The Aloha State

To say we are excited to be in Hawaii is the understatement of the century!  I’m so excited to have a real sized mini van again.  The truck is HUGE!!!  Look at Andrew standing in it!

We arrived pretty late at night so we did one night in a hotel right next to the airport.  Then we got up, went to walmart (of course) had Mc. D’s for breakfast, did a Costco run, another walmart run and we were off to the resort! 

These fish are so well trained…you drop a bit of water into the water and they all come swimming over.  Z thought that was amazing.

Just hanging pool side with my teenage who wants to get a good base tan (insert eyeroll here)

Chris and I could only convince Z to go down to the beach.  The other kids said they could see it from their chair.  I think they are still pretty exhausted from the travel!

Z

Zack has a small cut on his foot.  He doesn’t want a shark to come for him.  We had a little chat and now all is well.

The view from our room. 

This bag is incredibly heavy.  Look at these two siblings helping each other out!  My kids are awesome.

My view for most of the day….

Ben and Kal went up to the room, got showered, put on real clothes and came down to the pool to read.  They kill me.

This boy is a fish.  He told me he didn’t want to swim the whole time he was in Hawaii.  That lasted…only until he saw the pool

Hats are a thing apparently……

This kid.  As soon as we showed him our spot he was gone.  He’d pop up every now and again for a snack..but I pretty much didn’t see him all day.  He found other kids and off he went!

Ben has been dying for two things….Panda Express and Dairy Queen.  We checked one off tonight!

These two have been so cute with each other!  We need to travel to Hawaii more often!

Rainbow on the way to dinner.

I think he had a good day.  We got home from dinner and as we was waiting to pray he sat in the pool tubes and fell asleep right away.  These are moments that make a mom so happy.

(And the one good thing about going backward is you get up at 3am and have time to blog for three hours.  It is 2pm to me…so I felt like I got great sleep when I went to bed at 9pm last night.)

Away we GO!

The day has finally come!  It’s time to go to HAWAII!!!!  I’m not looking forward to the 24 hour travel day…but thankfully my kids are awesome travelers…so it won’t be too bad.
Zack makes himself very at home on all airplanes…

After our 10 hour Gatwick to Canada Z man requests an audience with the pilot to collect his reward…a pair of wings.  Funny how he thinks that is just the norm now.

Cute kids and MOUNTAINS!!!!

We enjoyed a very long two hour bonding time with the Canadian boarder patrol.  Ugh.  In Gatwick our flight was full so they offered to check any carry on luggage.  We happily handed over 4 of them!  Unfortunately we were also the special family that the printer broke on.  No worries…they will just hand write the tags.  Great!  NO!  NOT GREAT!  That means that no one can do their job because the system is so automated when they don’t have a barcode to scan they don’t know what to do!  Two hours later, and an awesome West Jet employee later (she walked over to the tarmac, hand picked up our luggage, printed new tags, and got us a $75.00 airport food voucher for being so patient) we were on our way.  To celebrate we quickly ate dinner/lunch/breakfast (who knows our clocks were so messed up) on the floor, in the terminal, before hopping on our last 6 hour flight.

Side note, we got Tim Hortons (think sandwich/donut fast food place) for six people and six donuts.  Wanna guess how much it cost?  $74.58.  Yep, we aren’t cheap!  The voucher was super appreciated!
WE MADE IT!  Aloha everyone!

Best quote award goes to Zack.  “Mom – why did we even come here…it looks just like England!” (we arrived at 10pm….it was dark….so it was just like England.  You’ll be happy to know he has since changed his mind)
Also, we took off around 1:30 pm from London...and landed at 3:00 pm in Canada.  That's trippy.

Sumer Solstice

I’ve never lived this far north of the equator, so I’ve never experienced such a dramatic shift in time with the seasons.  In winter I can drop my kids off at school and the sun hasn’t come up yet, and pick them up after it has already set.  It’s crazy.

Summer is just the opposite!  It starts to get light at 4am and stays light till after 10.  This picture was taken from my bed at 11pm…while I was trying to fall asleep.

And then this a few hours later at 4:48am

Crazy right?!?!  But it gives England some pretty amazing sunsets….which they normally don’t have (but i’m a sunset snob after living in New Mexico and Utah)

We complete ONE YEAR…

of school in the UK!  How exciting!  Ben finished year 9, Kallie year 8, Andrew year 5, and Zack year 1.  Such an amazing year filled with new experiences, new friends, new school etiquette, learning uniforms, sport kits, swim bags, music lessons, hot lunches, incredible field trips that included Spain, skiing in the Alps, and Belgium, and 100’s of other new things.  FYI Kal isn’t in these pictures because she was on a field trip to Saville.  Poor kid.

Technically the kids still have three weeks of school left (they don’t get out till July 13) but we are off to the States so they will miss it.

And Christopher has been stateside for the last two weeks and he is now finally home!!!  (Well for less than 24 hours before we turn around and go right back via Hawaii!)