6/30/2009

Pictures!

I finally, finally waded through the thousand+ pictures that Dinah and I took during her trip and narrowed it down to just over a hundred photos for a picasa album. It's a big one, but it was such a fun visit with them that we had to take a ton of pictures!

So here's the photojournal of our two week fun together:

http://picasaweb.google.com/amykerkemeyer/DinahSHawaiiVisit#

Enjoy!

6/29/2009

School Days (in July!?)

Now that our visitors have gone home to leave us to our boring routines again (anyone else want to come visit?) our thoughts have turned to school. I know, school in July is crazy by mainland schedules. But here they have a week off for fall break, a very long Christmas break (3 weeks), and then another week in the spring. I guess that must all add up to a short summer break (about 2 months total). School starts here July 30.

So it's not even July yet and we've been out doing our school shopping. Never having had a kid in school before, I never realized how insane the school shopping lists are that the schools send home. They are very specific as to what they want and the list is long. So we've hunted 3 stores to find what we need, I think it is a bit overboard. Wouldn't it be easier for the school to buy this stuff in bulk and then have me write a check? Yeah, I know, trust a school district to find the cheapest, easiest option? I guess that just wouldn't happen...

Adam starts a Kindergarten readiness program next week so he will be in school a little earlier than the rest. I thought it wouldn't hurt to do it since he hasn't been in preschool and most kids here have been in a school setting before. It's only 3 hours a day and he'll go 4 days a week since he already has swim lessons on Mondays. I hope it will ease a few of his fears before he starts 'real' Kindergarten.

I discovered yesterday too that Adam has two very wiggly teeth. His first baby teeth to go! I was looking at him and his teeth were crooked but he always had very straight teeth before. I didn't think teeth just suddenly went crooked, but they do when they're wiggling and twisting around! I gave them a push and they leaned way over. So soon he'll have a cute toothless smile :) He's worried he'll lose them when they fall out and the tooth fairy won't come. We read a book from the series 'Toot and Puddle' and a character loses a tooth and then they have to go look for it. So hopefully we won't be on a tooth hunt once it falls out!

Well next on my agenda is to finally finish organizing my recent pictures so I can post a link to them here. Off to Picasa...



6/24/2009

Another beautiful day in Hawaii

As I was driving to my tennis lessons this evening, I was blown away at how beautiful the rainbows were on my drive. The sun was behind me and I was driving towards the rain. As I almost reached where it was raining, the rainbows were so intense and close by that I could actually see the rainbow in front of the palm trees beside the road. I was ready to pull over and look for some leprechauns...

I haven't updated in a while! I've had one of my best friends from St. Louis visiting for the last couple weeks and she and her kids just left for home this afternoon. I don't know what we're going to do with ourselves tomorrow, we'll be lonely! But I have something scheduled each morning this week, so at least we won't be sitting around the house bored. I'll post some pictures of our whirlwind tour of the island with friends soon, but it may take me a couple of days just to sort through the pictures. Between the two of us we took about 1000 pictures in two weeks! It truly was fun to be a tourist again, we hadn't hit the popular sites in a while.

6/14/2009

Tourists in our own town again

Our dear friends from St. Louis have been visiting and so we've been touring the town. It's been great fun and all the kids have been having a good time. I have taken so many pictures I haven't even sat down to go through them all, but I'll post a link when I get a chance.

We've gone to the Ko'Olina beach, the halona blow hole, Pali overlook, Arizona memorial, Dole plantation, hiked Diamond head and went to Sea Life Park. Whew....

6/05/2009

Picnic


Until today, it has been just plain hot and sticky the past few days. No trade winds to cool us off... The water is the place to be when it's like that, so we've spent a lot of time with sprinklers, in the pool, and at the beach. Here's Adam and Cole having a little picnic lunch at Ko'Olina. Them with their sandy feet and beach towels with their PB&J. I just love the pampered resort feel when we go there, all the swaying coconut palms and the golf course trimmed lawns... It really is paradise!