TOO MUCH TO COVER!!!

It has been a HUGE amount of time since I updated the blog and I was feeling guilty for neglecting to keep up with EVERYTHING.

My semester ended with a HUGE bang. ALL the required classes are DONE!
Now it is time to play....literally! I have electives to choose from but I needed a break first.
I decided to take the first month of summer session off and relax. Well, not relax, but take time off for ME!
I DID update the 4th of July event only because it was special and something to celebrate.
So, here is the rest of the stuff I didn't get to before that.

Time covered: May 28- June 30
Reason I didn't blog until now: Too busy to slow down.
So, here is all the fun stuff you missed while we were jettin all over town!
The girls got out of school earlier than last year so we had a little more summer to enjoy here in Hawaii.


Pepere came for his first visit to Oahu just in time for the last day of school. We did the regular routine of walking to school (1 mile one way) and he soon realized that we were going to run him ragged.
The girls were very excited to introduce him to all their teachers. It was a great LAST day.
Since school ended on a MONDAY, we had the rest of the week to go have fun on the island. We decided that Pearl Harbor was the best place to start. Thorin gave him the key points of WHY Pearl Harbor was so important, why we failed at stopping the Japanese planes that day and who the key players were leading up the attack.
She was so proud to be the expert.

We took Pepere out to the memorial and showed him the Arizona in its resting place in the Harbor and history.
It was a beautiful day to explore the island.

Later that week we continued our adventures with a HIKE! We took Pepere to the lighthouse hike. The view is beautiful, it is not too steep and super easy to see other islands on a clear day. In the winter it is the prime place to whale watch. Even though it was too far for Pepere to go to see the lighthouse or the WWII bunkers, we still got some amazing views.
Even though it is beautiful from up there, that is NOT so much the reason it is our favorite . There is this AWESOME burger place on the way back home that made the girls beg to take Pepere there.




We also had a few NEW adventures while he was here. One day I surprised everyone and we drove to the DOLE Plantation. I had heard about the pineapple ice cream and thought it would be a great treat.
We stopped there and after eating pineapple ice cream topped with tons of pineapple chunks, we played around in one of the gardens. Everyone took turns being a pineapple. I think they looked very FRESH!

We ended up at the plantation a couple times during his visit. We also found a cute McDonald's, just check out the seats. We did a few beach adventures too. One to look for sea glass. This is glass that has ended up in the ocean but the water and sand has beat the rough edges out of it and it is fun to look for on the beach. It comes in several colors. Mostly it is clear or brown, but we have found blue, green and pink.

We also went to the TURTLE beach, but the tourists were chasing them and they were too annoyed to come on shore.

Another favorite of the girls was our shaved-ice outing. We got the local shaved ice from a very popular place on the island.

You can get it with ice cream in the bottom. It is really good!

For those of you who have never had shaved ice, it is NOT a snow cone!

This ice is shaved not ground or chopped. It is so fine that it is like fluff. It melts in your mouth like air....so awesome!

We were very sad that Pepere's visit came to an end. We did have one last fun outing. There were these GIANT bugs at the mall and the girls wanted him to see them. We went for lunch and then wandered around reading stats about bugs. These things were HUGE! The bugs would lift up their wings or legs and it was creepy. Pepere almost got eaten but the MANTIS, but the girls saved him! Cannon was so exhausted from all the fun, the next day was spent drooling on the sofa cushions.

After successfully finishing another semester & showing Pepere and the girls around the island to fun treats, I fugured that it was time for me to have a girl's night out. I went to my first Luau with our FRG ladies and several of my best battle buddies. It was really fun and the food was amazing.

It was so cute to watch these young kids perform hula. Some of the polynesian style was very fun to watch, but I kept thinking that I would not want my young girl girating her hips in front of a bunch of strangers....then I realized that they do it anyways,...might as well get paid for it in a family troupe! The fire performer was really cool. The sunset and fire were beautiful to watch.

View Sorenna's video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiSNEmpWWGI

We hope Pepere had fun and that we didn't wear him out too much.