Gimme a Break

It's Spring Break 2015 and we didn't have big plans.  The school did in the days leading up to it, though, or at least it felt that way for my 7-year-old.  Spirit Week is a BIG DEAL to him.

Crazy hair day.  He was bummed because we decided last minute not to use the red dye we bought at the store (which said adults only).  His frown turned upside down when Kate said, "You look like a dinosaur!"  

 I hosted preschool that week.  Here are the kids taking trips to the moon (yes, those are fancy space suits) to find their moon rocks.  To my surprise, planet day was my very favorite preschool day ever.  The kids were super excited to take off in the space ship and land on planets where all you could do was spin, or jump up and down, or walk backwards.  This day reminded me that kids have vivid imaginations and they are so willing to embrace new information. (I did teach them real facts about planets, too.  Ha!)

 A day at the park with playgroup.  Kate and her friend, Ever:

Another Spirit Day--Zachary had a hard time going to sleep the night before twin/triplet day.  He combed his hair down to look like David (since JoJo "doesn't do his hair because it's too short).  The boys were all anxious that their shorts be exactly the same color of navy and Zac came home relieved that "they were."  Ha!  

 Another preschool day--St. Patty's.

 The last day of the semester, Zac's school had a carnival day.  I was there to help his teacher and afterwards, she gave Kate a bunch of good behavior/good work tokens to use for games and activities.  We barely saw Zachary--he was so busy running from station to station.  Kate thought it was the most exciting day of her year so far.

 She won some big prizes:

 Zac and his besties at the photo booth on pajama day/carnival day.  Mrs. Yamada is his teacher on the right.

After Zachary's soccer game that Saturday, we cooked it up to Hanalei--our first time there in over 6 months.  Sports ate up our Saturdays for a long time, and we were determined to get north.  Brady and Kate weren't feeling good, but they took one for the team (er, me) and we had a lovely afternoon in the sand and surf.

 Sick daddy with his sick girl:

 Day 1 of Spring Break: We played at Christina's pool for 2 hours and then played at our pool for 2 hours.  We've had a chilly winter, supposedly the coldest March in 50 years.  That didn't stop my kids from begging to use their free shave ice coupons.

 Day 2: We met up with the Hadleys for beach time at Sheratons.  It was finally warm!

 We also rocked our St. Patty's shirts, drank green milk and ate green cookies.

Day 3:  More pool time!   Kate is getting more competent in the water.  We also made two cakes for enrichment that night, and the kids had lunch with Brady while I went out with friends to celebrate birthdays.

 Thursday was my weekly trip to Oahu for the doctor.  The flights are terrible right now, so I couldn't get back as quickly as normal.  I packed a bag and ran for an hour and half along Waikiki, ate lunch at my favorite Japanese restaurant, watched March Madness, and of course shopped.  I feel guilty leaving my kids for Oahu and usually it is relatively stressful.  This trip was awesome and felt like a vacation.  Brady took a day off and made it fun for the kids, which eased my mind and guilt.  They played until they were rained out at Lydgate, then salvaged the afternoon at Fun Factory and the buffet at Pizza Hut (double groan).  Zac was shocked at the concept of a buffet--"Mom, did you know there is a place you can eat pizza until you are completely full?"  Kate added, "And they have cinnamon sugar pizza!"  They asked if we could go again this weekend, and our response was that we'll go again next time it pours rain during Spring Break.

Our Magic Tree House

We started reading the Magic Tree House series to the kids at night.  Our Magic Tree House is Polihale, the place we go where time stands still and we have adventures and we come home 24 hours later feeling like we were there a week.  And a week is never long enough.

We run in the sand.  We play in the water.  We pack and unpack and pack again.  We wipe sand off our toes before we get in the tent.  We listen to the loud, crashing waves all night.  We talk around the campfire for hours.  We stare at shooting star after shooting star.  We keep track of the kids with glow sticks.  We eat hot dogs, marshmallows, and a lot of veggies to try and compensate.  We see spectacular sunsets.  We make memories.  

I love this place and I love that every time we go, we throw another card in the Polihale deck.

It's never super easy to get here.  This time, I helped with enrichment late on Wednesday night, had an all-day doctor appointment in Oahu Thursday, and hosted Kate's birthday party on Friday morning--all before packing up the car and heading out to camp that afternoon.  It takes coordination and planning and sweat to get here, and we always question if this was a "good weekend" to camp.  We especially wondered that on this particular day because the further west we drove, the worse the weather got--an unusual weather pattern for our island.

We got there and didn't set up camp right away because it was raining and cold.  An hour later, though, the clouds cleared and it was a spectacular night.

No one camped with us, but several families joined us for the fire--Keeps, Clarks and VandenAkkers.

The water was rough and we shouldn't have even allowed the older kids to go out to their knees:

I love this--Kate leaning over to match Zac's lean.

Pink, pink, pink.

We were in bed at 11pm, which is probably some kind of early record for us.  Everyone left by then, and Kate was adamant about staying up with us until the party was over.  (Zac reminds us regularly that he is the "best sleeper in the family," and he proved it again by falling asleep in a chair at 8:20pm.)

The next morning it was pancakes and sand, thankfully only in the same sentence and no longer in the same bite.  (Zachary is famous with our friends for dipping his syrup-soaked pancake in the sand before eating when he was a toddler.)

We didn't have a lot of time the next morning since we needed to be in Lihue for Zac's soccer game at 12pm and we had a long day of church meetings on Saturday.  We made the most of the hour and a half we had to play.  We love being here with friends, but it is awesome to be here just the four of us, too.

My favorite picture of the post:

This was the perfect ending to spring break 2015.  Can you feel my sigh of contentment?

Cold, Muddy Pigs

I've begged for an all-day excursion for weeks, but our schedule is so often tied up with sports.  We chose sports and we love sports.  What's not to love about this?

 But we were ready for an adventure that took longer than a couple hours.  We decided to go to Hanalei for the day, but that went out the window when the night before, we were so chilly neither of us wanted to get the remote because it meant getting out from under our blankets on the couch.  Instead, we went for a hike in the canyon after Zachary's early game.

It was 50 degrees, windy, and misty, and that meant we were freezing.  We had to take some "before" shots because we could see it was going to be a muddy day.

 Moving gets you warm.

 Kate called this discovery an "ice cream flower."

 She was a trooper and hiked 4 miles, "because I'm almost 4."  Zac pointed out the injustice of the situation, since the hike was 7.5 miles and he is only 7.25 years old.

 This hike has been closed down for the last few years, and we completely forgot about the waterfalls and how well it opens up along the coast.  We almost decided to stop here but it's lucky we forged ahead--it was getting late and we worried about hiking in the dark with the kids, but pushing forward gave us the views below.

 Blowing on his hands to keep warm:

 The wind was seriously nuts.

 I think this picture is so cute,

 ...but this picture screams "Zachary":

"Mom!  You should have put my hair in a pony!!!"

 Love this shot.  We saw a whale breach (well, I did) right as we geared up to take this.  It's crazy you can see something like that so far up in the cliffs.

 Kate is WAY TOO BIG for this.  Brady carried her for a long time.  This is that awkward transition stage when they are too heavy to heft around but too little to make it long distance.

Early on in the hike, I jumped out of my skin when I looked up at this little piggy strung up in the trees.  Ew.  The kids and Brady laughed and laughed and we talked about it the whole way down.  We also told the kids all about hiking this same trail with Zac when he was really little, and how a huge pig charged at us down a hill.  We were very nervous, grabbed sticks, and started yelling at the pig and he decided to stop charging us.  He was about 100 pounds or more.  With that story in mind and the dead pig in the trees, we were all on the lookout for pigs.  This one turned out to be our only sighting.

We usually make up stories on hikes, but this time we made up songs.  I have to include them because while they are ridiculously simple, they also are the stuff of memories.

Zac and Me made up a chant and Zachary thought the echo sections were the best.

Muddy, Muddy, Muddy, Muddy (Echo: Muddy!)
Repeat.
Mud in my toes and mud in my nose,
Mud on my bum and mud is on my thumb.
I said it's muddy!  (Echo: MUDDY!)
Repeat.

Kate and Dad sang theirs to the tune of "I Like to Eat, Eat, Eat Apples and Bananas":

I like to hike, hike, hike through the trees
With the mud, mud, mud all over my knees.
I like to see, see, see pigs chargin at me.
And feel their eyes, eyes, eyes staring at me.

 We got out of there just before it started getting dark, and of course had to take a muddy "after" shot. This doesn't feature Kate's very muddy bum and actually most of the mud washed off, so...not a terribly impressive picture, huh?  It scratched an adventure itch for our family, though, and reaffirmed our belief that hiking is one of the most wholesome things we can do with our kids.  It's a lot of work, a lot of clean-up, and sometimes even a lot of whining, but in the end we are all happy and refreshed.