Naomi's Geckos

Naomi decided that she was going to make the best of living with geckos :-)

Writing Letters

Amber wrote some letters recently with her fun birthday present :-)

Motorcycle Trip

Messy, Happy Eater

Playing

The Kids

They were sitting quite nicely together until Brent decided that Amber's arm looked kind of tasty. Needless to say she wasn't exactly interested :-)

Trying Breadfruit

This post goes out to my friend Tiffany. She and I like to try interesting new fruits. This is "breadfruit." It grows much like a coconut. Our Samoan neighbors shared it with us. I baked it in the oven at 350 for about 1 hr. The inside is starchy, kind of like a plantain fruit. The neighbors said we should pour coconut milk over it, but...guess I'm not "Hawaiian enough" yet because I didn't have any coconut milk in the pantry. smiles. Other recipes I've read say that you can substitute breadfruit for potatoes. Interesting. I'll have to keep practicing and refining my Hawaiian cooking skills over the next 2 years. :-)

Geckos

O.K. So I caught this picture of a gecko on our outside wall the other night (as per people's requests). He's really a friendly looking little guy. smiles.

The next morning Lucas caught a baby Gecko in the house. Amber likes to pet them.

Little Man

Brent is almost 9 months now. Hard to believe that come October he will be one! He's getting so big, and... that tongue... lol.

Mr. Smooshi

This fun pillow was a bonus birthday present. Amber did the bat-your-eyes, smile-at-daddy, and say-please routine... It worked! :-)

Amber's Birthday

Happy 2nd Birthday, Amber Bethany! What a beautiful little princess you are! We all love you!

Pretty cooking apron, rolling pin, and fun mixing/baking supplies from G'pa and G'ma Smith. Princess flip flops from Dad and Mom:

Art supplies and pink puff pen from Auntie Renee. Black purse, piggy bank, bracelets, creation book, big girl underwear from G'ma Maureen and G'pa Paul:

New stuffed dog ("woo") from Daddy:

Singing "happy birthday" card from G'pa Paul and G'ma Maureen:

Lucas's Motorcycle Gear

Lucas is acquiring his motorcycle safety gear in preparation for the "motorcycle safety" course at the end of the month. He got this slick new helmet at the bike store just the other day. Now he's ready for a sweet ride. :-)

At The End Of The Hike

Here we are eating lunch at the end of our half way hike to Manoa Falls. We also learned a valuable lesson about why not to leave your windows open. That is unless you don't care about wild chickens taking over your car as a temporary roosting (and everything that goes along with that) place.

Stuck In The Mud

Unfortunately for us the path turned pretty muddy about half way through, and was a little more slippery then we could manage safely with Amber and Brent.

Amber didn't exactly like the squishy mud in her shoes.

The Rainforest

The rain forest was quite something, with towering trees, very dense vegetation, and amazingly deep shades of green. It is quite a difference from some of the vegetation only a few miles away which is pretty much a desert due to the effects of the mountains on the rainfall.

Start Of Our Hiking Attempt

We have been wanting to take a hike, so we picked what we thought would be an easy path for us with the kids. This is us at the start of our hike to Manoa Falls, through one of the many rain forests here on the Island.