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?