So I am SERIOUSLY delinquent on updating the blog. Life happens. And I don't always have time to blog about it!
Let's see, what has gone on since I last posted... Thanksgiving... we had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with our friends in the neighborhood. It was a great meal and we didn't have to eat turkey for a week straight since we split up the leftovers.
December was the busy month. Barb and Steve came to visit. We had a good time being tourists with them. I think we showed them a good time around the island, and I'm sure we thawed them out a little from their Colorado winter. I have a ton of great pictures, here are some of them:
Pics from Barb & Steve's visit
Then about a week after their visit we left for a vacation on the Big Island of Hawaii. I had a really good time on that trip. We stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa which had fabulous pools and an ocean fed lagoon where you could snorkel with turtles and fish. We took some road trips from the Hilton and spent a couple of days just enjoying the resort. The hotel was so huge that they had a tram and a boat to take from one end of the place to another. So the boys loved it (do you want to take the train or the boat back to the room??).
After a few days on the Kailua-Kona side of the island, we drove around the south end of the island over to the Hilo side. We saw the volcano national park, which was really impressive. I could have spent a few days hiking there if we didn't have a couple of small kids with us :) But we had a good time exploring what we could that was not too far from the road. We drove down to see the ocean entry point for the active lava flow. We hiked about 0.75 mi across a lava bed to the edge where we could see the lava entering the ocean (quite a distance away). As the sun set, you could see the orange glow of the lava. After the volcano we spent one night in Hilo and then flew out the next morning. We came back a couple of days before Christmas. Here are the photos from our Big Island vacation..
Big Island photos
For Christmas we were supposed to get together with friends again, but their son came down with strep throat and so we were on our own for Christmas dinner. I went out to try to find a chicken to roast for dinner but ended up with turkey. I picked a small one so we wouldn't have to eat turkey and turkey and turkey. We had a nice day at home.
We had a typical New Year's at our house. I went to bed early :) Then I got up to watch the neighborhood fireworks at midnight. It wasn't as bad as last year, it was breezy so the smoke didn't build up so much. I happened to find this video on YouTube of a New Year's video in Kunia (the neighborhood we live in) from this year. Skip to about 2:45 into the video to see what folks here do for New Year's....
Click here and skip ahead to 2:45min
You can see the 10ft strings of firecrackers they set off and the huge aerials that people light off. Remember these are all RESIDENTS lighting these off. And the aerials can be seen in every direction... People have money to burn, literally!!
Well Happy New Year everyone and I'll try to update the blog a little more frequently...
