really wanted to do on our trip was to go to the temple in Laie with her dad and do baptisms.  She made sure she had her recommend ready and was so excited.  You can imagine her disappointment when we arrived and she realized she had forgotten her recommend!  Thankfully for us, we were able to contact our kind bishop (who was also on a trip out of town!).  He went out of his way to contact the temple and arrange everything so she and her dad could make it after all.
 
 They ended up choosing the perfect morning to go (Valentine's Day, too!).  They had a great experience.  I don't think Ryenne will ever forget her early morning hot date to the Laie temple with her daddy.





shave ice!



What's there not to love about shave ice?  The girls couldn't find anything!

Before our trip ended, we promised the girls a trip to Haliewa town for some famous Hawaiian shave ice and a little bit of souvenir shopping.  They each had a little bit of money to spend and so we spent the evening walking from shop to shop checking out the treasures and trying to find something that caught their eye and fit in their budget!


 
This sign made us laugh!  Especially me, who has experienced Hawaiian Time a little more than the others when I lived there back in my college days.  I never thought of myself as an uptight person until I lived with a bunch of people who didn't have a care in the world!  They taught me so many important lessons!



In the end, Kate and Emmy each bought a ukulele (immediately after our trip they asked Aunt Nan to teach them a song which they played for their class talent show!).  Kate also bought some shell bracelets for her friends and Emmy found a pair of earrings.  Claire bought a dress, a bracelet, and a little flower for her hair, and Ryenne found a little photo book and saved the rest of her money which she spent at Pearl Harbor a few days later.  All in all, a successful outing!

Thursday, May 2, 2013

"hamama bay" and our turtle adventure



On our second try, we finally made it to Hanauma Bay, or as Claire called it, "Hamama Bay".  The first day we took off for our snorkeling adventure, and after a loooong drive, we arrived only to find out that it was closed on Tuesdays.   We all laughed, and ended up going to lunch and finding another beach to play at.  After just a few minutes at the one of the "best beaches in Oahu", we decided that our little Laie beach was so much better!  We packed up and headed North to play at our favorite place instead.

So, a few days later, we tried again.  (This time we checked the schedule!)  The girls were pretty excited to see lots of fish, and really wanted to see a sea turtle.  It was a little scary for a few of them at first, but they ended up being really brave and we had lots of fun.  Claire was pretty timid, and so we found that it worked best to stand in the shallow water where she could just stick her goggles in and see the fun, big fish swimming around her feet.  Pretty big stuff for a four year old!


The most exciting part of the day is when Ryenne and I were out snorkeling in the coral.  She had just been telling me how she had seen lots of cool fish, but what she really wanted to see was a turtle.  We started snorkeling again, and about three seconds later, I looked down just in time to see a turtle right below me!  We laugh now at how I started freaking out, trying to get her attention!  She saw it too and we watched for a minute before we realized it's shell was stuck between the two rocks it had been swimming through.  Ryenne was able to swim down and help it out.  Her turtle adventure turned out even better than she had hoped!

Emmy had been swimming nearby and had seen a turtle too (maybe the same one?), but Kate was so disappointed to have missed it.  I was sad for her too, since she had been the bravest one and had spent the most time in the water in hopes to see one!


Besides the sea life, we had fun people watching too!  Our favorite was the older couple who walked by.  The mister had the smallest little speedo we'd seen, while the missus sported a full body wetsuit, complete with her fins, goggles, and snorkel.  Awesome!



(When I wanted the kids to gather for a picture in front of the bay, Emmy almost refused because it was "so embarrassing"!  That girl!)








a day at the pcc

 
One of our favorite days in Hawaii was spent at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  We had to laugh though, because we chose the first and hottest day of our trip to spend there, and the kids were dying.  It would have been a perfect day to have a little rain or overcast sky, because much of it was spent sitting in the sun.  Oh, well- that's how we roll!

I've been to the PCC lots of times, and Courtney and I went there together on a trip also, but we were excited to take the girls.  It was mostly the same (same cheesy jokes!), and the girls loved it.  Ryenne can still make us laugh with her perfect impression of the way things are done in Samoa.




The kids loved the boat show, especially when one of the boats "drivers" fell in the water.  Every time a boat came by, the girls would say that it was their favorite one!




(Our girls, who are quite the tree climbers themselves, were quite impressed with this guy's skills.)

 
Of course, the girls wanted to meet this guy, but Kate was the only one brave enough to ask!  :)


making fishies on a stick. . .!











Claire had been talking for weeks about seeing the "fire dancers" everyone had told her about and was so excited to see the night show.  Wouldn't you know it, she fell asleep almost as soon as the show started.  We tried everything (even ice cream!) to try to wake her up, but the poor girl was just plain worn out!  We bought a DVD afterwards so she could watch the "fire dancer show".  The other girls were absolutely mesmerized by the whole show and still say that it was their favorite part of the day. 

(I'm trying to inspire them to go to school at BYU-H.  So obviously, this day was a big weapon in my arsenal.  Now I keep telling them that if they there, they can learn to dance like that too!)



(It's so fun to see these pictures, and reminds me of the fun we had on our trip. One thing about our day at the center that made us laugh is that as we were leaving the New Zealand exhibit, I thought I saw a friend that I had known in our ward growing up. When I called her name, sure enough, she turned around! What a small world. We ended up seeing them a few days later at Pearl Harbor too!)

i did something really awesome the other day

So the other morning I was out in the yard trimming stuff.  You  know, the plants that should have been trimmed last fall, but weren't.  And since I didn't really know how to do it, I just took the trimmer thingies and whacked away to my hearts content.  We'll see how that goes. 

To keep myself occupied whilst hacking at my bushes, I was talking on the phone to my sister.  And then I noticed I was feeling a little hot.  Well, I must have been feeling really hot, if you know what I mean, because I yanked my sweatshirt off.  It took me a minute or two to notice that it was feeling really breezy.  You know why?  I looked down to remember that I didn't have a t-shirt on under that 'ol sweatshirt.  Just my undies.  (And a you-know-what, thankfully.  I say 'thankfully' because that is not always the case.) 

First, I got dressed.  Second, I looked around to see that the road was blessedly bare.  No neighbors to see me hanging out in my skivvies, working in the front yard.  Except for the farmer on the tractor across the street, that is.



Lucky guy.  Bet he's still laughing.