Inspector Hector

We love brushing our teeth! Especially now that we've discovered

Inspector Hector Plaque Detector!

You remember those little red pills the dentist made us chew to see all the plaque we were missing, well our kids do it every night with a rinse. It is so great, they fight over who gets to get inspected first. Then love to brush all the blue off in to the sink.

She is such a ham!!

Ben says, oooh I want some!

Boofest at the Graveyard Grill

For our traditional Halloween dinner we made a trip to the graveyard grill.

Savannah made the signs and hung them

eyeball juice with floating eyeballs

Wrapped mummies (bratwurst)

moldy bones (the mold were peas on the side)

bloody fingers and graveyard dip

all ready for tricks or treats, mostly treats

It was the year of the fairy, 3 of my nieces were fairies

David was not feeling well but wanted to trick or treat anyway

Dave & I dressed up this year, happy hawaiians!

Pumpkins & Patches & Puddles Oh My

How did fall just sneak up on me? One day I am lounging on the beach in beautiful weather and the next it is raining and halloween is already behind me. Forgive me if I have adopted a little of the island mentality and am a few weeks behind on posting pictures.

We started off the season with a pumpkin picking party at Grandma's Garden. Trust my mom to throw a party for all 14 of her grandkids on her own birthday. She is pretty giving! Then the floodgates opened and we spent Isabella's fall trip to the pumpkin patch in the pouring, driving, freezing rain!

Where my butt got so wet and my pants so muddy from the kids shoes that they are actually stained!

We did find a pretty cute pumpkin though!

We headed over to our old standby Joe's place (favorite farmstand ever) for some bigger pumpkins, Savannah wasn't satisfied with the size of the one she got from Grandma and Ben's was a little green gourd so we got 2 more and some delicious homemade apple cider

Carving is serious business!

You can't see it well, but we got these really COOL looking pumpkins from Joe's place but they were impossible to carve, even with Dave's big hunting knife! So Savannah carved her pumpkin from grandma after all and Dave carved Isabella's grandma pumpkin for Ben since she got another at BI-Zi Farms.

Little chubby hands! He loves his punkin!

The Rest of Hawaii...photo overload!

The lagoons at Ko'Olina were so beautiful, we spent every day snorkeling and swimming for hours.

This was a canoe from the 1800's, first used for fishing, then for drug running.

Our favorite lagoon, we got to swim with 4 sea turtles that live there, they were so tame, swimming right up to us and letting the kids feed them sea grass from their hands.

The Pali overlook, we thought bella would blow away it was so windy. Can you believe when we moved from NC these kids were 5 & 3 & 1 day old!! It was interesting to see how the dynamics changed, when we lived in NC David & Carynn were best friends now it was the boys & girls who play together, no mixing!

Bella is wiped out from bodysurfing at Bellows beach

We caught some "narly waves"

Lynn watched the kids so Dave and I could go snorkeling in Hanauma bay, it was such a beautiful morning and we had a wonderful time. I can't believe how BIG all the fish are that I always pictured very small. Our new favorite word....humuhumunukunukuapua'a or Trigger Fish. They are SO CUTE!

My little wahinis, with their "coco boobies" as we call them.

Visiting the Laie temple

The polynesian cultural center was really fun, I wish we had gone 2 days instead of just 1!

Watching the boat parade

The girls learning to hula like good wahinis!

The boys didn't want to learn to hula!

Look who we ran into...The Larsens! We had trouble connecting the whole week, busy schedules relaxing by the pool you know. But there they were chucking spears. I love running into friends, it is like getting a warm hug!

Spear Chucking!

Saying goodbye to the Lamberts. We had such a wonderful time visiting them. The kids all got along so well and for us it was like no time had gone by since North Carolina.

Ohana Sunsets

We caught the sunset the next night, and it was beautiful!

Playing in a Banyan Tree next to Paradise Cove Luau

Looking fore tidepools

The Fellow

Dave was made a Fellow of the American College of Dentists. An invitation only dental society. That was the whole reason we went to Hawaii, we didn't want to miss him being inducted in. Plus the conference was in HAWAII...need I say more. Anyway, Day 3 included lots of fun things but was topped off with this event at the Sheraton.

Shaka

The kids made it about 3/4 of the way through entertaining themselves with cars and games on my phone and then we had to excuse ourselves to wait outside.

We raced back to Ko'Olina, a 1 hour drive with Honolulu traffic (YUCKY) trying to catch the sunset over the water. We were 10 minutes too late. Bummer!

Hawaii, v 1.0

It is going to take me lots of posts to get through all the pictures we took of our trip. And since I am still in laundry recovery and school recovery mode at home, please forgive the lateness. We had the most wonderful family vacation to Hawaii the end of Sept, beginning of October. Dave was going to the ADA conference and being inducted into a dental society so we decided to celebrate and take all the kid

s with us. We also have friends who live on Oahu so visiting them was an added bonus!

Thank Heaven for ipods! And kids getting older.
Bella the secret MJ fan, this is her singing Thriller. It sounds pretty much like this:

Thrilla, thrilla night a humma hum budu dada hmum aa

We stayed in a condo on the south side of the island at the beautiful Mariott Ko'Olina resort. It had 4 lagoons so we had to try them all. What a relaxing vacation. I think this was lagoon 2
Ben wasn't a huge fan of the water, or the sand. But he was content to sit on my lap.

Dave taught each of the kids to snorkel

And luckily we can find a Wendy's everywhere we go. Dave even tried the local special at McDonalds, spam and eggs. He said it was just as gross as he remembered it being from when he was a kid. My thought was, "well why did you buy it then??"


All tuckered out. (Yes her hands are in her pants What The??)