Our Blog
April 2018
The first day of April was also Easter. The kids were waiting to go find their Easter baskets.
General Conference activities!
And this has to be one of the most common Easter activities: eat the head off a chocolate bunny! (You thought I was going to say Easter egg hunt…)
We did that too!
My sweet Cason has had to take this nast medicine for a year and a half now. As much as he hates it, he has gotten better at it!
Corbin “flossing” while he is in the outfield!
For Cub Scouts, they showed the boys the proper way to burn a flag when it is torn or tattered.
Corbin missed Cub Scouts for his game. Look at that cool guy!
I washed and folded some of the boys old baby clothes to pass on to Holly for Nate and it had me reminiscing about my small baby boys! I could almost feel those chunky babies in my arms wearing these exact clothes.
I got to drive on a field trip for Corbin’s class.
Kinsley drew this picture and wrote this all by herself! I loved it because it shows how excited we all are for upcoming trip!
My kids don’t love homework (who does?) but I have to give them credit, especially Corbin, for just coming home and getting it done. Even when it takes longer because of a 3 page book report, project and presentation he has to complete. Last year I had to sit with him more to encourage the work on reports. This time, I gave him ideas of timing and he just worked on it himself and got it done 2 days before it was due!! I’m so proud of this kid!
Aisling had her baby shower and I was so glad I got to celebrate with her!
Sleepy girl on the way home!
But then we went to Great America because our nephew was here for school for a band concert! We got to see him for a minute before he was off to the awards!
The next day was a Sunday and I felt we all needed to get out of the house after church. My body, mind and spirit had been craving some nature and I thought it would be good for us to go on a little hike!
We went to our friends house for dinner and thought this it was cute when the 4 boys were begging Connor to go out and play baseball with them.
Kinsley came home from school with a stowaway in her lunch box. She seriously brought a rollie pollie home from school.
Corbin freaked me out with his tortilla face!
At Cason’s game when Nate was getting ready to leave, Kinsley gave him a hug and then he just kept hugging her! It was so cute!
Playing with Nate!!
And then……HAWAII!!!!!!
When we got back from Hawaii, i noticed these flowers in our backyard had bloomed! I love spring!!
The kids spring pictures!
We got a selfie walking home!
I’m tired of being the mom that is just a drill sergeant barking orders to be on time for school in the morning and then to get homework done, eat a super early dinner to be on time for the various baseball games or practices or scouts or whatever it is. So this one day after school, I took the kids to get ice cream and then walk around the pond at our local community center. I think it was a nice break up of the monotony of the week and definitely a needed high after our awesome trip!
I loved this project Kinsley brought home from class one day!! Everything about it is just so cute!
I told Cason to grab a few grapes for dinner and this was his idea of a few. This kid LOVES grapes!
What a great month!!
Hawaii 2018
The kids had been asking for years if we would take them to Hawaii, so we decided that this would be the year. The kids spring break fell late enought that we found good deals so it worked out great!
Heading to security!
On the plane!
We got our car rental and headed to the North Shore! The mountains were green and wet and beautiful!
We stopped for lunch and there was beauty right behind us!
Kinsley started complaining of not feeling well while we were driving and I was concerned she might be feeling sick and then she fell asleep!
We got to the hotel and Kinsley still was cranky and lethargic and my dreams of a nice relaxing vacation were starting to disappear. I thought we would be nursing a sick girl most of the vacation.
While we waited for our room to be ready, we headed to the hammocks that were all out front of our room.
Connor snuggled Kinsley on one as well!
And then maybe it was the nice Hawaii air, but she started to perk up and get happy and was great the rest of the vacation!! I found the flower just sitting on the ground and she loved it being in her hair!
And of course, being silly putting it on Connor!
We went down to the beach to check out the water!! Kinsley was in heaven.
Climbing some trees!!
We got our first leis.
More beach exploring!
Then we needed to check out the pool!
I did not got in the water. The weather when we first got there was not great. I guess it had poured rain the night before we got there and a lot of houses were severely damaged. So while it wasn’t freezing, it definitely did not feel warm out and the pools and water were cold.
That night for dinner we went to a popular shrimp food truck and got some shrimp, barbequed corn on the cob, and some shaved ice.
Then we all went to bed early since it felt so late for us!
Even though church started at 8am the next morning, we were all up early and ready in plenty of time to lounge around lazily!
Or to do some hula!
Our room!
Sacrament meeting was right next to the temple, so we walked over to the temple!
We walked behind the temple at the suggestion of my mom and found this awesome tree she described!!
We then headed to a family friend of mine growing up and stopped for lunch on the way! This dock was just down the stairs from our table! Supposedly this water is usually a crystal clear blue but since the rains that had happened it was muddy and murky. It was still beautiful to us though!
Another napping Kinsley!
Dinner at the hotel!
I thougt it was so funny that Kinsley had completely unpacked her stuff and helped herself to the drawer space!
We heard about a great bakery near us that had a chocolate coconut pie so we thought we better try it out!
The pie was definitely as delicious as we heard!!
We then drove to the beach to see some turtles! It was a little too early to see them but the kids had fun playing in the waves anyway!
Then we went on a walk to a waterfall. We read that you can swim in the water near the waterfall so we wore our swimsuits but when we got there they had closed the swimming part due to the rains. The walk was through the botanical gardens so it was just beautfiful!
We saw a hen with her chicks. I just noticed that the hen is looking straight at the camera!
And then a peacock!
At the waterfall!!
There was a section of the gardens that had some Hawaiian games. The kids were really getting into the Hawaiian checkers!
Then we stopped for som of the famous shaved ice at Matsumoto’s! I heard that the line can be crazy but maybe because it was so early, our line was like 2 minutes!
Then we headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center! The kids were excited to get their passports stamped to get a prize at the end.
It was a late night but (most) of us made it through!
We woke up and were moving on to our next hotel!! Aulani! We stopped at the Dole Plantation on our way!
Then we made it to Aulani!!
The kids thought it was so cool to have our name on the TV when we got to our room!
Swimsuits on first thing!
We checked out the pool then the beach!!
On our way back to our room we saw Moana!
We didn’t get tickets from the luau at the hotel but we had a view of it from our room every night!
We did a character breakfast the next morning and met Mickey on the way in!
Kinsley was excited to see Minnie!
And then Pluto!
They found the Stitch statue!
Then we had to do some pool time!!
We took the kids to the kids club and they loved it. They never wanted to leave but we did pick them up when we missed them!!
More pool time!!
We went to a nice dinner at the hotel!
The boys loved the robes that were provided!
Hanging out at the pool. This was our normal spot most days! Hot tub to the back, pool and ocean to the front!
Listening to some live music. The woman signing is a friend of our friend that we visisted at the first of our trip!
And I have a million pictures of the end of this waterslide. The kids (and Connor) must have done it a million times while we were there!
That Friday was Connor’s birthday so he got to choose what we did that day. We definitely did some water slides! But then we decided to venture off the resort and head to Pearl Harbor and Waikiki.
At Pearl Harbor, before you get on the boat, you watch a movie telling what happened.
So the boys seemed really affected by the movie and as soon as we got off the boat, understood the solemness of this place. They immdefiately took off their hats on their own and held them over their hearts! I was impressed with their reverance of where we were!
After Pearl Harbor, we took an audio tour of a submarine.
Then we headed to Waikiki to go have dinner at Duke's.
The kids were dying to get in the water!
We took the kids to get some souvenirs at the market acorrs the street.
Our last full day we hung out at the pool and then walked across the street and got some dinner and ice cream.
Connor got some pie to eat in bed!
The next morning was our last few hours before our flight. Corbin was the only one that kept all his Aulani bracelets so he had to go get his last one even though we didnt get in the pool!
Good-bye Hawaii! We hope to get back to visit soon!!