hawaii…happy anniversary

my parents decided to take us all over to hawaii to celebrate their 40th anniversary.  we thought it would only be fair if we threw them a little anniversary/luau/party in appreciation:)  it also happened to be little emmy’s first birthday, so we celebrated that as well.  we reserved the pool for an evening and had some swimming, dinner, cake, and some presents. 

jess and emmy

grandma showing us the praying mantis she found on the camera

 

brian and leilani

  

 

if we walked down past the pool in the evening, we found these little gecko’s all over the place.  they are super fast, especially when carson kept trying to touch them.  he claims he did get to feel one of them.

emmy got a few birthday presents, this stuffed animal was from brian and leilani, and she loved to snuggle it.

i don’t know what is going on between these two, but it makes me giggle every time i look at the picture.

grandpa and grandma opening presents.  some of the grandchildren made scrapbook pages about some of the favorite memories they have with grandpa and grandma.

 

 

the adults finally getting to eat after the little ones headed back to swim. 

 

shelly and emmy

leilani and emmy

   

the birthday girl snuggling her grandpa

 

   

meghan learned how to play somewhere over the rainbow (which was one of grandpa lyle’s favorite hawaiian songs) on the ukulele as her gift to grandma and grandpa.   rachel helped her sing and it was such a neat way to remember grandma glenna and grandpa lyle.  i thought of them so much during our trip, everywhere we went, i had a memory of being there before with them.  it was truly a bittersweet experience, such great memories of them, but it made me miss them so much.

hawaii…big beach

after spending a few days at the mellow beach that we could just walk to, we decided we were ready for a little more surf.  the small waves at kamoale 2 were perfect for the kids, but we thought it would be fun for the adults to play a bit as well.  i have great memories of spending all day at big beach body surfing with my brother and sisters when i was a teenager, but the waves certainly take a bit of getting used to.  some of them come in with a vengeance.

morgan, cooper and aaron playing in the sand

some of the braver ones in my family. grandma went right out and took a few grandkids in life jackets.  they loved it, but it was a little scary as a mom to see your child out there.  i think everyone in my family has a story of getting stuck in a wave here, we call it getting stuck in the washing machine.  you get rather tossed about.

coop and grandma looking for whales

or maybe he is looking for quack quacks.

the cousin’s covering uncle brian in sand

coop and aaron

i had to take a picture of all the sand that was in aaron’s hair after he got taken out by a big beach wave.

 

   

unfortunately this picture is pretty sad.  shae and adam were out in the water with boogie boards, when a huge wave hit.  they tried to jump on the boards and ride it, but shae ended up getting slammed into the sand and hurting his neck pretty badly.  we are so grateful it wasn’t worse, but it was certainly a bummer to get hurt a few days into his trip to hawaii.  he certainly had to take it easy and not do many activities afterwords:(

the girls making some art in the sand.  they had to try really hard to keep coop away.  all he wanted to do was run through it and destroy everything.

hawaii…mushroom rock

on sunday we decided to go for a drive around the west side of maui.   i loved that you could see so many different climates and scenery in an afternoon drive.  we drove past the dry side of the island first, then we started into the wetter side..  we went for a walk at a place called mushroom rock.  it is a little walk from the road, but the view was amazing.  we saw a whale and quite a few sea turtles right close to the shore.

 

all of us watching the sea turtles

megs

adam and emmy

grandpa, meghan, morgan, and rachel on mushroom rock

 

me and coop

   

love this girl and that crazy hair

a little whale watching

 

the kiddos looking in the tide pools

the drive home was about 15 miles of one way roads and bridges.  it was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on.  this is a picture of some of the road and a tiny hawaiin village.

our train of rental cars, this picture is of the road after it has widened up for a while.  we didn’t stop and get many pictures, because we wanted to hurry and try not to run into any cars coming the other way.  in a lot of places, you could only fit one car, so if you ran into another car, someone had to back up.  we only ran into a few cars, and there was always a pull-out close by.

 

the only damper on our day is that poor carson was pretty sick.  we drugged him up for the walk, but once we were driving home he started feeling lousy again.  luckily he fell asleep for most of the drive.