Pirates, Fireworks, and Sand Monsters: Our 4th of July Weekend

Zachary had a fling with the show, "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" on the Disney channel. It is a silly little cartoon about three mini-pirates who are trying to resolve problems that Capt Hook creates--all while following their slogan, "Safety First!" and wearing life jackets. It is one of those shows that sort of makes you want to stub your toe rather than sit through the 20 minutes of politically-correct conflict resolution.

...But Zac loved it. One morning, we created a shoebox for a treasure chest, and created "gold dabloons" for it. For the next two weeks, the most effective discipline method was to threaten removal of a gold dabloon. Fantastic.

Terrified by stories of older-sibling-beating-up-baby, I have only just started leaving Kate in a room unattended with Zachary. No kidding, I took her everywhere, even if I was stepping out of the room for a minute or two.

The very first time I left her was this past weekend. Zac came rushing into the bathroom, saying, "MOM! Kate is Capt Hook!" My only thought was "Oh, no! What did he DO?!!!?" I ran into the living room, and this is what I found:
Besides poor restaurant selection, Kauai is also not famous for fireworks. You could have fooled Zachary. We took the drive out to the military base (which, thanks to a DUI checkpoint, resulted in a 1.5 hour one-way drive) for their beach fireworks on July 1st, and although the fireworks lasted a whopping 6 minutes--MAYBE--we came away thinking that it was terrific. Zac kept screaming, "WHOO-HOO!," "OH, YEAH!!!!," and "DID YOU SEE THAT, MOM?" He was easily the most vocal kiddo on the beach. We couldn't stop laughing at his reactions to each (tiny) explosion.

I'm pretty sure this was the finale.
Saturday, we kept it local at Brennecke's. We are becoming a bit disenchanted with this beach (which is .5 miles from our house) due to huge crowds and waves that are less than stellar lately. They usually pick up during the summer, so we'll see if this beach can pull itself back up into our good graces.
I'm in the middle with the pink swimsuit bottoms.

Brady is on the left, body surfing:

Here's a pic of my birthday man, who is still lookin' dapper at 32:

On the 4th, we went paddleboarding at Kalipaki. I wanted to try waves on a paddleboard, but at best they were ankle-slappers, and at one point, I fell and scratched my tummy on the reef (it was that shallow). I did catch 2 on the paddleboard, but I definitely prefer catching waves with a smaller board. Brady did much better than me, leading me to analyze my performance for about an hour while he patiently listened. I am a sucker for feedback.
Zachary wanted to get buried in the sand over and over again. Sand is his element.



Kate is such an easy-going baby. She was content to hang out in the shade while we played in the sand.
We finished off the holiday with 4th of July waffles. Yummy.