I want to see her eyes.  To me, I can see her smile in her eyes (to know just how genuine the one on her mouth might be)...so to have the bangs in them constantly bugs me.  But, she wants to grow them out.  When I threaten her with the scissors, she runs to get a barrette to hold back the bangs.  But her promises are short-lived.  She hates ponytails and hair devices.  The hair is back in her eyes the next hour.  Yet, I can't bring myself to actually cut them.  Simply because she's growing up and making her own sense of self.  Apparently, I'll just have to wait it out for awhile longer.

One of my favorite things to do in Kauai is to swim with sea turtles at Ke'e Beach.  This is my favorite beach by far in Kauai, located at the end of the road on the island's north side.  Parking is hard to come by, so go early in the day.  If you go just beyond the reef, the turtles hang out there.  The challenge is to make it out over the reef.  The water is about 8 inches deeper than an average person floating depth, so you have to basically do the smallest flutter kicks to get out over the reef without touching it.  The work is worth it.  These turtles are awesome!

This past weekend I pulled off the impossible.  I kept a big secret from Jason.  I surprised him, Anna, and Holly with a trip to Kauai!  As I type this, I am sitting outside our room, enjoying the night's warm breeze and ocean smells.  This is heaven.

Two big influences led to this surprise, last minute vacation.  The first has to do with jealousy (the same influence responsible for some of my horrid high school moments).  The last two couples that I photographed were leaving for Kauai the next day for their honeymoons.  Kauai happens to be one of my favorite places on earth.  Now, I haven't seen that many places on earth...spain, mexico, canada, usa, honduras, guatemala, grand cayman, and kauai...but really I can't imagine much better than this island.  Grand Cayman was great, but since I live on the west coast...the flights are much easier to Kauai than the Carribean. 

Another influencing factor came from our neighbors across the street.  They are Muslim and just came back from a 2 week trip to Mecca to see their religion's holiest mosque.  I saw some amazing photos of their trip, heard some really interesting stories, but one thing they said really resonated with me.  Their trip reminded them that life is short, precious and that we should make sure to appreciate our moments as they come and take advantage of opportunities to spend time with our kids before they outgrow our houses.  And since I had recently been looking at old photos of the girls, this statement really hit close to home last week.

The two influences were strong.  I went home on Tuesday night and booked a trip to Kauai.  It is short trip, since I am in the midst of a busy wedding season...so just Sunday-Thursday.  My wedding on the 4th of July was in Los Angeles area.  Jason and the girls stayed in Paso to watch fireworks and then drove down Sunday morning to meet me for a few days of "visiting my family in San Diego." 

He had NO idea that what he was really doing was coming to LAX for a trip.  The surprise almost got spoiled when Jason let the girls sleep in on Sunday morning...thus leaving Paso nearly 2 hours later than he said he would.  I was sweating bullets that he wouldn't make it to LA in time for our flight...but he did.  I kept my secret all the way until he met me in LA at our friends' house.  He literally didn't believe me about the real vacation plans for hours.  He had a look on his face of complete and total stunned disbelief.

This also marked the girls first airplane ride.  They were a little nervous, but did well.  They spent about an hour drawing pictures of themselves on a beach, swimming with turtles, and smelling flowers (all things they associate with our descriptions of Hawaii).  The plane was empty in our section, so we all got to stretch out over about 4 rows of seats.  Now...please let that happen on the flight home and I'll be super excited!

Some of my favorite moments so far were Holly's excitement when she finally figured out we were staying for more than a couple hours.  When we walked into the hotel room she just shrieked in happiness because she finally understood that we were staying for awhile.  Apparently, she thought that we were just staying for a couple hours before that?!  And, this morning...our first morning...a rooster (one of the millions on Kauai that roam free) made his cock-a-doodle-doo right our our patio door.  Anna jumped bolt upright out of bed and said "What the heck was that?!  Is there a monster in Kauai?!"  Apparently, she's never actually heard a rooster in person?

So...happy Kauai days.  Hug the ones you love tight, plan a spur of the moment event together.  This is where the memories are made.

Ohhh...and Happy Birthday to Holly DiSimone.  She turned 5 years old today!  Luckily, Kauai makes birthday cakes and ice cream, too.  Not just beautiful sunsets and lush gardens.

I have finally downloaded the copious amounts of photos from our year of Disneyland travels and such. Thought I would share them here so that my mom can see them too. Rather than clog up the blog oodles of point-and-shoot snapshots, I'm gonna use my snazzy new toy...a blog show to condense the space a little bit.

You can hover over the thumbnails on the right hand side and it will automatically scroll around to get to the new images for you to click on. If you're like me though, you might get confused by the scrolling action being so fast and furious. Think about it this way, there are 81 images in this little scroll bar's height. If you want to see the 40th image, go about half way down the side of the scroll bar with your mouse pointer and the thumbnails will slow down and stop on the 40th image (+/-).  The key is to move your mouse very slowly.  very very slowly if you want to see each thumbnail. 

Or take the easy way out and click the right arrow key on your keyboard and it will advance one-by-one.



 

Today I got to drop Anna off at school and pick her up. That's a big day for me. Happily, I got to see all the first and second graders sing a loving Mother's Day song to all the mom's on the playground. Also, I was "surprised" with this cool book from Anna that they had made in class. (She'd let it leak that she was making a special gift for me earlier in the week...she just couldn't hold it in. Just like me...hate keeping secrets!) Days like this are why we don't go insane when raising kids. Why we keep feeding them and hugging them.