Hawaiian photo shoot

The last night before we left I made the kids get dressed up, and hair done for a photo shoot. We haven't had pictures of them done forever. They weren't too excited, but Jeff was even less excited even though he wasn't even in the pictures. It was a little bit stressful for me because we were on the clock until sunset. I had hoped we would make it down to the beach for some shots too, but it got too dark. Overall the kids did pretty good, but I am not happey with the group pictures. We only got a couple of decent ones. Oh well we can always do it again soon, just not in Hawaii. I am still trying to decide on which ones to put on my wall. Let me know which ones are your favorites. I will number them to make it easier.

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And there you have it.

Hilton & Volcanos

We did end up doing a few other things in Hawaii besides the beach and the pool. One afternoon we went over to the Hilton to see the Dolphins. They are amazing to watch. I love that it is free to come and look and you can get really close up to them. Maybe when our kids are bigger we could get into the water with them. That has always been a dream of mine.


We also took a day and drove to the other side of the island. It took a couple of hours to get there and the roads are very narrow and windy. Taylor and I both got a little car sick on the way.

We made our kids do a 4 mile hike down to a lava lake. It was really cool. Taylor did great too and made it to the ascent mostly be herself. Unfortunately right before we got back into the trees she fell and got cut up on the lava rocks. She had some skinned knees and a bloody elbow. Needless to say she got a ride up the hill. Jeff and I took turns. At the time that we started back up the hill it also started to rain. I thought the cover of the trees would keep us pretty dry, but we were soaked and cold by the end. It didn't really help morale much. I was so proud of my kids for doing it. They were by far the youngest kids on the trail. I think I saw one other girl that was probably 10. We got a lot of looks and comments from people about how brave we were to do it with kids. Jeff and I have always tried to stay active even with kids and I hope that someday our kids love the adventure as much as we do.
In the picture above you can see the trail across the lava lake, it is a little bit lighter than the other lava.



Kaylee and Taylor showing off their muscles.


Normally I don't like to post pictures of my butt, especially in saggy pregnancy pants, but Taylor reminded me of a little monkey curled up on my back.
We didn't see any red flowing lava at the volcano rim, just lots of hot spots with lots of smoke.

Hawaii and the beach

On our trip we spent a lot of time at the beach! So here are the pictures from the beach. This first one is the statue at the Mauna Kea resort that we passed on our way to and from the parking lot. The kids loved to stop and see the flowers that people would place in its hands.



Taylor would occassionally freak out with the waves. I would never know when she would get scared. She would just take off running up to the chairs. It was really fun to try and chase her down across the hot sand before she could make it all the way. This time she stopped in a big hole and cried it out.
Ryan had a little spring break friend that got to come with us to Hawaii. It was an assignment to take a picture with it to take back to school to show his class. You will see him pop up occassionally throughout our trip.


The kids loved building sand castles. We spent hours out on the sand with them. For some reason they really liked it when we were active participants. They didn't love playing alone, so much for relaxing in the beach chairs. (That is another trip without kids right?)




I loved this expression!

We've Arrived

These posts are going to be extra fun for me to post because our weather here is terrible. So I will live in the past and remember all the sunshine that we got to enjoy. I am also going to draw it out and split up the posts. Here is the first morning with the kids out on the back porch. We spent almost every meal out there and loved looking out at the ocean and spotting whales. it was amazing.
Ryan and I went for a walk and brought back these pretty flowers for the girls.
You can see the whale if you know what it is. Look at the little white dot in the middle, yes that is a whale.
Mealtime! We had french toast on Hawaiian sweet bread and POG to drink. It was our favorite.