Just Fun and Games

Some of the fun of family is just the joy of playing together...

They won't have any trouble with her and boys...  :-)

And it has come full circle.  I was going to post a picture of my girls riding on the back of the boys but alas, I will simply remind us.

After snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, Em wanted to draw a seahorse.  It was so good, I had to take a pic. She is very detail oriented and actually quite good...so, no, not from either of us...that has skipped generations.

Em didn't snorkel much at Hanauma, but then the next day we were at a lagoon and she let K "teach her how to do it."

This might be my favorite picture of Em in a LONG time!  It makes me laugh every time I see it.  I realize she does a lot of funny stuff, but this takes the cake.

Mari is three now. Like I said, no problem with the boys...man, she is pretty!

The first hike we took the girls on was the Pill Boxes at Lanikai. The beauty of moving to the other side of the island (last time we were here, my brother's family lived on Ford Island and now they have moved to Kauai) is that all the pretty hikes are super close by.

The pill boxes are the old guard posts at the top of many of the hills along the coast of Hawaii that have been left for tourists.

Being winter on the windward side of the island, most of our visit was fraught with wind and clouds that rolled in and out all day and night.

The lack of sun made the water not look as blue and green as it typically is, but still it can't steal all the beauty, and the bonus was that it wasn't so hot and miserable.  While we were up here, we looked up the price of real estate.  If you would like one of those houses on the beach down there, you may purchase it for a cool 8 to 20 million.

That behind K is what Kauai looks like when a storm rolls through.

Now my only goal in picture taking is to teach Em to open her eyes without lifting her eyebrows so high that she looks scary! He he.

Girls

While the boys were away, the girls did play...

The boy cousins still had school to attend when we first arrived and with the Dads gone, we decided to show Mari what it is like with older sisters instead of brothers. Of course there was dress-up and tea parties...here we made puppets.

And we danced the mornings away.

Then we went to all the calm beaches in the area...those with small waves so the faint of heart could boogie-board without fear and walk right past the giant breakers to float in the ocean as the waves rolled by beneath us.

As Stitch always says, "Ohana means family." Aww.

Three little monkeys eating bananas at the beach.

This monkey could NOT resist the trees here.  She always made it pretty high - at least until I got scolded by a concerned native. (I was usually distracted by my youngest, who, five feet off the ground, had my stomach turning as I waited for her to break her arm). I was not in the mood to explore the medical prowess of the Hawaiian Islands! Meanwhile, my oldest, who was thirty feet up in the tree, did not have me concerned in the least. I understand that as small as she is, she looks way too young to climb that high. But what they don't know is that she is older than they think, AND, she has great balance and coordination coupled with an over-dose of caution. This is the perfect combination for a parent, especially if the parent has an accident prone sibling to watch. If K is scared, she won't go. If she thinks she is unsafe, she won't do it. It is comforting as a parent...once you learn to trust it. :-)

Anyhow, I took pictures as she got near the ground and everyone was sure she was safe.  Sigh.

The littlest monkey decided she was a fox and waited for the girls to stop climbing. She is very patient!

One of the days, Nati received an award at school. We were all so proud!

It took me the better part of a week to really decompress from all the stress of the pigeon fever and the school year starting up and losing our youth leader, but somewhere near the end of the first week, after a couple of good hikes, I finally started to relax.  It made me realize just how stressed I had let myself get.

Now that the horses are well and school is in a groove, I am hoping not to let my stress build that much again. I don't have a real strategy for doing that other than praying more so I worry less and genuinely leaving tomorrow's worries for tomorrow. I find that the stress I agree to take on to myself can become a habitual way of living, just like worry or fear. Mine comes from wanting to do everything the best way possible - perfectionism. So I strive and strive until one day I realize I have gone too far and I am exhausted. Then I have no choice but to fall back into grace and ask God to forgive me for trying to do it all on my own - again - and ask Him to give me proper perspective on what it means to do things well and to the best of my ability without exhausting all of who I am. It is a hard lesson for me and with an endless 'to-do' list, I am learning that I even need to plan in time to rest and have fun.  Getting M to do the same...we will see how that goes. :-)  Speaking of time to rest, I have ten minutes until my mandatory rest time before bed. Yeehaw!!

So, on the ranch front, I did lose one of my workers the day we got back so I am on chores for half the month, but other than that, the ranch did well while we were gone and we have even had some rain. We are cold! Well, for here and it was a rough transition back, but in so many ways, it is nice just to not to be hot.  I am a cold sissy. I admit it. But even for me, that was a very long summer of very hot days and it's nice to see it go!  My midwestern family will appreciate just how sissy I have gotten - I just bought ski pants for doing the chores in the morning because it gets down into the high thirties and low forties at night and I don't like to go out in it in the morning. :-)  In my defense, it will often be raining as well, but really, I just don't like to be cold.  You would think it is twenty below the way I am dressed! Hope they don't get beat up by the work!

Have a wonderful day! God bless!!