Hawaii Adventures

This year Helaman and I celebrated his spring break week with a trip to Hawaii! Here are some highlights!

Airplane shot of Oahu

Barely made our plane to Honolulu from Dallas on March 11 after dropping off Charlotte at Play-Dough summer camp with Grandma.

Checked into the Ilikai Hotel on Waikiki Beach. My parents let us use their time share there this year. Thanks!! It was really nice to be so close to the beach.
That night we walked out to the ocean. Not too many swimmers at night! So we headed to the spa.View from the hotel's roof restaurant. This is where we went to a timeshare sales pitch in order to get some money for activities.
Next day brought Hanauma Bay snorkeling and laying around. Just what I needed.
Saturday it rained and we headed to a huge swap meet in Aloha Stadium where we bought a lot of random Hawaiian stuff. Here is Helaman drinking from a coconut.
Luckily later that night it cleared up and we went to dinner right on the beach at Duke's.

The LDS Chapel in Honolulu.
USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
Monday bright and early we headed to the North Shore where we had a shark cage outing!
More pictures will be coming on this one when we get our underwater camera film developed. It was really fun and different from most things you can do in Hawaii. The sharks were about 10-12 feet and they came right up to the boat when the guides started throwing fish out. It was cool to see them so near to the boat, and even more amazing to see them underwater closely circling the floating cage we were in. We could have reached out and touched them - obviously that wasn't advised.
Survived! High recommend! From the boat we also saw a huge whale having some fun in the ocean breaching.
Afterward we stopped by the Hawaiian Temple in Laie which is under renovation.Here we are the next day at Valley of Temples Memorial Park, which is a huge graveyard with temples like this Byodo-In Temple, built to commemorate the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii.Then we headed to Kualoa Ranch for an ATV tour of all the places they film movies and shows.The ranch was beautiful and we especially loved the fresh guava you could pick from the trees and eat whole! Here we are at the Jurassic Park location.
Here's the Pearl Harbor film location. I don't remember that movie so well, but LOST fans will recognize this structure as a Dharma station, specifically where Jack and Juliette kissed.
At Hurley's Golf Course.
We both climbed up this tower from the "Jughead" episode. Remember, the bomb was buried.

Last stop on our way home was to the blowhole lookout. From here you could see many humpback whales surfacing.Goodbye Hawaii - til next time!

Birthday Mania

Birthday Numbers:

Height: 2'11"
Weight: 29 lbs.
Party attendees: 50
Free round trip plane rides to date: 11
Apple Jacks consumed: Infinite

Proudly displaying her cupcake cake

Extremely confused at the singing and flame on her cake. We forgot to prep her for this.Happy Birthday girl.

Look who's 2!

Happy Birthday Charlotte! You are growing up so fast!

March 27, 2007

1 month

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10 months1 year!14 months16 months17 months18 months19 months21 months23.5 months

Getting my money's worth

Deal Alert

Those of you who know me, know I love coupons. So when I saw that I could get the Entertainment Book 2009 for $1.25, I ordered it right away since this is the best deal I've seen on it all year. Even if you only use a few coupons out of the huge thing it is worth it. Here's how:

1.) Click HERE to register with Cashbaq. Cashbaq (a cash back portal like Ebates) is offering a $5 bonus to all new registered members. Be sure to edit the “My Account” page and enter your address so you can get paid.

2.) Once you’ve signed up for a Cashbaq account in Step 1, select the Entertainment Book store from the “Shop by Store” drop down window. The current offer for the book is 35% off PLUS $10 cash back from Cashbaq.

3.) Click the “Use Coupon” link to be directed to the Entertainment Book website. Enter your zip code on the Entertainment website and order the corresponding book for your location (~$16.25).

4.) Receive the 2009 Entertainment Book plus $15 in Cashbaq!

Between this and eBates, you should NEVER buy anything online without getting some cash back.

V-Day

One of our malls has a great collection of ride-on cars, trucks, trains and a space shuttle like this one that Charlotte just loves. She doesn't mind that I don't make them move ($1 for 30 seconds - are you kidding?), she just hops from one to the other and has a great time. I was hoping her car obsession would take the place of the shoe obsessions my friends have warned me about with their little girls. Nope - she is a shoe girl too now. On and off. On and off.

This weekend my parents came to visit us and my mom, Charlotte and I went to JCPenney for a photo shoot. Charlotte lost patience with the whole thing very quickly, but they did capture some good shots and we'll have to go back there to get a family picture because I was actually impressed with JCPenney's quality and prices. But I can't imagine doing this without a "handler", in this case my mom, which is probably why I've only been once before to get her picture taken. In that situation, I only ended up getting the two free 8x10s that came with my coupon, because Charlotte was screaming to get home and I had had it too. Thanks Mom! And thanks to Dad for staying home and fixing our toilet, refrigerator and rocking chair. It was a great Valentine's Day - we were stuffed with pizza, donuts, frozen custard and sugar cookies!

Full grown Char

This week Charlotte got her first official haircut! A few weeks ago I hacked off some of her baby mullet but that trim was having a rough time growing out. I didn't know how she would react to this situation but she behaved amazingly well and we both had a great time.

Waiting patiently for her turnPracticing moves on the catwalkBeing a model client and feeling very grown up in the high chairAll done!