Summer Fun - Yellowstone - July

In July we met KC's brothers and their families and stayed in a cabin in Island Park. We went to Yellowstone for two days and saw most of the park. We spent a lot of time in the car, but it was beautiful and fun.

The first traffic jam was caused by these Elk.

The cousins (minus Cara)

One of the many hot pots, this one wasn't too stinky.

Waiting for Old Faithful

And waiting

Finally, the eruption. 

We called this Dragon's Cave (I don't think that was the actually name)

The boys thought it all was cool.

One of the many bison we saw out by the roads.

Late in the day stop at Yellowstone falls.. getting tired, can't you tell.

Just hold still.

All of the cousins. All those little trees in the background are new growth after the fires they had a few decades ago.

Hi Cara. No you can't get out.

I wish we had checked this out more. 

Mammoth Springs, those were cool.

All of us at Mammoth Hot Springs.

A grizzly bear that we saw not too far from the road.

In front of the cabin before we left. It was fun. Thanks everyone.

Summer Fun - June

I guess you could say we have been busy this summer. This is what we did in June:

We stayed part of a week in Snowbird. Escaped from the valley heat and did some swimming and hiking.

We walked up a trail a bit and had a little picnic lunch with the kids.

The boys and KC and I hiked 4 miles from the Snowbird resort up the mountain to Hidden Peak where the tram goes. 

We were able to meet Will and Cara up there with my parents as they took the tram up.

KC's friend invited us to hike the Narrows in Zion's top down. It was 16 miles down the river.

Though the park got to 117 degrees that day it wasn't that hot in the canyon and the water was nice and cool.

Summer Fun - Hawaii - May

Sort of last minute ( a month before) we found out that KC needed to go to Hawaii for a couple of days for work. So we decided it make a week long trip and that I would come with him to keep him company. We rented a little condo on the island of Oahu's windward shore and bought our plane tickets. It was wonderful despite some rain at the beginning of the trip and of course the week went by too quickly. Here are some shots from our trip.

At the airport getting ready for the long flight over. It was a long night.

We spent the first day near Honolulu and visited the USS Arizona memorial and the Bowfin Submarine.

We hiked to the top of Diamond Head crater, great view but it was hot.

Part of the Diamond Head hike included a long flight of stairs. The military built these to access the look outs that they have at the top.

We hiked in the jungle to Manoa Falls. It was the same day and much cooler among the trees. 

Lots of bamboo forests. 

Our rental car "Guido" was fun to drive.

We went on Sunday to the Valley of the Temples and to the Buddhist temple there. It had been raining pretty hard so the koi pond was murky, but look at the mountain and see how many waterfalls you can count.

We spent the next day at the Polynesian Cultural Center. They know how to treat you right. 

KC learning how to throw a spear.

The Laie Temple before KC started his second "work" day.

The Dole Plantation maze was fun to navigate. It took us about an hour to find all the boxes and get out.

We drove around the North Shore of Oahu where all the famous surfing beaches are. We watched the sunset at Sunset Beach as well.

Snokeling at Hanauma Bay, awesome.

I don't know the name of this blowhole, but the water was pretty turbulent so it was shooting pretty well.

Birthday Season!

All of the boys birthdays are one right after another for the last 3 months. So we call it birthday season around here. Instead of doing 3 different posts I am doing one post for all 3 boys' birthdays.

Andrew turned 9 and had just a family party for his birthday. He got to have Grandma and Grandpa come up for his special day though and we all went to Planet Play to eat lots of pizza and do laser tag, mini golf, go karts and other fun stuff. He is a big fan of Minecraft still so I made his cake with that in mind. The cake only really makes sense to real hardcore Minecraft fans.

William's birthday was next and he was so excited. He turned 4 years old, but if you ask him now he'd say he's 12 years old. (I think because he asked me when he could go to the temple and I said he had to be 12.) Anyway we went to Hollywood Connection and went on the carousel that he tolerated, the bumper cars that William LOVED, and we tried roller skating which he didn't love. For his cake he insisted on having a blue cat cake, so he got one.

Isaac turned 7 years old and it was his turn to have a friend party. I told him it had to be small so we could justify having another friend party when he turns 8. He informed me 1 week before his birthday that he wanted a Tron theme party. So I got busy and luckily found some stuff online such as free printable invitations, an idea for making program discs (that glowed) and playing a ring toss game, an idea for decorating the cake and a fun idea using black lights. I got most of it from the Disney family.go.com website. My brother also donated some genuine Tron music to play in the background that really set the mood. We had a ton of fun. After eating, pizza, ice cream and cake the kids all went down and watched some scenes from the movie in our Grid room. It was cool.

Isaac also really wanted a wooden samurai sword. We must love him because now he has one. Oye.