Best birthday present

This weekend my sweet, wonderful husband chartered a helicopter to fly our family over our beautiful island in honor of my birthday! It is an amazing experience, not only to see the mountains and waterfalls up close and personal, but also for us to see the parts of the island we have never seen before because they are inaccessible by car, and the hiking trails are too dangerous to take the kids on. It was a great way for us to see the island really well before we have to say goodbye to it. The ride was a magical experience for all of us…here are some images from the tour.

{I got to sit up front, with windows all around!}

{inside the canyon}

{coastline riddled with sea caves and waterfalls tumbling straight into the ocean}

{one of our favorite beaches as seen from the air: the wave pattern is cause by the coral reef}

{more waterfalls than you can image!}

I am still here…sort of

I did not mean to disappear for such a long period of time. It is not because of a lack of things to share, I even have a bunch of half finished draft posts on various things we were doing in school before our life got turned upside down about two weeks ago! My husband was offered a promotion, and so we are moving AGAIN! We are trading our snorkel gear for snow boots and moving to the Midwest! Don’t get me started on how much we are going to miss the great weather and natural beauty of Hawaii, but in every other way this move will be better for us. For starters there are the grandparents, aunties, uncles, and cousins that my boys will have all around them…and that is no small thing for us, since it has been 14 years since I lived near any of my family and my boys have never experienced it. I am so happy that they will be able to benefit from developing those relationships. And then there is a wonderful Baha’i community, all the homeschooling resources and options, museums, zoos…and I could go on and on about all the positives of this move, but I won’t. For starters I have so much to do, and then there is the nasty cold the kids and I have. Second bad one in the last two months, total bummer. As if we want to spend our last days in Hawaii sick at home, right?

So, I am here, and I will be stopping in to share things when I am able. It may not be every week day…at least not for a while. But I will do my best.

{image from my husband’s recent raft trip around part of our island}

River boat ride with my boys

Yesterday the boys and I spent a very pleasant morning doing a little river boating.

{paddle boarders}

{on board entertainment}

A wonderful way to spend a weekend morning with my sweeties…

Weekending and what we’ve been up to…

Yesterday we spent a fabulous day on this lovely beach.

We snorkeled, swam, splashed, built, had water fights, and fish nibbling our toes while we sat in the shallow water at the shore. A perfect family day and the last of our summer vacation!

I have been posting a lot about our summer travels and not so much about what we have been doing the last couple of weeks. That’s because I had nothing completed to write about. We were waiting for curriculum to arrive, and it did, all on the same day. My hubby came home from the post office with five boxes piled in his arms and Rylan and I squealing with excitement.

Since that day I have spent hours and hours familiarizing myself with the material, planning our new daily schedule, and planning in detail the next two months of school. I now have planned lessons, materials ready (or notes to remind me what to prepare for a particular lesson the night before), even craft projects planned for the next two months (I am planning to have one afternoon for a planned craft project every week). I am sure I will make adjustments to the schedule as the year goes on, but for now we have what we need to make a good start. And I have lots to share here!

We are all very excited about beginning the new year together, Rylan has been counting down the days all of the past week! Gotta love an enthusiastic learner!

More to come on our first day of first grade and what our school area looks like (I have been working on that too, since it became a bit of a storage area over the summer!)…hopefully a little later today. Stop in and take a peek!

Punalu’u Black Sand Beach

I have been on salt-and-pepper sand beaches before (a mix of volcanic sand and regular beach sand), but never before had I seen anything like this beach, which was pure black volcanic sand.

We stopped and spent a little time here on our way from Kona to Volcano Village. It was the oddest sight, and the sand had a feel to it that is hard to explain, definitely unlike regular sand.

The boys found it fascinating and it took no encouragement for them to explore and dig and play.

And that is the last installment on the highlights from our week on Big Island!

Manini'owali/Kua Bay and swimming with the endangered green sea turtle

This is another installment from our Big Island trip – we spent a morning at Manini'owali/Kua Bay in the Kekaha Kai State Park. I have to say that this is one of the most breathtaking beaches I have ever been on.

Beautiful white sand, turquoise water, black volcanic rock, and as if that wasn’t enough of a reason to hang out there, we also got to go snorkeling with four green sea turtles who happened to be eating off the rocks near the shoreline.

We swam right next to them, they were quite relaxed with our presence, and in fact with the waves we bumped into each other several times as well.

Needless to say we had some rather pleased traveler’s after this visit!

Kayaking and snorkeling in Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park and underwater preserve

We put aside a whole day of our Big Island trip for Kealakekua Bay and I am so glad we did. If you only have 2 days on this island I would say spend one in Kealakekua Bay and one in Volcanoes National Park (although I would more strongly suggest that you not limit your trip to this awesome island to only 2 days! ;) ). But these parts of our trip were undoubtedly the highlights of our week there.

{the bay}

In the morning we rented a kayak, threw all our gear into the wet bag, and set to rowing the 1 1/2 to 2 miles across this beautiful bay. I have to tell you, not a single one of my photos (much to my disappointment) show how absolutely turquoise the water was there. It was gorgeous.

{climbing into the kayak}

We canoed about half way across the bay when met with several pods of very friendly spinner dolphins. They put on quite a show for us, continually leaping up and spinning on their tails. There were also a few too cute babies in the pods who swam so close to our kayak you could reach out to touch them, it is an incredible experience to have these majestic creatures so close and in the wild.

{swimming along side us}

Needless to say, it took no encouragement for the boys to jump in and swim with them. Both boys were in awe and giddy with excitement, and should I point out that I was in awe of the fact that they seemed quite unaffected at the 20-30m depth of the water! The dolphins swam around and under them…and mom so taken with all of this wonder did not get one decent photo of it…at the time I was so absorbed I did not think too much of the camera, but afterwards I was so sad that I did not have my wits about me…oh well…next time! :)

{little Damian watching the dolphins beneath him}

{Ramtin, Rylan, and Mr. Spinner}

After spending a considerable time with the dolphins we continued to kayak to the other side of the bay. At which point you tie your kayak near the Captain Cook Monument, and there under the water is the most gorgeous underwater preserve. Pristine coral and a rainbow of fish. We could have spent all day snorkeling there.

{the area where we snorkeled}

It was a beautiful day. After we kayaked back to the shore, went to the hotel to shower and change, we took our very hungry selves out to a lovely dinner, at a lovely restaurant, and enjoyed talking about all the amazing experiences we had just shared. And not a day has gone by since then that Damian has not reminded me that he swam with dolphins…

Exploring Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Before going on our trip to Big Island, the boys and I read several books on volcanoes in general, and Hawaii specifically. It was a great learning opportunity, since Rylan was excited about going to see the real thing, and I wanted to make sure that our time there was a real learning experience for him, and he could appreciate and understand what he was seeing. At the end of the post I have shared our reading selection.

{current active volcano in the foreground as we hiked}

During our week on Big Island, we spent two days in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. On our first day we did the popular Kilauea Iki hike, a 4 mile hike which starts with a steep descent through a fern filled rain forest, then crosses a lava-paved crater floor, then back up through a rain forest again.

{volcano crater that we hiked across}

This hike was quite amazing. To go from lush green to a solid black volcanic surface that covered a huge expanse of land. You cross large fissures in the lava rock, and go through an area filled with steam vents (where I stopped to get a natural steam facial, of course ;) ).

{climbing down onto the crater floor} {Damian exploring the rock}{Rylan reading to us at each fact marker on the trail} {stopping to study lava rock formations}

During our time in the park we also went through the famous Thurston lava tube, drove down the Chain of Craters road, a large section of which has been destroyed by lava flow, and visited the Jagger museum.

{Thurston lava tube} {trail of new lava flow over the old} {watching the seismic activity, the really blue one is the currently active crater}

In the evening we went down to the area being manned by civil defense (because it is outside of the boundary of the National Park) to see the current surface lava flow.

{the doomed town, already largely destroyed by flowing lava} {interesting lava formations}

We walked a mile to the look out area, by which time it was dark and we could see the red, hot glow of the lava as it flowed down towards the ocean (unfortunately, I have no good photos of our lava watching to share, because all I have is a point and shoot camera, and did not think to bring a tripod. In the dark night sky, my camera picked up nothing but blurred images :( ). As the lava flowed past trees and bushes, they would burn, the flames flaring into the dark sky. There was also one poor home (fully vacated already) that was surrounded by lava with its fate uncertain. Some homes in the area have survived, the lava somehow flowed around them, mercifully. It is an odd sight seeing literally miles of black lava rock with the odd home still standing amongst it. Some of the residents still manage to have a sense of humor despite the obvious slump in their property values! :)

{2 lots, oceanview}

That day my Rylan walked 6 miles, on his own two feet over some rough terrain, without complaint. I have to say we were pretty proud of him after that and the park was an experience we will never forget!