Oh What Do You Do In the Summertime?

(I actually wrote this post all the way back on July 20th but didn't post it because I needed to add more pictures...almost 2 months later I'm finally getting back to it! It's long, grab some popcorn.)

I haven't posted anything about our summer. It's not because it's was boring and nothing to report but quit the opposite. A normal summer for us in the past would be to leave home the minute school got out and hit the road to go visit family. Well we now live near family and our annual trip to Utah didn't happen until the end of July. What would we do all of June and most of July? Let me tell you:

In June we had a visit from Kuliana's family for a week. We had a busy week with playing and with baseball games. Kanani had also volunteered us to put on a little production for a Luai so we practiced a couple of days to relearn a dance and to teach our girls some dances. I was nervous about it but it turned out great. Everyone did a great job. Especially Kuliana, she was the teacher and she did a solo dance. She is awesome at Hula and I loved watching her dance, I definetly would love to learn it way better and to beable to move like that. It is such a beautiful style of dance that I feel it has a very spritual side to it.

A week later myself, Alani, Kaleb, & Hayden, Kanani and her 3 youngest and Lehua and her two kiddos headed to Kuliana's for a fabulous birthday party for Kenzi. Todd had won a horse party at there preschool's silent auction and we all got to benefit from it. The first day we got there we headed out to see Kuliana's new house that was being built. It was gorgeous.

The next day we got brave and took our children to the Zoo.

When we got home the kids had a great time with the slip in slide.

The next day we rested and decided to only go to a movie. Then on Saturday we went to the party and the kids had a blast. They horse painted, played with lizards, panned for gold, and rode horses. What a fantastic party!

Leilani's family came next to visit. They were actually waiting for us when we got home from Kuliana's. We went swimming, bike riding, and pond jumping.

In the middle of all this we had baseball and softball going on. Parker started his league shortly after we moved here in March and his season went into the middle of June.

Kalia and Kaleb started in May and went until the first week of July. Eric was also heavily involved in this. Hours before Kalia's first game we got a phone call saying that if we didn't coach her team, her team wouldn't be able to play. So, Eric took over. He was a little freaked out at first never before having coached girls fast pitch. He didn't even know all the rules that went along with it. But thanks to you tube he learned many things, like how to fast pitch!! Kalia I think was getting tired of watching videos on how to pitch. She did pitch half way through the season and did great. This was her first year of playing softball or baseball. She picked up on it quite easily and started to develop yet another talent.

So our nights in June were spent running between games. On the nights that we didn't have games we had practices. We were all happy when everyone was finished and we got to relax a little.

This brings us into July. July started with Eric heading off to Gerinomo (scout camp) on the 4th of July. Yep you read it on the 4th. I thought the day would be ruined for the rest of us but we ended up having a great day. We started by going to the cheesy little parade they had here. We then went swimming at Lehua's neighbors house and spent hours there. Kaleb learned how to do flips off the diving board. (To my horror the following Monday he decided to try it off the high dive. I was glad I didn't see that!) We then went back to Dad's and had Hamburgers and Hot Dogs. He cooked them and they were delicious. After that we headed up to the fireworks. Kanani's family had found a great spot last year on the baseball fields and so we headed there. We just didn't know that they would be setting them off on the baseball field in front of us a whole 200yds away. We had to crank our heads all the way back to watch them because they were practically on top of us. Some of them even fell to the ground maybe 30 yds in front of us. It scared my poor little Alani like crazy and now she never wants to see fireworks again. They lasted about 30 minutes, our little town gave a great show.

The rest of July up to this point as been talked about, our anniversary (and yes Eric was at Gerinomo for that too), Wicked (incredible), trip to Yuma (exhausting). The week before we left for Utah Kaleb had Karate Camp and Kalia had Volleball Camp. We then headed out to Utah...that will be a later post! I hope.