kela's 8th and sea life park

I almost can't believe it.  My Kela has turned 8 years old!

How did this happen?!  Oh, yes.  Now I remember.

Time goes on, and we continue to age.

I am no longer a young mom excited and nervous about raising a newborn.

No, I'm now an old and cynical mother of 4 who looks forward to bedtimes and summer break to be over!

But since we are still in the middle of summer break, that leaves me with 4 kids that need to get out of the house!

And since the weather was perfect, this beautiful Monday, July the 9th, Kela got to spend her birthday hanging out with her very favorite people in the whole world:  her cousins.

Believe it or not, after nearly 11+ years of living in Hawaii, this was my very first time visiting Sea Life Park!

The girls were super excited!  

And even though it was HOT, and the park was quite a bit smaller than I thought it would be, the girls had fun and Kela had a fun birthday.

 So, here we are at the first stop: The Dolphin Show.

 Kaden's super excited to see the dolphins!

Just kidding.  He's just super excited to see his cousins, I'm sure.

 Me & my boy.

Right before he fell off the seat and scraped his knee.

No surprise there...

 And the show begins!

See that darker one on the far left?  That's actually the world's very first WHOLFIN!

(Half whale, half dolphin.  Crazy!)  And he did tons of flips and jumps, too.

Maybe not as spectacular of a show as Sea World...but still pretty good!

Mitch had to fly out this morning so it was just me and the kids.

And a lot of cousins, too, of course.

Here they are checking out the dolphins after the show.
They were just lazily swimming around...like they weren't just doing flips and playing with balls a few minutes ago!  We tried to get them to jump, but they weren't having it.  Oh well.  Dolphin trainers we are not.

After the dolphins we hit the playground for a little while before the next scheduled show.

 Kaden likes the slide.  A lot.

But he has this tendency to go down head first.  Which makes for some tricky landings when going down a curvy, spiral slide like this one.
Had to catch a tumbling toddler a couple of times.

...Rumi and Kela.  Not sure what to say about these two.

 

  Kaden playing peek-a-boo. 

 

Anna and Jojo.  During one of their "friendly spells."

Ha!  Knox LOVED the slide.

The Three Musketeers!
Can't wait for these three to grow up together!

We stopped by the HONU on the way to the show.

 Which Kaden had ZERO interest in.
Shame...I LOVE sea turtles!

 At the sea lion show...the kids were super hot!  Or, maybe just Jojo and Justus were because they were busy running the length of the bleachers for a good 20 minutes while waiting for the show to start.

 And the show was great!

Kaden was impressed!  Apparently, he's a fan of sea lion!

 Last stop was anther dolphin show...although this one had a few other animals in the mix.
And was blessedly under cover.

 Plus we got a close up look at the dolphins swimming!
How cool is that?!

 One of the other animals...the penguin.
Which was SO stinkin' cute!  Have you seen penguin walk?
Few things are cuter to watch than a penguin walking, I think.

And here we are...at the end of a LONG day.
What a group, huh?
I'm pretty sure we got mistaken for a school field trip of some kind.  :)

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Okay, and then a just a couple of days later, we had Kela's birthday party.
She insisted on having it at a bounce house in the mall.
I was pretty sure 8 was too old for bounce houses...but I was proven wrong.
On so many levels.

 Hmm...do you think the cake decorator at Costco piped enough frosting on this cake?

Kela and her grandma.  Who stayed for only a little bit.
Do you blame her?

 Look at these kids?!  And let me tell you, Kela wasn't the oldest one in this group.
Neither was she the craziest.

 No, I think the craziest fell to this one.

 Who kept falling back into the "hot tub" while Kaden looked on.

 Surprisingly, Kaden and Knox were pretty sedate for most of the day.

They did venture out into the bounce houses after a while, though.

Knox liked this particular slide the best.
Or, maybe it was the cute little girl playing there?
hmmm...one can only speculate...

 The party wasn't too huge.  Mostly cousins with a few friends mixed in.

 I decided on finger foods for the refreshments.
Bounce houses don't seem to go well with saucy, sticky food.

And Kela had fun.  Which was all that mattered, right?
Happy Birthday to Kela!
I can't believe how fast 8 years has flown by!

Stay tuned for her upcoming baptism at the end of the month! :)

To check out the other pictures from Sea Life Park, click HERE!
And for pictures from Kela's Birthday party, click HERE!

happy birthday america!

Ah, the Fourth of July!

The day was beautiful and sunny and perfect!

We discovered that the tide was pretty low late in the morning, so rather than spend the day at the beach (like most everyone else today!) we decided to head over to the tide pools!

Here we are.  

We got out there a tad later than I had hoped...but we still had plenty of time to hunt for crab and fish trapped in the pools of water created by the receding tide.

Here we are...exploring.

While Kaden looked on and guarded the bucket.

Jolee.  Posing with her net.

Which was purely for show.

She spent most of the time looking for hermit crabs and playing with the rocks on the beach.

Mitch, unfortunately, had to fly out the day before so I was solo out at the beach.

He came home later in the afternoon-in time for the evening festivities-but that meant I was busy watching out for this guy.

When he wasn't trying to escape my arms, he was fascinated with the bucket of ever-increasing fish.

These kids caught a LOT of fish!

 Here, you can't see too well...but the blue (and a red bucket, not pictured) had all the fish, while the yellow housed all the hermit and regular crabs. 

I think these are tiny Manini fish.

Super cute...and quite plentiful!

The kids caught a LOT of these guys.

Here's Jojo playing with a hermit crab.

Who refused to emerge from his shell.  Can you blame him?

Riho was the champion fish catcher.

The kids exploring the tide pools...

Dang...uploaded side ways.

But the water was cool and clear!

Atau caught this fuzzy crab.

Who totally played dead until we plopped him into the bucket.  

A lesson in crab hunting, perhaps?

These two enjoyed themselves by throwing rocks and guarding the bucket of crabs.

Amazing how many pictures I was able to take while holding this guy!

Talk about squirmy!  And determined to get wet in any way possible!

Ooh, a crab!

After tide pooling, we headed over to Airi's house for the second half of the day's festivities.
And since it was such a beautiful day, the kids hit the pool.  Of course.
Atau took this great photo...which led to a LOT more photos from this same angle.
Which happened to be INSIDE the pool.

And yes, my camera did sustain a little splashing from the kids...but hopefully nothing permanent.  :P

Kaden really loves the hot tub.
Mitch and I had to take turns watching him in here because he's starting to get pretty fearless in there.
As in, crouching down until his mouth goes under the water, jumping up and down, and of course walking all along the bench...which happens to NOT go all around the hot tub.

This was their Power Rangers kick jump.

Take 2.

All lining up and waiting patiently for their turn to jump in.

Me and my squirmy baby.
I think he was ready to get out by this time.

Kela's aerial shot.

And since we can no longer do fireworks here in Hawaii (cue booing...) we had a relatively quiet 4th of July celebration.  After watching the Waikiki fireworks from Airi's balcony (we had a GREAT view!) we headed downstairs for some s'more making.
I mentioned before that I don't care for s'mores, right?
But marshmallows we DO like.
Here's Jojo roasting hers.  Or, I was, but asked her to hold the stick while I took the picture.
Hence, her apprehensive face.

 Such a great day, spent with family and friends!

Makes me grateful for this wonderful country we live in, the freedoms we get to enjoy, and the beautiful islands we get to call home.

Hope everyone else had a FABULOUS 4th of July as well!

Click HERE for more pics from this day!!!