End of Summer

How has Labor Day already come and gone? Summer is over! Of course, that means something different here. In Kauai, you know it's fall when the trade winds stop and you sweat more--lots more. If I could have A/C for only 2 months of the year, it would be September and October.

End of summer means the start of Co-op Preschool for Zachary. Here he is on Day 1 at our house with his four preschool buddies.
Kate is 6 months old in about a week. I can't believe it. Zac's friend Will (see picture above) told me that she "still doesn't look like a girl," so I have amp-ted up the bows. She is getting great at grabbing items, definitely knows her mommy and daddy (and big brother), and is officially sleep trained.

This picture was cuter in my head, but I still like it. I wanted to get her toes a little more clear in the background.
Brady's work hosted a camp-out this year in Koke'e (the "mountains" here). It was nice to have chilly weather for a camp-out, and the scenery was gorgeous. It did put me over the edge with Kate and camp-outs, though. We've been camping 4 times since she was born, and all with the same no-sleep result. We're done for a few months!

"Hi, I had a GREAT time getting rocked and cuddled by Mommy and Daddy all night long."

We had to convince Zachary to take a hike with us and leave his friends behind for a little while. He was not happy about it. After we got started, he loved it. As soon as we were finished he asked to go again.


This was the greatest weekend for Zachary. He played non-stop, enjoyed creating this cereal necklace, and played in mounds of dirt for hours.

There were quite a few games planned. I got called to do the Vaseline/cotton ball game, and this is me realizing that Genevieve creamed me.

Jeff took pics of the event, and I don't see one of Brady in his game.
Zac in the kid relay:
The end of summer also ushered in a big swell. I love the south swells because it sounds like the ocean is just outside our windows at night.



Kate officially eats better than her older brother. All of her food with no battles!
She's also ready for sleeping by 6:30pm every night. It's weird to have my nights back.
This is proof that I also take pictures of my son. Most of the pics, however, look like this:
Although occasionally he doesn't pull a face.
Uncle Doug, Aunt Teresa, and their daughter Holly came out to visit this past weekend. We had a few beautiful beach days with them. Holly will be attending BYU-H, so we hope to see her again soon. We forgot our camera, but Doug snagged a couple shots of us boogie boarding at Kealia.

Look close: this has to be one of the silliest pics of us together.

Zac fell in love with our visitors as he always does! Holly was awesome to play with him in the sand.
We also enjoyed a gorgeous day at Polihale on Labor Day, a few surf outings, and plenty of trips to the pool. Our big news is that Zachary is officially swimming in the ocean now! He's been nervous since about age 2, and stayed mostly away from ocean water (but not sand!). He's suddenly jumping through waves and dipping his head under like it's no biggie. A little peer pressure goes a long with this kiddo!

Enjoy your fall leaves and crisp temps. This is the season I miss the most.

Ryan and Karen

A few weeks ago, Ryan and Karen came to town for two weeks of beach frolicking, boogie boarding, snorkeling, hiking, walks...and 2 days of babysitting. We loved having them here--they were super helpful and on top of that, they were terrific with our kids. Zachary is still praying for them three weeks later, and asks me if Uncle Ryan and Aunt Karen will "come play with me sometime." He's also repeatedly said, "Remember when Uncle Ryan and Aunt Karen played in the sand with me? That was fun. Let's do it again."

The first Saturday they were here, we introduced them to Brennecke's, Mahaulepu and Horseshoe Beach, and Keoki's (basically the same as Duke's, including the Hula Pie).


The following Monday, Brady accompanied them on one of our all-time favorite hikes which goes along the NaPali Coast to Hanakapiai Falls. Karen was 19 weeks pregnant and hung in there like a champ the entire way.
We took in a couple sunsets and watched the waves crash behind our house.

That weekend, they watched our kids while we did the Kalalau via kayak (that hardly anyone commented on, which leads me to believe you only look at our pictures on the blog...).

Brady took off work in the middle of the week, and we headed up to the north shore for snorkeling at Hideaways. I'd spent some time explaining to them that the snorkeling here is not great--the coral isn't vibrant and the only thing you usually see snorkeling are fish. Somehow, we scored a perfect day with bright coral, hundreds of fish, and lots of sunshine. To boot, there was a fire in our neighborhood which required all residents to evacuate for hours, and we missed the whole ordeal. Good timing!

Karen and Kate (By the way, it really threw off our ward when we introduced her at church as Karen Edwards.)Ryan was a great sport and buried Zachary over and over again.

"Fish out of water"

Zachary told us he was tired, and next thing we knew, he was sound asleep in the sand. Brady created some shade for the tuckered out kiddo. I wish we had a picture of his sand-imprinted face when he woke up.

We went to Secret Beach later that afternoon and took a pretty walk. It's not the best beach for water sports, but it is gorgeous and has lots of rocks to navigate.


Kate in her element, the carrier:


Ryan and Karen took somewhere around 800 (?) pictures, so we're expecting good things from their blog. We won't steal their thunder describing all their adventures. We will say that the best part for us was talking every night and getting a chance to know Karen better. We're definitely the outliers of the family, and we feel a little more "caught up." Of course we made Ryan do his Seinfeld impressions, too ("First place, second place, dead last").

Since they left, the weather has taken a nose dive. Muggy, cloudy, rainy, gnats, HOT, muggy, muggy, muggy, gnats, gnats. Please come back and bring us the two weeks of perfect weather you left with.

Kalalau Kayak Trip

Here is the story of a boy and a girl who did an adventure they've been dying to try since they day they moved to Kauai.

It is not a picture book. Why? The camera they brought broke. The camera the other couple brought also broke. It was discovered 5 minutes after getting in the water, but 15 minutes too late to do anything about it.

Instead, you will have to imagine enormous sea caves, sparkling waterfalls, sheer cliffs, occasional rough seas and just as often, seas as calm as a lake (but bright blue and beautiful). You are also free to imagine dolphins, whales, and mermaids, but none of those were present during our trip.

Ryan and Karen came to visit (!), rounding out the last of the Edwards clan to make it out here. They were excellent and helpful guests, playing with our kids and helping out--but more on that later. Halfway through their vacation, they watched Zachary and Kate so we could do this trip.

This gig had a lot to live up to--we've already hiked in (2 years ago) and loved it, and we haven't done anything really adventurous since Kate was born. We went with our friends Chad and Mary, who both went solo in their kayaks, while we pushed along in our double. Chad has been on the coast quite a few times, so he was our official guide.

The first day was gorgeous. The ocean was calm enough that we were able to go into sea cave after sea cave. After we got over our irritation of having no camera, it was actually kind of nice to not worry about picture-taking and just breathe it all in. We could not believe the deep blue of the water and the green of the coastline.

Besides getting completely wasted with seasickness, the kayaking was really easy and we got into Kalalau in about 2 hours. We spent the afternoon on the beach, setting up camp (trying out hammocks for the first time), and hiking into the valley's famous waterfall. You can actually slide down the waterfall into the water, but it is not as cool as it sounds (especially when you are are a wimp about the rocks and only go from the halfway point). We ate plenty of guavas, fresh oranges, and passion fruit--yummy. We saw at least a dozen nudists, and may have joined them for a round of skinny dipping that night. We'll let you decide. We were wanna-be hippies for the weekend, and loved it.

The next morning, we swam over to our favorite beach on the island--Ho'opu. You can't dock a kayak there and you can't reach it by foot so it is arguably the most remote beach on the island. Fabulous. We had it mostly to ourselves, plus a topless woman wearing a child's floatie. It also has a waterfall you can swim in, but not quite so quaint because the water almost takes your head off when you dare to try it.

Lunchtime came, and we were all pretty nervous. We'd seen kayak after kayak get flipped heading out of Kalalau. The swell was up and the conditions were more than a little choppy. Shore-breakers were coming in hard every few minutes, and we knew we couldn't hack it if we got caught up in one of those. We made a game-plan, and retrospectively, it wasn't the best "Plan A" ever thought up by 4 naive kayakers. The boys pushed Mary out first, and she seemed to be out safely. Next, they pushed me--alone at the front of the kayak--and went to push Chad in. Brady planned to swim right out after Chad got in safely. The plan went wrong when Mary was taken by a current and smashed hard into shore. The boys went running down the coast to help her. In the meantime, the current took me for a fast ride along the 1 mile beach, and there was no keeping myself in place. Because I was in front, I was in no position to steer. I also just could not fight that current. The boys got Mary back out, and then Brady got Chad in. By the time Chad was out the water, he didn't realize that Brady was swimming behind him, and he left to make sure we were okay. Brady started getting nervous because he was in open water with no life jacket or flippers, and clearly this current was powerful. He was pretty sure there was no way he could get himself back to shore. He yelled out to Chad, who had to work hard to get back to him. Chad towed Brady to me, and everything was okay minus the fact that the boys were pretty anxious about the ordeal and exhausted from the effort of towing/swimming (and in Brady's case, very nearly losing his swim trunks).

For the record, we did have a "Plan B" and even after all that, Brady still didn't put his life jacket on. I was the only one dorking out with my jacket the entire trip. When Brady first related this story to people, I felt like he was exaggerating the danger of the situation. I will state now that I have been corrected and told horror story after horror story about ocean currents (and the difficulty of finding swimmers in the open ocean), and I now realize that we were lucky nothing else went wrong.

The best part of the day came when we were facing huge swells. Brady yelled "RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT" and we paddled our hearts out. It was slightly nerve-wrecking, pretty intense, and overall just awesome. I'm glad we didn't flip. We couldn't go into the famous "Eye of God" sea cave (see my post from a couple weeks ago showing kayakers entering this cave) because the swells were too high. It was wild, though. We turned a corner to head into Polihale, and the seas were calm. The rest of the journey was easy and beautiful. We even ran into a buddy of Chad's who was manning a zodiac, and he threw us some ice cold drinks. We made it into Polihale without crashing, which was impressive considering the big shore-breakers there, too.

People keep asking me which I prefer: kayaking or hiking. There are obviously benefits to both, but I will have to go with hiking. It's more hard-core, gritty, and exhausting. I loved it when we hiked into Kalalau so tired we could hardly walk any more. We weren't really tired at any point of this adventure (except the boys after towing/swimming). I would say hiking is at least 3 times harder than kayaking. However, if you only have 2 days, kayaking is the way to go.

Also for the record: everyone says that Dramamine doesn't work if you take it when you are already sick. I was pretty darn seasick on day 2, and took another pill about an hour into our journey. Within about 30 min, I was good! (That could be another reason I prefer the hiking...)

Who wants to go with us for round 2? Our only requirements are you have to wear a life jacket, and your camera has to work.

Family Photos

A couple weeks ago, we celebrated the disappearance of my braces by finally getting some family pics taken. I was a little bummed because I screwed up the best one (see head tilt below--the wind was good and blowing!), but what can you do? We might try and do some head switching if we can get the extra pictures from the photographer, swap in a happier look from Kate for the one below, and use that one for parents.

Losing It

Three weeks ago, I called up Brady and told him that I was going to lose it if we didn't paint our awful walls. The very next day, we started the project, and the last pieces of artwork went onto our beautiful walls just yesterday. While I am not a fan of improving our landlord's house for free and losing 3 weekends, I do think it was worth it. Brady was gracious and took on the "honey do list" without complaint. Watching him paint reminded me of our Colony days.
I also lost my braces. Here's the last pic of me with them. Without the braces, I also lost some of my youthful look. I now look like I'm almost 30 rather than 19.
You might think Kate is losing her hair, but she's never grown any so no. She's plunged down to the 40 percentile, so she's lost a little on the growth charts. She is the happiest baby I've ever known and totally content to watch Zachary during the day. She's also very patient with him as he dresses her up. Lately, his favorite thing is to put the lid of a contact case on her nose and tell me she is a clown.


I know that she looks more like Brady, but don't you see some of me in this pic?
Zachary lost his life jacket the day he started swim lessons! He can now swim across the pool (by that I mean mostly doggie paddle, but face down). This is him with his teacher.

One week into swim lessons, we were at the pool practicing his new skills. He slipped on the pool's siding and came down on his chin. It bled a bit, but it stopped and he was anxious to get back to swimming. I checked on the wound, and thought maybe it was deep enough to be worried. I called Brady, who left work and then promptly took him to urgent care. It turned out he needed glue and butterfly bandages. He was a brave kiddo and rewarded with his first ice cream from McD's.
One of Kate's first times in the water.

Since the painting, we've lost time to get out as a family. Instead, we've taken a few separate adventures. We each get an hour to go do whatever we want. Yeah, I know. We sound like one of those couples that ends up vacationing separately in another year, but it has worked out the past couple weeks and helped scratch an itch. We've also still taken the kids to the pool for their entertainment, so we're not that selfish. Here's a couple pics from Brady's biking to Horseshoe Beach. We want to take Karen and Ryan there sometime in the next two weeks (they arrive today!).