Tommy's Birthday

Happy New Year Everyone

Amber Off Roading

Brent On A Date

Going For A ride

Amber and Brent getting a Ride in their friend's SUV.

Amber And Brent On Surfboard

Longboard Surfing

More surfing. Almost done with these pictures I promise!

This is a longboard if you hadn't figure that out by now ;-)

Me riding one in. I have to figure out how to set Naomi up with my better camera sometime as it is hard to get pictures that far out with a little point and shoot camera.

Merry Christmas!

New Blog Title Picture

We just posted a new blog title picture for the new year as the kids especially have changed a ton during the last year. Happy early Christmas!!!



Old picture for comparison.

Kids Together

Owen Update

We wanted to update everyone on Owen's progress.

He is back in State College with my parents, after spending about a week in DC visiting various doctors there. I was blessed to get to see him several times when I was back in DC on work travel and was very impressed with his attitude about the whole situation. He really wants God to be glorified in the whole situation. Owen had some excellent care in DC but he still has a long road ahead of him with trying to restore nerve damage in his hand and shoulder, and with reconstruction of his ear. Please continue to keep him and the family in your prayers. Thank you!

Brent's Christmas Pictures

Here are some of the pictures I got of Brent in his Santa Outfit on the beach.

Ambers's Christmas Pictures

Got some cute pictures of the Kids on the beach in preparation for our Christmas Cards this year :-)

North Shore Surfing

We didn't have any of the cute girls along to help take our picture, so here are some after shots of us on the north shore after surfing there. The waves were ~4 ft on average (which in Hawaii measurements means that some of them were over my head - 6ft). We weren't sure exactly the names of the beach we ended up surfing at but it was close to Lanakai. The waves even at that size were incredibly powerful and almost more then any of us could handle. Brian took his first trip "Over The Falls" - surfing lingo for when the front of your surf board dives under when catching a wave and the back of your board goes over your head (ie you do a head over heals flip and the big wave crashes right on top of you). The day after we were up there a big north swell came in that brought the waves up to +15 ft (needless to say we did not try to surf those). The pictures are of us in Haliewa (Legendary North Shore Surfing Town).






Our Surf Mobile

Brent Being Silly

More at Waimea Valley

Having Fun in the waterfall at the top of the hike.

Waimea Falls Hike

We all hiked Waimea Falls together






Lots of very large tropical trees :-)




Plenty of Peacocks around as well.

Brent And Santa

Santa and a Dinosaur. Brent is a happy little guy.

Amber Excited About Snowman

It has been a long time since Amber saw a snowman ;-) It is supprising she remembers what one is :-)

Naomi and Mom Tour Downtown

Mom and I got to enjoy a nice girls' day away down in Honolulu/Waikiki. We toured the 'Iolani Palace and also the Mission House. Both were VERY interesting! There is so much more to Hawaiian history and culture than hula dancers on the beach. Hawaii has a historically strong Christian influence from the missionaries who came! We also enjoyed dinner and shopping and a mini makeover down on the Waikiki strip.

Snorkling Trip

Short Video from the Snorkeling tour. The guys were oogling the twin 225 HP outboard motors (Mr. Larsen has a 14 HP motor on his fishing boat ;-)).

Snorkeling Trip

So if I had to list one of my top regrets from the year it would be not having a waterproof camera along with us when I went snorkeling with Dad and Brian Larsen. We went with http://www.seahawaii.com/ off the west coast of Oahu and saw some truly amazing sites and I am very disappointed not to have had my camera with me.

The first stop was snorkeling with a pod of 50+ Hawaiian spinner dolphins (named because they like to do spins in the air when they jump out of the water) in crystal clear 40ft deep water. After waiting for 10 min for the Dolphins to come check out our boat we slipped in off the side of the boat and immediately saw the Dolphins swimming below and around us. We could see very clearly all the way to the bottom. We stayed there for half an hour with the Dolphins all around us (one surface right in front of me (4ft away).

Our second stop was Turtle rock off Makaha Beach. This was an amazing reef/rock formation about 10 ft under the water that almost always has several green sea turtles just hanging out around it. We were not disappointed as there were 4 turtles (that I saw at least) right in the vicinity of the rock just hanging out along the reef, along with tons of other fish. One of our guides (who does snorkeling tours during the week, and is a fire dancer on the weekends) also showed us some of the differences in the types of sea urchin and which ones are safe to hold. If you were wondering a sea urchin crawling on your hand is a very funny feeling. It feels like a little prickly suction cup.

In all it was one of the coolest experiences I have had yet while we have been here. Would have been cool to see a humpback whale as well (they said they ran into one on the prior days tour).

Here are a couple pictures from the boat.