The Braves

Tobie started his Tee Ball games this past weekend. They had opening day and then he got to play his first game. It is all very exciting! Theo is one of the coaches and actually got to pick the name of the team. He chose the Atlanta Braves. I was surprised by this because that was my Pawpaw's favorite team, but then Theo reminded me that he IS from Georgia. Duh Kara! But I thought it was an awesome coincidence and I love the name!

Having their first huddle of the day. Tobie is concentrating extremely hard. The sun was right behind me so I couldn't get him to look at me when I took the picture.
Walking onto the field for the opening ceremony. All the Tee Ball and Soft Ball teams gather before their games as a little kick off show before the season. Theo is on the other side of the guy in the brown jacket. Incidentally the guy in the brown jacket is also Coast Guard and he flies helicopters. He arranged for a CG helicopter to fly right over head of the crowd.
The team is looking really good!

Here comes that helicopter I was mentioning.
They got really close. Miriam was a little unsure if she liked it because she hates loud noises. She doesn't even like going into a public bathroom because the toilets are too loud when you flush them. She has some interesting quirks!
This is the warm up before the game. Tobie is straight ahead getting ready to throw. He's #6, that was Theo's number when he played ball. As you can tell his pants are already all dirty before the game even got started. That is a result of rolling down a very steep hill right behind our house after the opening ceremony.
I love his stance! His knee position is priceless!
Coach Theo. Lookin' good Coach!!!
There is Tobie running to first while Coach Theo does double duty with a wandering child.
Being steered in the right direction after a fellow player just hit.


Tobie resting. He is conserving his energy.
Throwing the ball in. I am his mother so I am biased, but he has a really good throwing arm and good aim also. They didn't keep score for the game, but that didn't stop me from congratulating him on kicking the other teams booty! I'm not competitive at all!

A True Prophet

The Ensign came out with a supplementary magazine all about the life and accomplishments of Gordon B. Hinckley. There was a quote in there that really rang true and I think should be hung in every home. He said, "If a husband would think less of himself and more of his wife, we'd have happier homes throughout the Church and throughout the world." Now how can you deny the gospel is true when the Prophet, a true man of God, makes a comment like that! President Hinckley was a wonderful and wise Prophet.

Laie Temple

Of course we had to visit our temple. This was the 5th Temple ever built and the first to be built outside of Utah. I thought that was a very interesting bit of history.

I had to go pick Emma up because she was so interested in the statue of Jesus Christ.


What a beautiful temple. Maybe next time we will be able to go in.

Valley of the Temples

These beautiful mountains were on our way to the temple. We passed this other place called the Valley of the Temples which was pretty much a graveyard that had all these temples from other churches in it. It all began with the building of this temple, which is a Buddhist temple that was built for all the Japanese people that had started to relocate here in Hawaii. It was very pretty all around, not as pretty as the LDS Temple of course, but it was interesting to see.


They had these really beautiful black swans swimming in this moat that went around the temple. It was also filled with these huge koi fish.
This is the largest statue of Buddha outside of any Asian country.
They had this big gong that it said would bring you good luck if you rang it. Tobie rang it a couple of times too many. There was people waiting behind him and I had to force him down so they could have a turn.
I wasn't going to ring it until I read the message that said it would bring good luck, so I thought what the heck?

Beach Days

We tried to spend as much time at the beach as we could, which was surprisingly not that much. We were running around so much sightseeing that we didn't get too many relaxing on the sand days. But when we did the kids really enjoyed it. It felt as if you were closer to the sun, so even though it wasn't that hot, you could feel the sun burning your skin as soon as it touched it. We could well lubricated with sunblock!Emma loved the water. I really loved that there wasn't any tide here, so we didn't have to worry about big waves sweeping her out. We still stayed close since her legs are still relatively new to the whole walking thing. She did fall in a couple of times, but that did not deter her from walking right back in.
I thought I had a better picture of her legs coated with the sand, but this is the best we did apparently. Like I said in another posting the sand here is like breadcrumbs. So she would get wet and then roll around in the sand which coated her legs with the stuff and I thought they looked like little breaded chicken legs.
It took a lot of convincing Miss Miriam to even set foot in the water. She would much rather be sunbathing and burying herself in the sand. It was nice spending time with her because I could strategically lay out and make sand sculptures to!
Here are the girls loving the sand together. Emma was ferocious with that shovel. She kept slinging the sand onto Miriam. Miriam was a good sport about it until it started to land on her head.
"This place is awesome!"
Tobie with the skim board. He could have stayed out there for hours on end. Every day he was telling us how much he loves Hawaii and never wants to leave. Well maybe one day we can get stationed there, but who knows!?!

Honolulu Zoo

We visited the Honolulu Zoo and though it was small, it was pretty nice. I actually prefer that they are small, I get really exhausted trekking through zoos for hours. This tree was outside of the entrance. These tress were all over the place and very interesting. The trunk would grow and then the branches would send down these things that look like skinny vines, but once they reach the ground they become roots and start getting huge. This was one of the biggest ones we saw, and even though it looks cool, it did not smell good in there. Apparently all the homeless people live in trees just like this one. I could have kept walking inside it and it was like little rooms made from these limbs/roots. So the smell of human waste was very strong. YUCK! I was like, "Theo hurry and take the picture so I can get out of here!"
First we walked through the birds. Now birds are nice, but I wanted to get to the real big and exciting animals, like the elephant or the lions. But my kids, especially my girls were so excited to see these birds. They kept oohing and aahing over ever cage we came by. Pretty soon we weren't even stopping in front of the cages anymore because they would stare at one for so long.
We finally made it to the elephants, but Miriam was actually more impressed with the little stone elephant figurines that were in the exhibit.
They saw these hippos and thought, "wow elephants, HEY something we can CLIMB ON!!!"
This turtle was huge! And he came walking right up to us eating grass the whole way, like a huge turtle lawnmower.
This big guys name is Rusti, he is over 300lbs! It was almost freakish to see him grab the ropes and pull himself up on the poles and hammocks. His fur was so long, it looked as if he had this long fur cape on.
Climbing again. I think this was my kids favorite part of the zoo. I was looking at a sleeping lioness and they could have given a rat's posterior.
These apes were pretty funny. I think it was this guy here that ran at the glass at some other kid. She was probably not much older than Emma, but she fell down backwards and started crying he scared her so much. It was pretty intense seeing that thing coming right at you even though there is this thick piece of glass between the two of you. He seemed to like Emma though and she was transfixed. We sat there for probably 10 minutes just watching them walk back and forth or just munching on their snack like this guy.
We did skip some of the Safari part of it. It was lunch time and the kids were getting grumpy. The giraffe statue was the closest Tobie got to actually seeing one. But SanFran has a great zoo, so we can catch them all up with their Safari animals some other day.

The Hilton

Our first three nights were spent at the Hilton. It was so nice! I would have to say that I was a little surprised by the beaches. I'm used to the white powder you find in the Gulf or on the East Coast. When we went out to the beach the sand was really coarse like breadcrumbs. Then when you would walk out into the water there was a lot of broken up coral that made it very unpleasant to walk on. It was great if you got a floaty and just drifted, as long as you didn't have to walk on the bottom barefoot you would be fine. But I was a little surprised and I guess disappointed that it wasn't all smooth. This is Diamond Head in the background, not that guy right in the middle of my shot. We rode into the crater of it, and you can actually hike it, but with two kids that we would have to strap onto our backs and one that might beg to be held also, we didn't think it sounded like too much fun. We drove in and drove out. "We're inside an old volcano Tobie!" "And now we're out."
They had all kinds of cool animals inside the hotel. They had penguins that we passed everyday on our way out to the beach, breakfast or just going to get the car. It was pretty cool. They fed them at 8am every morning so we tried to get there for that every morning. They also had pink flamingos, but they didn't turn out in the picture. Their ponds were filled with huge Koi, and this pond here with the penguins had turtles. They were so cute!
Here the kids are running out to the beach first thing in the morning. We were actually headed to breakfast, but once the kids saw the beach and the ocean they just took off running. It took us a while to coax them back. It was a really pretty sight to see every morning.
This was by the lobby. It's all open so you see straight back to the ocean while you are checking in.
Every Friday night they have a show with hula dancers and this guy that does all these cool tricks with fire. He spins them and even ate the fire a little. This was as close as we could get and the best picture that was taken out of the whole 30 min. Then they had a fireworks show that was really awesome!
Inside the hotel you really felt like you were inside some fantasy tropical island. With all the exotic birds just wandering around and the beautiful plants, but as soon as you left you were immediately in the city of Waikiki. It was pretty surreal. I really loved the Hilton and I was a little sad to leave it, but it was just too darn expensive!

Plane Ride to Hawaii

We decided to take a Space A flight over to Hawaii since it was free and all. Let me tell you it was some experience! First they canceled the flight on Thursday, the day we were planning to go, but we caught a flight on Friday. So it was too disappointing, and we were able to move our hotel reservations back a day. The plane itself was a cargo plane. We weren't allowed to take too many pictures inside since there was cargo, I think because of the serial numbers and security purposes. The seats were lined up on either side of the plane and they were just fold down chairs. We were able to take on the car seats which was a life saver. There weren't any windows except the ones in the door. The people working there were really nice. Tobie got to go in the cockpit and even got to steer the plane a little. It was a 6 hour flight that the girls got a little sleep on. It was so loud in there that I couldn't hear Theo talking and he is the one taking the picture.