Hawaii Vacation - Day 1

In celebration of our 10-year anniversary this past year, Josh and I decided to take a vacation to Hawaii.  Josh used to live there, and he's been wanting to go back forever, so we finally made it happen!  After the kids got out on the last day of school, we headed down to St. George to Josh's parents house.  They were kind enough to watch all of the boys while we went.  I had never been away from any of the kids for longer than a couple of days, so I was a little nervous to leave them, especially little Quinn!  We spent the night, and the next day Josh's dad drove us to the airport in Las Vegas.  We flew out, had a layover in San Francisco, and arrived in Honolulu that night around 10:00pm.  Hawaii is four hours behind Utah time, so it was feeling really late to us!  We picked up our rental car and headed to our hotel.  We stayed in Waikiki, mainly because it was the cheapest hotel we could find.  The hotel ended up being really nice.  The only bad part was the $18/night parking fee.  Yikes!  One neat thing about the hotel was that all of the shampoos, lotions, etc. were pineapple and papaya scented.  Kind of a neat touch! :)

The next morning we walked to a nearby cafe for breakfast.  They had coconut syrup for the pancakes that was SO good!  I love anything coconut and vowed I would come home and figure out how to make it. :)   Josh had tropical muesli and eggs with corned beef hash topped with fried bananas.  It was fun having breakfast with a tropical twist. :) After breakfast we had fun seeing all the neat flowers and birds as we walked back to our hotel.

The hibiscus flowers were so pretty.

These lilly-pads were really cool.  I don't think I had ever seen real lilly-pads with flowers on them before!

The trees were so cool there!  

After we got back, we got the car and headed out to find a farmers' market.  The one we were originally looking for was supposed to be at an elementary school, but when we got there, it wasn't there that day for some reason.  I took a picture of the elementary school because it was neat to see how different their schools are over there.  Each classroom opens to the outdoors rather than being all indoors like they are here.

After some research and asking around we finally found a farmer's market that was going on.  We bought tons of fresh fruit so that we could use it as part of our breakfasts throughout the week.  We got fresh papayas, mangos, apple bananas, and a giant avocado!  While we were there we got some lunch from a local vendor.  We got laualau (pork wrapped in taro leaves - SO good!) and kalua pork.

Our big stack of fresh tropical fruit.

The papayas were my favorite! Yum!  I wish I could have brought some home.

We also stopped by a gas station at one point and Josh got us some Spam Musubis to try.  He used to eat them when he lived here.  They are pretty much a slice of Spam topping a rectangle of rice and wrapped in nori.  Sort of like a big Spam sushi.  They were actually really good!  They sell them all over the place over there.

Afterwards we found a grocery store and stocked up on foods that we could eat for breakfast so we didn't have to go out for breakfast anymore while we were there to save money.  After we got home, we decided to take a walk down to the beach.  Our hotel was within walking distance to Waikiki beach.

Standing by some bamboo trees at a nearby park.

After the beach, we headed back to town to eat dinner.  We decided to try a restaurant called Cheeseburger Waikiki, mainly because it was close to our hotel.  It ended up being really good.  I had some amazing coconut shrimp that came with sweet potato fries.  Josh had Kalua Pork nachos.

Birthday, Haircut, and End of School

We celebrated Josh's birthday on May 18th.  A day or two before that, Josh got stung by one of our new bees and the day of his birthday he woke up with a very swollen eye!  So he had some nice birthday pictures - LOL!

For Josh's birthday dinner we had his traditional Teriyaki chicken with brown rice, veggies, and pretzel Jell-o salad.  For his birthday cake I made him a peanut butter chocolate pie.  It looked nice and pretty....

 ... until it met the giant fireball.... er.... candles! After that it was a little melty. :)

Quinn got his first haircut!  It was starting to turn in the typical one-year-old mullet, and since the rest of us were going in for haircuts, we decided to go ahead and get his cut too.  It turned out really cute!

Before

After:

The school year finished up well for all of the boys!  They all did amazingly on their report cards and they all loved their teachers this year.  We will especially miss Bryce's Kindergarten teacher.  Bryce was doing so well, that he will be moving on to a different school this year (same town) and have a different teacher for first grade.  We met with her, and she seems like she will be great and the new class will be a good fit for Bryce.  Bryce's class ended the year with a water party.  When he got home that day, I asked him what he did at his water party.  He said, "I got wet."  Haha

Isaac's whole grade put on a really neat program full of fun songs.  He also got to do a business.  He and his friend sold cotton candy (his friend had a cotton candy maker) and other candies.  They had a Hawaii day where they learned about Hawaii and had fun activities.  We will miss Isaac's teacher as she will be taking on a different job next year.  

Parker's had a fun last week too.  They had a garage sale where they could bring things from home to sell for "money" they had been earning in class.  They also had a teddy bear day one of the days.

This year we gave the teachers a little thank you gift and also gave a little gift to Bryce's bus driver and bus aide.  For those two I made some little bus chocolates and packaged them up cute.

For all of the boys' teachers, we made little Chinese take out boxes with chocolates and paper fortune cookies.  The fortunes said "I was fortunate to have you as my teacher this year..." Or something like that. :)

Mother's Day

After church on Mother's Day, we put together the makings for shrimp tacos, and headed up the canyon for a picnic.  Shrimp tacos are kind of a funny choice for a picnic, but they sure were yummy!  We found the perfect spot for our picnic that was a secluded and right up next to the red cliffs.  The kids had so much fun climbing up the little hill to the rocks to play.

Quinn had fun playing in the sand.

There was a neat looking arch right next to where we were picnic'ing.

All of the kids playing in the sand together.  We really need to get a sandbox at our house!

Me with all of my boys.

Beginning of May

Quinn has sure gained a fascination for animals lately!  He just loves to sit and watch our chickens. He loves the kitty too.  

In cub scouts, Isaac participated in the Raingutter Regatta.  This is the boat he made.

They had races where they blew their boat to the finish line.  Here is one of Isaac's races.

If you didn't win your race, you had to walk the plank. :)

We had some fresh strawberries, so the kids requested strawberry shortcake.  Quinn thought that was some pretty good stuff!

Quinn was playing in the grass one morning while Josh and I did some gardening.  It was getting pretty sunny, so I put Josh's hat on his head so it didn't get burned (he's pretty bald on top haha).  I had to sneak it on because if he realized it was there he would take it right off. :)

Honeybees!

The beginning of May we got a beehive with honeybees!  We've been wanting to get bees for years, and this year we decided to go through with it.  We kind of got it as Josh's birthday present this year.  We started out with what they call a nuc.  It's basically a small hive.  Once the bees completely fill that one, we can get another box to put on top of that, and so on until there is enough honey for the bees to use them self and extra for us to have.  We can't wait until we can have some of our own honey!

Josh inspecting the hive all decked out in his beekeeping garb.

This is one of the trays in the hive.  You can see how the bees have begun to make the honeycomb:

The white part at the top is the part of the honeycomb they have already filled with honey:

See how these are a darker color?  This is the brood section.  It has bee eggs rather than honey:

Josh in his beekeeping clothes.  Eventually will get another set for me. :)  

Fun in April

One day I looked out my window and saw two little black ninjas running around. :)

For a fun project one day, Josh and I made a big water bag for the kids to play on.  We duct taped two big pieces of heavy plastic together and filled them with water.  The kids had lots of fun playing on it, especially Isaac and Parker.  Quinn wasn't too sure about it at first, but then decided it was pretty cool. :)

Quinn sure loves our kitty Whitney!  We have some little windows by out back door that are low enough for Quinn to stand at and look through.  He loves to stand there and look at the kitty through the window. :)

One day the kids had hot dogs and used regular bread instead of buns.  They got some toothpicks and made them into butterflies. 

Quinn wearing Daddy's hat.

We went down to visit my mom and dad and also to go see my sister's new baby, Bentlee.

It was a nice weekend.  The kids had fun playing in Grandma's sandbox.

Quinn got to sit on the horse.  He was crying, but not because he was scared - because I wasn't holding him.  Gotta love that age.  Silly boy. :)