Arie's 8th Birthday

Today we celebrate Arie's 8th Birthday! She is so excited about turning 8 and being baptized. Shane and I were talking about how time flies. Arie is turning 8, Jace passed the sacrament for the 1st time, JT is getting so big and is almost ready to start driving. Arie adds a spark of life to our family, everything is such a big deal. It seem just like yesterday that we were in the hospital fighting for her life. It is truly amazing how her health has improved year to year! Sat. will be such a special day for me to have Arie baptized, it is a day that I sometimes wondered if I would ever see happen. Happy Birthday Arie!!! We Love You!!!

Family Trip

I thought that I would share some of our activities in Hawaii and some of our photos. We left on Mon. Dec. 29th 2008. We had a direct flight to Hawaii. We stayed at a beach house in the town of Laia. Which is close to the North Shore where the famous pipeline is. Of course we checked out the pipeline and Sunset beach. There were lots of surfers and bodyboarders. The humidity was very high and it rained every day. But at least it was a warm rain. The boys and Shane took surf lessons with Cory and Jaden at Chun's Reef. Their lesson was taught by "Uncle Bryan". "Uncle Bryan" claimed to be the coach of alot of the pro surfers. All of our surfing students did get up and surf. While I was watching the surf lessons I saw a guy surfing with a bulldog on his board. I told Shane that we are turning Riley in for a new model.

We hiked to a waterfall that was about 700 feet tall. It was a waterfall that tourists don't go to, just the locals. We had to climb a rope up 2 sections of water. We ended up with a ton of bug bites. We had to hike up the river bed and in the river for about one mile. Only Bret and Chalisa's family and ours went to the top. The kids had the chance to jump into pools of water under some of the smaller falls on the way up and down. I slipped and fell into one of the pools, which was ok other than I had a bag on my back with beach towels and clothes in it. The bag quickly weighted me down as I tried to make it to the edge of the pool.

We did alot of body boarding at different beaches. We only ended up with one major injury. Bret totally got ate by a pounder. He injured his neck. He had a painful couple of last days and had to miss his surf lesson. When he got home he went to the Doctor, who told him that he had torn his ligaments in his neck.

We went to Pearl Harbor, the PCC, Hannama (sp) Bay (snorkeling), saw the blow hole, the most photographed beach, visited Tim and Elaine Hobbs (serving a mission at the PCC), ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, went to the Flea Market, ate fresh shrimp at the Shrimp trucks (yummmmmy!). I am leaving out many of the sites and beaches we went to. We did alot of beach walking and gathering shells. We enjoyed snorkeling at different beaches in our touring.

New Years Eve in Hawaii is a HUGE deal. They start letting off fireworks around 5pm and don't stop until sometime early in the morning. The smoke is so thick from all of the fireworks. The Hawaiins save their money to buy fireworks. They have firework wars and shoot them across the street at each other. If you wonder what the picture is with the smoke it is New Years Eve on the street where the temple is.

We drove up the West side of the island (north). This is really the ghetto of Hawaii!

(See the picture with the Holiday Inn Flag!)