Pine Valley for Pioneer Day

We were so happy to be able to be in Pine Valley for the traditional Pioneer Day celebration.  We go to the church for breakfast, a speaker and pioneer foot races.

 All of the kids in the background are Gardners!  I was so glad they were all there and would come join us.  Hunter and George have been friends since before they can remember, and even though they don't see each other very much, every time they do, it's like they see each other every day.(Just like me and Kellie)  Most of the other kids too.  They are a great group of people.

 Once they called for 14 year olds to come and race, no one wanted too, but when he said to bring your dads and race against them, they were more than happy to do it.  Kyle was cheating before the race even started.

 The little ones also participated in a "stick horse" race.  The secret to these races is, everyone gets cracker jack at the end, you just have to run.

Mostly we go to visit our Pine Valley friends and family and enjoy Pine Valley.  It was especially great to visit with the Gardner family. 
We also got a project done.  Kyle put an air conditioning unit in upstairs and it makes a world of difference.

While he was working hard on the a/c, Matty and I were working hard on getting her toes and fingernails to be as beautiful and colorful as humanly possible.

What cute chubby little hands and feet.  I never noticed how stubby they are!
She also had some chores to do.....

She had a hard time controlling it with those nubby little hands. :)

That evening we made it back home in time to go swimming at the Washington Rec Center with Beckstrands. They have games and fireworks and an awesome DJ.  These water walkers were the hit of the night.

 Emily is in the blue ball (I don't think she ever stayed standing long) and Evan is in the purple (some rotten kid was holding on to him). I think Ben is between them.  At one point, my three kids and three of Beckstrands were all in the balls at the same time.  They give them 5 minutes to run their guts out and exhaust their air.  I think it is a little scary, but they loved it.

Saturday we headed back up to Pine Valley to help Uncle Mark celebrate his 80th birthday!  They had the annual dutch oven cook off and they also had a dinner and entertainment where they invited neighbors and friends.

 I didn't take a lot of pictures but it is always fun to get reacquainted with our Wells cousins.

 I could not believe how high George was able to get flying on these giant swings.  He had a giant grin on his face the whole time- no fear.

 This little Wells cousin's name is Wells! He loves hats, and other people's shoes as well.

 I brought some bubble solution but Evan didn't want to wait for a turn with a "wand" so he figured out how to use his hands.

 He also brought his Uke and was invited to play with the band.  He was very excited, and put on a good show.

Uncle Gawain and Aunt Gayle had come over the night before and visited with our kids (we had run up to visit Grandma Sullivan and the kids neglected to call us and tell us we had visitors) for quite a while, so the next day Matty just attached herself to them.  Her new adopted grandparents.  It was sweet, and they were very happy to share their wealth of grandparent love with her.

Waikiki and Out.

We said goodbye to the dogs....

 Took one last swing.....

and packed up the Beach Bus.....

 Goodbye to our home away from home.  It served us well, and we are grateful for it.  We got to our hotel in Waikiki about 5 p.m.  The kids wanted to swim as soon as they saw the pool, so they jumped in their suits and I went to find them some food.  There was a little convenience store across the street where I found some fairly reasonably priced sandwiches and chocolate covered macadamia nuts- because they are now part of our food pyramid- a daily necessity!  This shop was the winner of the expensive milk contest we have been having for 2 months: $10.36!  This is twice as much as we normally pay, which is twice as much as we would pay in Utah.
We won't miss rationing dairy products or the ants and centipedes (total of 9 in the house by the end). But everything else, will be missed.

 We had the pool all to ourselves in the evening and the next morning; when they woke up and went straight to swimming again.  These pics were from our hotel balcony.

 I think Matty thinks she won!

 I loved the turtles on the bottom of the pool.  Kinda like the turtles swimming across the bottom of Waimea.
We got the kids fed and bathed and settled down and went wandering. We found Duke's International Marketplace, which is a tiny version of the swap meet but with more aggressive, more Asian, salesmen. We bought an extra suitcase.  She started the bidding at $40, and we bought it for $32. Which means we spent $2 more than we needed to!  It was only a few blocks away and so we took the kids back the next morning to do one last round of shopping, we prepped them before hand on the technique of bartering and we had a good time.  Right at the end we met an LDS kid that served his mission in Northern Utah and we headed back there for boot camp in a few weeks.  His name was Pali and he was trained by his father to do woodcarving.  We bought two tikis from him and he carved our names in the back for us.

 We didn't have enough money and he didn't take credit cards, so Kyle bought him a Jamba Juice around the corner and took it back to him.  He asked for Kyle's phone number and said maybe he would come and visit us when he comes to Utah.  Looks like we may have adopted Pali, the Poly.

Our plane didn't leave til 10 pm, so we still had a lot of day left to kill.  We checked out of the hotel and went to the Aquarium for a few hours. We saw lots of the same fish and coral and creatures that we saw in the ocean every week but we saw some awesome things we didn't swim with too.

 It was really funny to see someone in the tank, cleaning it, I guess every fish tank has to be cleaned....I wonder who does the one with the shark in it?  That is a giant clam- we didn't see any of those in the ocean.

 These were awesome jellyfish.  Luckily we didn't see any of those in the ocean either.  We heard of a jellyfish warning, and learned all we could about them, and waited for them to come (10 days after the full moon) but they never did.

 These are giant groupers and in the background is the black tipped reef shark that was supposed to live on the outside of shark's cove.  He is only about 5 feet long.  Those fish were bigger than him.  I am glad we didn't see any of them in the ocean.

 Matty's last visit with a humuhumunukanuka'apua'a.  This one was small and really fast.
 I wish we could take one home with us.

 I wish we could take this cute little puffer fish home with us too. 

 We did see one of these Monk Seals in the ocean and it seemed much happier than this guy in the aquarium.

It was a great afternoon.  We were happy to just hang out and stroll around and enjoy the surroundings. It wasn't big enough, and we ran out of aquarium before we ran out of time.
We went to the mall and ate some dinner and then headed to the airport a few hours early.

Once we finally got settled into the airplane and on our way I think we were all happy to be headed home again.  Hawaii was truly amazing and I wouldn't trade this adventure for anything, but it is true....
There's no place like home.

Aloha Oe' from the Wells Ohana