Thursday, July 26, 2007

Hawaii Baby!

Okay Okay Okay, so I know it has been pretty much forever since I last wrote, but in my defense, a TON of things have happened since then, and it's taken forever to write them all!

My Grandparents had their 50th wedding anniversary. We went up to New Mexico the last weekend in June to celebrate. It was a blast seeing everyone! Everyone except one family on my dad's side was there, so it was a lot of fun.

Amy & Stacy, my sisters, came home from the reunion with us and celebrated the 4th of July here. Bart's brother and his roommate also came. It was a lot of fun. We got some fire works and set them off on our street. Addison loved it. After that Bart was gone for a weekend in Virginia for the NAEA board meeting. Then the weekend after that we headed off to California. From there we left for Hawaii with my family. It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much fun!!!
We flew in on a Sunday to the Island of Kauai. The first full day we were there we just sort of hung around a chilled. Bart caught his token vacation creature. This vacation it was a crab.

That night we went to a Luau. It was a lot of fun. Some of my sisters went on stage to learn how to Hula, and Bart, my brother, and my brother in law wend up to learn how do the poi balls. It was a lot of fun. Addison loved the luau. She was memorized by all the pretty colors.
The second day we took a boat ride to the Napali Coast. It was beautiful. We had a ton of fun. There were these trampoline type things at the front of the boat that we could sit on. On the way home we were going over waves so fast it threw everyone up off the trampoline. It was a BLAST!!! And Bart had quite the hairdo after words.


Day three was Bart's birthday. Last Christmas my mom sent us a book about Kauai and told us to go through it and see if there was anything we really wanted to do. The only thing Bart really wanted to do was a hike along the Napali coast. So that's what we did for his birthday. He originally wanted to do a huge overnight hike, but he decided a smaller 8 mile hike would work. It was AWESOME! We hiked two miles along the Napali Coast to a beach, then two miles inland to a 300 foot waterfall! It was BEAUTIFUL!!! It was a hard hike though. It was really wet, so we kept slipping on mud. On our way back we ran out of water, and were VERY ready to be home. Overall it was a lot of fun though. :o)

Day four we went on a mud-buggy tour. That was a blast! We got SOOOOOOO muddy! We went to a few waterfalls, but after our 300 foot one, they weren't very impressive. :o) Somehow our tour guide managed to not get muddy though, so we snuck up on him afterwards and took care of that. :o)

Day five we got to go on a really cool adventure. We started out kayaking, then we hiked to a zip line and did that, then we went to this pool with a HUGE rope swing that you could jump off of into the water! It was a total blast! All the other excursions we had left Addison at the hotel with my mom, but this one they got to come on. I wasn't sure how Addison would like the kayaking, but after the initial dislike of her life vest, she did pretty well. I set her on my lap, and held the paddle in front of her and paddled. It was a great adventure.




My mom took Addison swimming every day. She really liked that.

Overall it was a great vacation! It has been very hard to come back to reality, but I think I've finally gotten back into the swing of things.

Bart is starting school again on Wednesday. The teachers need to be there a week before the students have to come. I'm going to miss having him at home. There are definitely some advantages to having the summers off.