June

I am not keeping up very well. There has been so much that I have done I don't even know where to start. Good thing all my pics are on facebook. In just 2 days I will be back in Wa. YAY! I'm excited to see my friends and play at "Lybbert's Pond". Most awesome thing with that. My grandpa had gone into town to get some things to fix the raft. The man behind the counter keep saying, "oh, don't worry about it we will take care of it." Confused my grandpa asked "what do you mean we?" the man then says "me and my guys here, we'll work on the raft and bring it out to you" he then turns to the guys and asks how many have ever swam at Lybbert's Pond and all of them raised their hands and some even commented how there kids and grandkids play there. How awesome is that. My grandpa was very touched by that. I don't think he fully realized how many people spent their summers there. I know it's a childhood favorite of mine.



As May comes to a close

I have been enjoying my time here with my nieces and nephew. They are so much fun. We went to the beach hoping for a great sunset but the clouds rolled in. So instead of watching a sunset we played around the rocks and crawled into just about anything we could.

 Some glamour shots. :) J/K

 I love this. Madi step into the red dirt not realizing how wet the dirt actually was. It was like clay, very entertaining to play with.

For memorial weekend we went with Lindon as he had the opportunity to go the Punchbowl which is in an inactive volcano and where the lives of those that have served our beautiful county rest. 

 See how cute he is. He is getting so big.

Lindon's job was to put lais on all the graves. The lais were so pretty and smelled fantastic.

Of course, here is Madi with the boys from the ward having the time of her life. Her parents are going to have to watch her. 

 We went to the Waikiki aquarium, it was not very big but it did have some fun fish. The seahorse. I have never actually seen one until now.

 I don't know what fish this one is but it sure looks cool.

 

I love the beach. Getting tan and reading and lets face it, lots of people watching.

This month has been so much fun. The great thing is is that I have another month here and then I get to spend a couple weeks in ML where I get to see other family and friends. I'm already missing the beach and the flea market. Speaking of which, I went to the Aloha Stadium flea market this weekend. That was pretty much awesome. We spent 4 hours there and found some great stuff. One of my favorite purchases was a wonder skirt. (look up magic or wonder skirt on YouTube) Apparently these skirts can be worn in about 100 different ways. Skirts, dresses and even cardigan style. It's awesome.



Plant Life

My sister and I went to Waimea Valley last week. So beautiful. Hawaii may not be known much for its wild life but it sure has some awesome plant life. Some of my favorites are the trees. Many of them have vines hanging from them and growing in all sorts of crazy ways, it's amazing to see.

 

This one is very poky. Don't want to fall into this one.

I loved the falls. The water was perfect after hiking into the valley. The water is about 30 feet deep and we could actually go behind the waterfall. It was gorgeous.

Honolulu Zoo

I love that the tortoise is red. There is so much red dirt around here and it turns everything red.

Did I not tell you the trees were amazing. It looks as though someone splashed paint all over but nope its just like that. They were all over.

The gorilla was awesome playing around in the sheet.

Peacocks are everywhere rooming around out in the open. I love the kids face, priceless.

It liked to pose for us.

The following are some of my absolute favorite pics. So far these will be getting printed and framed for my bathroom. I'll have to get a few more of the plant life around here to add to it.



Adventures

A great thing about visiting family on vacation is that most of what I get to do is not where most of the tourist are. Although, this week I decided that one area I wanted to see was Waikiki. So I took 'TheBus' there and spent the afternoon just laying in the sun, people watching (I will never understand way old women feel the need to wear thongs and old men banana hammocks)  and meandering around town just to see what Waikiki had to offer. One place that I stumbled upon was the International Market Place. Now I love to barter, I find it to be very hilarious just to see what the vendors will do. Mexico got me hooked to this. Most of the people were selling the same thing and I found the pendent pictured below. I loved this and most people wanted on average about 50 to over a hundred depending on the size. With my bartering skills I had the lady thinking I really wanted this. I was not about to pay 75 bucks for something that I'm not guaranteed to be real. After much bartering and walking away I paid 20 bucks. I'm very proud of myself. Real or Fake it was a good deal.

I also found this dress. SO CUTE! I loved it. I had seen things like this dress all over but this one actually covered everything it's supposed to, I could not pass it up.

The sun and I were good friends that day and I came back to the house with some real color, I'm no longer  so pasty white. It made for a great day at Waikiki.  

Bellows Air Force Station Beach

With my brother in law being in the military we can get into things for cheaper and into areas the general public cannot. It's pretty great. Bellows was gorgeous and there were not millions of people with us which gave us plenty of room for boogie boarding.

My sister Aubree and I. See how not pasty I am?

I love that this is the type of view that I get from driving around. I am never going to want to leave.

I'm in love!

I'm finally getting back to blogging. I took the semester off, I'll pretend that was on purpose. Although, there was not a lot of things that happened that I could have blogged about. It was a busy semester. I now have one more semester of classes then I student teach. YAY! I'm almost done. I can really see the end and it's very exciting.
Hopefully I will be better at blogging this summer, there is going to be a lot of things to tell about. I get an awesome opportunity of being in Hawaii until July and stay with Aubree's (my coolest oldest sister's) family. I got here on Wednesday and that afternoon we all went to the pool. The suns warmth was a welcomed feeling. What a great to start on my tan. I'm already in love with Hawaii.


 

Unfortunately the sun did not last long; it has not stopped raining since we left the pool. The storms have been amazing though. My niece Madi got pawned off on me one night that the thunder and lightening got so bad and scared her. It's a good thing I love her because she was draped all over me that night as she slept. 

Despite the rain we still have had some fun adventures. We went up to the North Shore and spent a few hours there. Yes it did rain and yes we stayed through it all. 

We wish that we would have had snorkeling gear because there were some great fish.

My nieces and nephew

Like I said we stayed despite the rain.

We were also able to go to Kaena Point State Park

This was our destination. If you were to look at Oahu then this is the North point that we hiked to from the north western side. No one is allowed to drive to this point so the only way to see it is by hiking or by boat.

Our hike was beautiful

Just the girls

Had to stop and take in the scenery

Saw a couple Monk Seals. They are so much cuter when they are swimming

I'm sure after a while this seal was wondering who we were, but starting doing tricks for us and swimming on its back. It was great fun to watch. 

The water is so gorgeous here and perfect to play in. I have the traveling bug and I'm sure it will never go away. I need to have a job that will allow me to travel everywhere. At least  I will never have to work summers. I will at least have the time to travel. 

Luckily, I have two months of this so there will be so much more to come.

Seattle

These kids are growing up so quickly. How cute are they? I have enjoyed the past few days with them. I don't get much of an opportunity to see them much so this trip was needed. It's been such a blast to see what Mukilteo has to offer. So pretty. I love Western Washington.

The fountain in Seattle is fun to watch as well. To bad it's not summer time so that the kids could play in it. That could have been hilarious to see.

We went to the Pacific Science Center. I like that place, it was my first experience there. I really enjoyed the butterfly garden. I think I could have spent all day in there.

I love the beach. I LOVE the water. One day I will live by water. I would be perfectly happy with that. We spent the morning here and we had a great time walking the beach and finding cool rocks and shells.

This is such a cute little light house. This just happens to be the first one I have ever been to. I think that I may need to see more. Lets face it. I LOVE to travel and I'm willing to go ANYWHERE!.

There was a little park there and this little toy was hilarious. They call it the tea cup and it makes me dizzy. Of course having Ashley spinning me faster does not help that situation.

I'm sad that my brothers family will be moving away from here this summer. I'll have to go see them in Cali. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here. I love my family.

Good Ol' Moses Lake

Coming back to Moses is always an adventure. I have been so lazy and it has been great. Soon it's back to school and back to work. Which is fine. I have been working on making a Christmas tree skirt. I'll be sure to post pictures of that when it's all done.

I had the opportunity to go see some old friends from jr high. I love these guys. Not everyone is here though. SAD! Good times with goodies and a movie (backup plan, wouldn't recommend it). Its always good to catch up. Crystal, Lena and Emily are so lucky to live so close to each other.

Crystals girls are adorable. I love that they finally took to me. They couldn't get enough of me swinging them around on my leg.