Last post before camp...more pics of Hawaii, garden update, and haircut

Just thought I'd post the last couple pictures I have from Hawaii. The last night we were there, Chad and I went on a little dinner cruise. It was a lot of fun. The food was actually pretty good, the guy singing was really good, and boy was it entertaining to watch all those white people dance to songs like "YMCA" and "Celebrate good times...COME ON!!!" Here's a picture from the first luau we went to. Paul was brave enough to get his camera out, but mine was safe under my poncho in my purse. And here we are parasailing. Paul managed to get these pictures as we went by the hotel. Believe me, it's us. Parasailing was a lot of fun and I'm glad Paul got the pictures, because they wanted to charge $20 for a roll of film taken by their employees, and then we'd also have to go get it developed. What a rip off!Here we are on the boat at the dinner cruise on that last night. Thought this was a nice way to end our trip, and the day. God's creation is so awesome. Speaking of God's creation...we came home to a garden that is flourishing! It rained quite a bit while we were away, and I'm sure that helped. Also our friends David & Tiffany took care of things while we were away...so a big thanks to them. We are starting to get little veggies on our plants. The zucchini and squash plants are HUGE!Here are the little seedlings that sprouted from a couple watermelon seeds Chad saved from Memorial Day. I think David brought the watermelon, so thanks again David. These are cucumbers. Who needs a lattice when you have a chain-link fence? I'm glad we have that chain-link fence that used to be the opening to the RV slab before Chad got rid of all that concrete and planted a garden. Those vine plants want so bad to find something to cling to. Kind of interesting to observe. And here are my tomato plants! They are doing really, really well. They have all grown to the top of each of the stakes. Now I'm wondering if I should have bought the large stakes. Even so, these are about 2 feet tall, and they are flowering, so hopefully we will have a bunch of tomatoes to pick when we get back from CBH.
Here's one of my tomatoes...I think it's a roma, but I can't remember.
Squash. We're about to have lots of it. And you are too if you want some. Same with the zucchini.
And finally, I became very tired of my hair over the past few weeks, so I decided to cut it off. See how unhappy I am?
And now, after. I went to a new girl and I liked her. I didn't take pictures of the back. I'm sure you can imagine what it looks like. Now don't get too excited because I posted a whole bunch over our vacation. It ain't gonna happen while I'm at Blue Haven. For one thing, in my spare time I will probably be napping or working with Chad on lessons, and blogging is kind of a time consumer (which is why I'm doing it now instead of packing and doing laundry, which I should be doing). Also, I'm not too keen on everyone having all their technology out all the time at camp, especially when we are trying to send a message to the kids that they should be putting God first and they don't need their iPod and cell phone for two weeks, and then we're all on our laptops all the time. So, other than to pay some bills and stuff, I won't be on a whole lot. This will be MUCH better than last year, because at that time we were literally one week from moving to Texas and I had to look at houses and take care of moving matters while we were in New Mexico. So glad I don't have to do that this year.

So, for the next few weeks, this blog will be pretty quiet. And if you haven't gotten yourself an account at bloglines.com to keep up with blogs, you should! I know I've said that before, but this is a service to all the parents out there who check the blogs every day. Just sign up for an account, subscribe to all the blogs you read, and then you just have to go to one website everyday instead of all of them, and it shows you which ones have updated. It's called a feed. Let's say it all together now...feed. Okay I'm done.

Miss us while we're gone, loyal blog readers!

We are home. The flights went well, but we are tired and hungry so no time to blog.

By the way, our garden plants are now huge and I'll take pictures and post tomorrow. And, we saw Sinbad and K-Fed at the Los Angeles airport. K-Fed had an entourage, and Sinbad was by himself and carrying all his own luggage.

Goodbye to HI

In a few short hours we will be boarding a plane to come back to Texas. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time here in Hawaii, and I hope you've enjoyed the pictures and getting to experience it with us. We are looking forward to being home for almost 48 hours before we leave for camp...and of course we are so excited about camp! I have one more post to do with pictures from our parasailing and sunset cruise from yesterday, but I don't have my camera with me so that will have to wait.

**Update: New video added to day 5.

I'm back! After the rainy luau we had Friday night, we decided to leave Saturday unplanned. We didn't do much except relax and be lazy. Sunday consisted of church, which was crazy because the preacher and his wife went to LCU and we met 4 or 5 other people who were Texas transplants (which is a lot considering the church had about 20 people), and in the visitor book just a few lines up one of the ministers from our church in Lubbock had signed his name. Small world.

We also went to Hapuna Beach on Sunday, which was our second visit. It is a great beach and I hope we can go again before we leave. I didn't take pictures though because I didn't bring my camera. They warn tourists about leaving valuables in the car (or with your stuff on the beach) at these places, and I would be soooo sad if my camera got stolen.

Yesterday we got a 4WD vehicle and visited Mauna Kea, which is the world's tallest mountain from its underwater base. I was feeling the altitude change as soon as we got to the top. Its actual height is something like 14,000 feet, and it is supposedly the best place in the world to look at stars. There are observatories all over the top of it. It was SO awesome!
The landscape at the top was like another planet. So barren, and we were just towering over the highest clouds in the atmosphere.
Take me to your people. These are what the observatories on top look like. They are some pretty weird buildings.
Chad and me on the summit. Special thanks to Dave, the guy who rode to the top with us, who took this picture. Interesting guy--he owns a backcountry ski touring company in Vancouver, and he had joined a sailing expedition from Vancouver to San Fran, then to Hawaii, then back to the mainland. It had taken them 23 days to sail to Hawaii. He was just stopped over for a couple days in Hawaii before they went back. Anyway, he didn't have a 4WD vehicle which the road to the top requires, so we gave him a ride from the visitor's center.
This was cool...a lake at the top of Mauna Kea fed entirely by permafrost. Supposedly the largest lake of its kind.
Just another view...I think this one is from the car on the ride up.
Later yesterday we revisited the luau, and this time it was dry for us. I got this picture of the sun setting and also the video at the bottom of the post. Today we drove to Volcanoes National Park and hiked the Kilauea Iki crater trail. It was a really great hike. It started off in the rainforest and we got to hike IN the crater, with steam vents all around us. It was a surreal landscape. I tried to get some pictures but it was really misty and windy and the lens of my camera kept getting little drops all over it, so these will have to do. Here's Chad walking at the beginning in the rainforest.The plant life was amazing. Ferns and other plants everywhere, but most of them have Hawaiian names so I can't remember what they are.Okay, this is a view of the bottom of the crater from the trail we were on, which was much higher and I guess you can't really tell that from the picture. That plume is steam from a crater vent. Pretty cool huh?At the bottom of the crater.More lava.The plants still figure out a way to grow. Enjoy!

Day 6

Hi. These photos are out of order because I don't feel like putting them in order. We are still having fun. I forgot that I hadn't shown you where we are staying yet. Here's a picture of the pool and what's on the other side of the pool. It's not exactly where we sleep, but we have been spending a lot of time here.
Here's a view of our hotel from the pool.
Here we are right after we arrived in Hawaii.
Here we are at a real Hawaiian luau. Funny story...it started raining really hard right after we finished eating, and they had to cancel the rest of the luau. But, we got to see them bring the pig out of the ground (see photo below), we got to go through the buffet (not for the picky eater), and we got to see the dancers perform one dance. They gave us a raincheck but I'm afraid we might be booked for the other nights they had available. Oh well. It was a fun and very wet experience. This was before the rain.

These are apple bananas. They are the size of a person's palm. I've heard they're delicious. Got them at an outside market yesterday.
Here they are getting the pig out of the imu (underground oven) at the luau.

Here's our kitchen.
Here's our view from our living room.

A beautiful sunset at the luau. After one fairly heavy rain, but before a very heavy one.
These are the crabs that hang out on the rocks outside our hotel.
The avocados here are HUGE. Like, the size of canteloupes. So when we were at the market yesterday, I was trying to find some avocados that were fairly ripe, which were the smaller ones. The guy saw that I was looking at the smaller ones and gave me a bag, filled it with avocados and told me to just take them, that he wouldn't sell them to me. So now we will be having avocados every day until we leave which is fine. Anyway, I took two limes and gave him $3, and we called it a deal.
Here we are again at the luau.
Again, at the luau, next to the dead roasting pig.

So that was the end of day 6...and over the weekend we don't have a whole lot going on, so there may not be as many pictures. But next week we are going to Volcanos Nat'l Park, going on a hike or two, going parasailing, and on a sunset cruise so it will pick up again in a couple days. For now, it's time to relax by the pool with a book. Have a great weekend everyone.

Day 5

Me again. These pictures are from our helicopter ride yesterday along the Kohala Coast which is just north of where we're staying. Riding the helicopter was the most expensive thing we'll do while we're in Hawaii, but totally worth it. It was awesome!This is the helicopter we rode in. Our pilot was SO Andy Bernard from "The Office."Feigning a smile as we are about to lift off.Poor Chad was so afraid, he almost backed out and got off right then. Can you see the fear on his face? Gotta love the photo quality taking pictures in a moving vehicle through a window.

Does anyone know how to rotate video? I was an idiot and took a couple videos vertically. Why did I do that? I have two more videos to upload but don't feel like doing it right now. So look for those later if you're interested. And sorry about your neck on this one.