Oh Summer

It is 99 degrees out and we don't have air conditioning in our house.
Sick.
I keep finding excuses to open the freezer and get a blast of the motherload of amazing coming outta that thing. I think I'm going to get a big ol' honking chest freezer, have Craig mount it to our ceiling in our bedroom in lieu of the fan, hook it up, and just leave it open, pouring all it's goodness over us as we sleep. Ahh....I feel a little better just thinking about it.
Aside from this disgusting weather (which is not helping the High Park fire any, no rain in sight for the last week and none to come this week either), the sun has been our friend now and again. Since I got back from Hawaii, we've been out and about enjoying all the things that three kids and a stay at home can enjoy. LIKE:
Catnapping

 Getting our hair cut

 Hanging out at the town barbeque/concert in the park and following Craig around while he works there for his practicum.

 Also facepaint. A MUST.

 Praying for the fire to be contained. :-(

 Getting family pictures taken!! Thank you Candie Giesey, she took a load of wonderful shots for us, here are a couple that I edited. Check out her work HERE. Love her to death.

Reorganizing. 

 And celebrating.

 Making use of old gifts.

 Goofing off. A MUST.

 Learning how to make a BUDDY BURNER at the relief society activity in my backyard. AMAZING. Ask me how to make them, they are really great for fun family activities and really useful in case of an emergency.

 Going to the library a lot. The Denver Zoo came and the kids got to see some of their animals and participate in the activities.

 

Chloe: MOM. I don't want to touch the animals. 

 

 Going as a family to the temple with our primary. A very sweet and fun experience.

 

 Stopping at Krispy Kreams on the way home for a pre-Father's Day treat.

 Getting up early and making caramel apple french toast with bacon and a donut for Daddy on Father's Day.

Just in case anyone didn't already know who we're dealing with here. Greatest Dad EVER. And yes he wore that to church.

In the meantime, melting away in the sauna otherwise known as my living room. LUCKILY we are headed out to Grandma's house in Denver this evening and will hopefully get to dip in the pool to cool off. Maybe by then a nice breeze will come and save our house from opening the portal to the fiery furnaces of the underworld by the time we get back...

Days ten, eleven, and twelve, home again home again...

Okay, I'm home now.

I need to blog the last couple of days before I forget what we did.
SOOOO, Saturday we decided to go visit Waimea Canyon, otherwise known as the grand canyon of Hawaii. We saw some of it from the helicopter, but I'm not gonna lie, I probably wasn't as appreciative of it as I would have liked to be given the "bag of shame", as it has come to be known, that accompanied my helicopter experience (P.S., did I tell you how when we got out of the helicopter I had to bring said bag all the way across the parking lot in full view of the next group waiting to get loaded on the helicopter to put it in the dumpster? I had a small consolation in seeing many other bags of shame in the dumpster as I dropped it off, guess I wasn't the only one who wasn't forewarned....). Anyway, Waimea Canyon was breathtaking. Rose really wanted to do like another 8 mile hike, and that probably would have been awesome, but my body was tired and when Addison voiced the same opinion I had to side with him to appease my aches and pains. We were going to find a shorter one, but I guess no one really looked to see where the trailhead was, and we were running out of gas when we drove up there, so we just went to the lookout point and then came back. Loved the views, though, definitely worth the trip.

 Hee hee...

 Rockstar Addison!

Rose was less sure of her inner rockstar, but she gave it her best shot. 

We came home and wandered the stores at Poi'pu beach resort, then Rose and I cooked up a bunch of vegetables and rice for dinner, then watched the Dailai Lama on CNN until we fell asleep. 

The next day was Sunday! Best day of the week. My mom and I got up early and went to church nearby. The ward we went to on the south side was much bigger than the branch in Hanalei, and the people were very friendly. I'm still amazed at the faith of the people in our church all over the world. It was like I was home. Afterwards we came home and Addison and Rose were tanning on the back deck. We went out as it was getting later and walked to Poi'pu beach at this lookout point to watch the sunset. I decided not to bring my camera so I could just enjoy it, but I couldn't help but snap a few with my iphone while we were there. It was one of those blazing life changingly incredible sunsets and I again sat and marveled, as I did over the whole trip, how beautiful this world is that God has made for us.

Monday was our last day in Hawaii- we spent the morning packing and getting ready to leave the condo we were staying in, then loaded up the car and went to the McBryde and Allerton Botanical Gardens. We heard both were beautiful, but the McBryde gardens had a self-guided tour, which we were more interested, and it was $15 a person instead of $45 a person. We opted for McBryde half-heartedly, mostly because of the cost, but then later on the tram back to the visitor's center the tram driver informed us as we drove by Allerton Gardens that it was on National Geographic's top ten places to visit in the world. Bam. Regret. Oh well, the McBryde Gardens were beautiful too and it was a nice relaxing way to end our trip in Hawaii. 

After the gardens we drove out to Lihue where the airport was and dropped of the rental car and headed to the airport. We were a few hours early, so we headed over to Starbucks to plug in our phones to charge for the overnight flight back to the mainland and watch the helicopter ride video. It was far less "shameful" watching it from the DVD than it was in the actual helicopter. I didn't watch the whole thing, I'll have to watch the rest later- my mom and I went and used one of those massage chairs in the lounge while listening to some live Hawaiin music in the lobby.
Our hearts were a little heavy as we left, and maybe a little heavier when we got home, but I can say that I was very excited to be reunited with my family again. Odell didn't forget who I was (hooray!!), I feel like Craig and I are far more appreciative of each other this week after a two week separation, and the kids are back to climbing all over me and enjoying the outside summer weather! 

It was a much needed reunion with my Mom and brother and sister over the whole trip. It truly is a paradise out there, people don't just say that, and I'm grateful that I was able to experience. Next time I go out there it will not be without my eternal companion and kids by my side, all I could think about the whole time was how much they would enjoy it there. When their older, I think. And we aren't broke. :-)
Aloha Hawaii!!!

Days six, seven, eight, and nine!

Just as a warning, I am not adding more pictures to this blog, but HAVE added them to facebook, so if you are friends with me you can go check them out there! It's a lot easier for me to gather and edit photos at home, which I will do then, but for now it is late and I'm tired and don't have the energy to do it on my mom's computer. :-)
Early Tuesday morning my mom and I got up and drove to the airport in Lihue for a quick night's stay on Oahu. My mom has a good friend she has been in contact with for a couple of years who is interested in some religious text she has been studying, but has yet to meet her. They had arranged for a rendevous on this trip and I decided to come along for the ride so I could visit the Lai'e temple with them. When we got to Honolulu, we drove up to Ruth's house to pick her up. We visited with her in her modest apartment where we ate yummy cooked vegetables in a room surrounded with her incredible art. She is also a painter and has some amazing paintings of her late husband and other Hawaiin flowers and scenes- she is really very talented. Then we packed up our things and had a pleasant drive to the other side of the island to Lai'e- which means "gathering place". Did you know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints bought over I think 600 acres of land (maybe less than that, I can't remember) in the 1800's to accommodate the over 5,000 members that had come into the church in a few short years after missionaries were sent to Hawaii? They paid $14,000 for the land. Can you imagine how much that land would be worth now? Incredible. When we got to Lai'e, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center first for some wonderful presentations, DELICIOUS dinner, and breath-taking show into the evening. Ruth's son lives in Lai'e and had arranged for us to stay at their home for the night. Her son was instrumental in helping to construct the rededication of the Lai'e temple (there is a picture of him and his wife in the rededication book they made for the temple). They were so kind to us and very accommodating, we felt like one of the family. The next morning we went to a beautiful session at the temple- seriously, that made my whole trip. I felt so calm and at peace there and it reaffirmed the necessity we have for temples on this earth!! And I also felt some strong answers to concerns I'd been having and it was just a beautiful session. Afterwards my Mom and Ruth visited in the temple while I went out and skyped with my kids and took pictures of the temple. Then we all piled back into the car and grabbed some lunch at the snackbar at BYU Hawaii, then came back and went through the visitor's center at the temple again, before heading back to Honolulu to drop Ruth off. On the way home we stopped at a beautiful Buddhist temple up in the hills to take pictures and walk around. When we got back to the airport we were exHAUSTED! Good night sleep then for sure.
The next morning we had to pack up our things and move to the south side of the island, where we are going to stay until we leave on Monday night. We stopped in Lihue for a helicopter tour of the island. There were fantastic views and certainly a thrilling ride....maybe a little too thrilling. If I had thought for a moment that it would have been as tipsy topsy turvey as it was up there I would have taken some motion sickness pills beforehand, but I don't get airsick so somehow I didn't think I would get helicopter sick. Well I did. Let's just say it's a really good thing they put barf bags on the helicopters, they came in handy. But even with the sickness, it was worth the trip, the views were incredible!! We toured the whole island and saw some of the most beautiful waterfalls I've ever seen in my life, as well as a quick view of Kalalau beach where Addison and Rose stayed on their hike. After the helicopter trip we headed to Poipu where we found the condo we are staying in. A lot more tourists where we are...not like the northside at all, but it is beautiful here too. When we got to the condo, I skyped with Craig on my phone for a bit and realized I was seeing some weird things in my eyes. I used to get really bad migraines when I was a teenager, but I had like two total (I remember them both they were such a terrible experience) and the last one I had I was maybe 13 or 14. Well I reckognized the blurriness and spots as soon as I saw them and thought I better go lie down for a while. Within a half an hour I had a full blown migraine. I was nauseated extremely so and couldn't really down any water I felt so awful, even though I knew that was probably why I was having the migraine. I layed still in my bed and tried not to think about how the room felt like it was spinning with a pillow over my eyes. Eventually the nausea subsided enough that I was able to drink some more water and take an advil and that helped and it only lasted all of about 4 hours, which could have been much worse. Thank goodness it wasn't, it was awful.
This morning we woke up early and I was feeling much better and went for a kayak ride/hike up to a beautiful waterfall that is only accessible by kayak and hike. It was calming, slow, and beautiful. Our tour guide was very animated and friendly and even made me a bracelet with a chicken feather in it on the trail. We ate lunch at the falls, then hiked back and kayaked home. We checked out the geyser nearby (really just waves hitting rocks that have a big hole in it where it shot out), then walked to the beach for a bit. Then we drove 30 minutes to the most amazing Thai food restaurant we've ever been to that our tour guide had recommended. We were going to go to an art show nearby, but after a long day we were pretty much unanimously pooped and came home.
I am now ready to crash.
Goodnight!!
PS- 4 more days until I get to see my kids and hubby again!!!

Day 4 and 5

 Ahhhhh...
Day four was a must needed rest. Addison and Rose headed off to their high adventure hike on the treacherous 11 mile Kalalau trail where they were going to spend the night on Kalalau beach. My mom and I headed to the Hanalei branch for church and had a very spritually uplifting meeting and spiritually uplifting day.
The next day instead of waiting around and worrying to make sure that they got home safe, we decided to do our own hike up to Hanakapi'ai falls- 8 miles round trip and beautiful! Stopped to explore Hanakapi'ai beach on the way back. The four miles up I had the energy of the universe. Two miles back to the beach I was still doing good, then the last two miles back to Ke'e beach kicked my trash. By then it was mid-day, the sun was blazing on the uphill portion of the trail, and I totally died. Made it down okay, but had to take my time. Then I came home and crashed on my bed for two hours without hardly blinking. The waterfalls were BEAUTIFUL- totally worth the hike, and although we had to cross the stream several times, which made some of the rockier parts more slick, we made it up just fine and enjoyed watching the waterfalls over our lunch. Thanks for packing the lunch Mom, it was great...
PS, I apologize for the picture quality, I made the decision not to bring my camera, even though I regretted it when I was up there. These are all from my iphone. :-)

 Afterwards, Add and Rose got back in one piece and we all showered and went to the Kalypso bar and grill. This was our yummy dessert.

 Battle wounds from the hike. Minimal to what they could have been, considering...well, me. :-)

Hawaii, Days 2 and 3

Oh boy.
This place is just incredible.
It seems like every night so far I've gone to bed thinking there's nothing more I need to see, nothing could be better than what I've already seen, and then the next day comes and goes and it's even better than the day before. I'm so so so so grateful that I am able to take this trip. Who gets to go to Hawaii for a vacation for this long in my station in life? While in many ways I am dying to hold my kids in my arms and to be with my husband and share with them everything I've seen, I also am truly feeling blessed to be here...just wish my family could be here too. Going to look into internships on Kauai for Craig next semester, ha ha.
Yesterday morning we started off tending to our sunburns and lathering up again before going down to the beach, again. This time with the snorkeling gear in tow. For those of you who may have grown up putting on the mask and breathing tube and floated around the local swimming pool watching your little brother swim underneath you and flash you a dorky goggley face, this is not what snorkeling was intended for. Tunnels beach is what snorkeling was intended for. If I had known how many fish were so close to me when I got into the water on the beach, I probably would have freaked out and not gone in. But when you do it with the snorkeling gear, a whole new world opens up. It was AMAZING! I saw all sorts of colorful fish everywhere, big ones and small ones. I was honestly a little nervous that any second a big shark would come sneaking up out of the abyss beyond the drop off and chomp my arm off...but no such thing happened and I actually found myself relaxing and truly swimming with the fish. Really neat. No pictures to document that experience, although I'm going to look into getting a disposable underwater camera next time we run into town. After that I came up on the beach and tried to nap a little, but I was so scared of making my sunburn worse that I packed up and headed to the house. I sat down on the couch for a minute and before I knew it I was out and two hours later I woke up really hungry and feeling much better. Then Rose and Add and I hopped into the car and drove up the road to find some caves that a tour guide of Kauai had mentioned. We found two of the three and have a good idea of where the third one might be, but those were really neat too. The first one was called "Dry Cave", as it was just that, a Dry Cave. The dramatic lit pictures of Add and Rose below are from in there. The second was called "Wet Cave", as it was wet and had a big pool that stretched the length of it. You weren't supposed to swim in it or "linger" in there for too long as there was falling rock, so we just took a few pictures. On the way home we stopped at a rocky stream where some people were swimming and I took more pictures of the stream and lush vegetation and local flowers. We came back home after that and talked to the woman who lives in the apartment below the condo we are staying in, who was out walking her dog. Really friendly woman, she makes hats for the local markets around the area- apparently, though, a couple around here has a dog that came and attacked her dog at the beach recently, and she was really nervous because the owner of said dog had been walking said dog up and down the road by the house the last few nights and she was nervous that he would be by soon, so we continued our visit in the backyard where I met some friendly ants crawling in a line up the wall and got bit by a few too many bugs. Then Rose and I hopped into the car and took a trip down to Ke'e beach where I documented the sunset on my camera. Glorious. Also found a little stream coming out of the jungle that had a small pond pooling up before it emptied into the ocean and fraternized with the local tadpoles and climbed some of the low hanging trees. Rose also posed for some pictures for me and left her sunglasses in the pool by accident, we'll have to go back and find them soon. Then we came home and let Addison cook us some yummy pasta with parmesean chicken and/or veggie burger, and buttered toast on the side. Delish.
This morning my Mom and I got our tickets finalized for a trip we are taking next week to Oahu to visit the temple and Polynesian Cultural Center there, which we will leave for on Tuesday. Then we packed up our stuff and headed to the Hanalei farmer's market where I got a really yummy Acai berry smoothie with granola and bananas for breakfast and picked up some goodies for the kids and hubby while shopping around. Found previously mentioned couple with mean dog selling jewelery there- only reason I recognized them was because one of the owners was apparently a transgendered woman, and after I saw a pitbullish looking dog and examined the two women sitting there, one of them definitely had a more masculine physique. Avoided their shop.  After that we went down to Hanalei Bay, which was just a picture perfect white sand beach from head to toe. We walked over to a covered dock with stretched into the water to find a bunch of people gathering together. Suddenly many of them were paddling to a spot beyond the dock or jumping into the water near a couple who were dressed in colorful shirts and necklaces on a boat. We couldn't hear what was going on, and finally we asked someone next to us watching from the dock, and she turned around and politely said that it was a funeral, they were spreading the ashes. I took a couple of pictures, but then immediately felt bad for intruding. However it was touching to watch as we walked away, the couple in the boat said a few words and then threw the ashes and large flowers into the bay and all the people gathered around in the water and on the dock hooted and hollered and splashed in the water making large waves. Took more pictures at the bay and passed by the house they used in the film "The Descendants", which I have not seen, but apparently was filmed on Kauai. Then we got back in the car and tried to go and find a place called "Queen's Bath" where there are some neat lava rocks with big pools in them for swimming, but it was in an obscure neighborhood and the parking lot for it was teeny tiny. We pulled in behind a man, who could have taken a somewhat differently positioned parking spot if he had wanted to and we could have pulled in next to him, leaving room for other cars to leave if they needed to, but instead he pulled in and parked perpendicularly behind two or three cars. The woman from the car got out and announced they were going to wait for a spot to open up. I tried to squeeze into the spot the other car could have taken, but the guy wouldn't move an inch, so frustrated, we decided to come back later. Then we went to the Princeville market were we picked up a few more groceries and looked at some of the shops there and I skyped with my hubs and my kids and talked with them on my phone where the cell service was good. And ached on the inside for them greatly. After we got home, we ate lunch- Add and Rose went back to Tunnels beach and try as I did to avoid another nap, it came upon me without permission (still getting used to the time difference). After I woke up and Addison and Rose had come home, the three of us went out to eat while my mom stayed home and rested and got some work done for the Oahu trip. We went back into Hanalei and enjoyed some yummy food at a small grill- I had the Blackened Ahi with rice and veggies. I think I could eat that every day of my life and be satisfied. We had to get back for Addison and Rose after that, though, as they had to get packed for their big trip- they are walking the 11 mile Kalalau trail tomorrow to Napali Beach and camping a night on the beach when they get there. My mom is worried sick and I have a mixture of jealousy and relief that I am not going. It's rated a level 9 out of 10 trail, very difficult with narrow paths on cliff edges plus crossing streams with potential flash flooding and very dangerous sections when muddy...but there are gorgeous waterfalls on the way and the Napali coast is supposed to be incredible. I wish with all of my heart that I was in shape enough to go or had experience backpacking at all, but I don't. Maybe someday...
Tomorrow my mom and I will be attending the local ward in Hanalei for chuch and praying our hearts out for Addison and Rose's safe return. And also letting my wicked sunburn on my back have a day of rest as well. Here are a few more pictures in random order, looking forward to going through all these when we get home too.
G'night!