Kauai Day 1 - January 27

We made it! We left Spokane early Friday morning and spent the majority of the day flying. We left Grandma Kellogg in charge of the kids and we escaped!!! So begins our week of fun on Kauai

This is "our" beach. Our condo backed up to this perfect inlet and beach.

View of our pool and out to the beach behind our condo. I never got tired of this. Doesn't it just look like a vacation should?

Our awesome helicopter sits behind me. I was so so excited to do this. We booked it for our first day and it did not disappoint. Something I would recommend to anyone. If you do it you have to go on a Hughes 500. This helicopter is doorless and seats only 4 passengers. We chose the Jack Harter company which offers a complete 60 minutes tour of the entire island. So impressive. Kevin buckling in and getting his earphones on. They weighed us before hand and gave us seating assignments, so Kevin sat back left and I sat front right. We each had a camera, so we got a ton of pictures. Here are a few of my favorites.

View of Wailua falls

Beautiful toes I know, but hey you know they are mine.

This is an aerial view of our condo/hotel set up. That pool is known as the biggest pool in the entire state of Hawaii. It took a few minutes to swim around the entire thing. So warm and relaxing.

Waves on the North shore were incredibly big the week we were there. We are talking 25 to 30 footers.

The Napali coast is one of Kaui's must see, experience and be in awe over. You can really only get a good look at it by air or hiking in. Absolutely breathtaking.

All of us in front of our helicopter and see our cute pilot in the back? We are looking a bit windblown, but can you blame us?

After the helicopter ride we headed down to the South shore to look at the spouting horn blow hole and see what other beauties were down there. This is also where we experienced the delicious Puka dog. Who knew a hot dog could taste so yummy.

These are some petrified sand dunes down on the south shore, we ran out of daylight so we didn't get to wander as far as we wanted, but they were really fun, and were a great location to check out a beautiful Hawaiian sunset.

Spouting horn blow hole-we weren't allowed to get within 100 ft. I guess that is for the best as I needed my camera for the remainder of the trip.

Soaking in the beauty of the South shore. What a great day.

Where I wish I still was...

Here is a sneak peek of the next posts to come. We spent 7 fabulous days in Kauai. Not only did we go to Hawaii, but we escaped our children for 7 days of bliss. Talk about not wanting to come back home.

Eagles

We went to see the eagles up at Lake Couer d'Alene. Something we have been meaning to do for the last 4 years. It is a new tradition for sure. Every December record numbers of Eagles come our way because the kokanee salmon are running at the lake. I even heard that it is the largest gathering of eagles in the North West since Eagles usually don't hang out together. We were able to see lots and it was me who didn't want to leave. They are beautiful and huge and simply amazing to watch snatch a fish out of the water.

So cool!! Mind you we don't have a nice camera, but we still got some pretty decent pictures. I like that you can compare the size of this eagle to those pesky seagulls.

Binoculars are a hot commodity

The kids were not thinking this was as cool as I did. They actually were whining because the temperature was literally cold. Someday they will appreciate it I suppose.

Conor defrosting the freezer. We had Grandma and Grandpa bring up their steamer to help get rid of the layer of ice. It was the highlight of Conor's day to shoot hot water at the ice.

Lincoln helping Grandma type an e-mail. Lincoln showing his new found walking skills

Side note for Lincoln: He loves attention. Our favorite game at dinnertime is to have all of us turn away from Lincoln then on the count of three look at him and he busts a gut laughing about it. He loves it when people laugh. He always joins in which is so cute.

Another 10 minutes??? Ahhh the suspense, we just can't stand it.

Checking out the contents of their stockings

Lincoln cleaning up after Santa...I love this picture. He just started munching on the leftover crumbs on the plate. Of course it is an ugly paper plate since I was too tired to find the cute cookies for Santa plate..but on the bright side Santa left a note right on the plate.

This is what Conor really wanted for Christmas. They don't make em like they use to.

Watching...Watching

Santa is so cool! He brings the best candy ever :)

Lincoln discovered his little stash of goods from Santa no problem. No interest in opening presents this year, still just happy with the paper and wrecking the stuff the other kids got out. The few presents he wouldn't open, we ended up opening for him the next day. He just couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. Lincoln was actually more excited that he had figured out how to walk. He really started walking on Christmas eve and Christmas day. I love the Frankenstein walk.

Dancing with ELMO! He is really cute, and Lincoln finally figured out how to squeeze his hand and make him do the hokey pokey. This is a well loved Elmo, thanks for sharing him with us Witt family. I actually have a picture of Conor somewhere about this age with this exact cute little Elmo.

All dressed up for church on Christmas day. It was a little hard to leave all our fun toys behind to go to church, but what a great reminder of what Christmas is all about.

Back home and back into jammies and time to eat the yummy traditional Christmas dinner. We got to skype with the Witt's and play a few of the new fun games we got after dinner. The day went by so fast. As I cleaned up some messes and moved stuff around so I could actually find the couch, I am filled with gratitude for the Christmas season and all that it brings to our family. We are so blessed.

Christmas Eve

Oh so exciting...so hard to wait another 12 hours.

Christmas eve jammies

Putting food out for Rudolph and gang

Spending time with Grandpa

Reading the new Christmas eve book and Luke 2

Conor showing off the cool sparkle glasses

Josie displaying the earrings (toys) the kids got from the Witt's

Preparing for Christmas

Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen came to spend Christmas with us!

We went down to the Davenport to look at the display of gingerbread houses. This was one of the favorites.

The beautiful Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel

Grandpa taking Josie for a walk on the treadmill

Preparing for Christmas is so exciting. It is even more special when grandparents come to help usher in the fun.

#1 in Design

Check out the plane that won best design in Mrs. Cong's 3rd grade class.

Conor showing me his airplane for posterity

This is the plane that Conor and Kevin spent many many hours of work creating. I believe this is actually plane 4. The first 3 didn't fly upto standard. They were required to design and build a plane that would stay in the air. They would be given a chance to throw it off the highest slide in the playground 2x's. Conor's was one of the finalists for staying in the air the longest but monster plane beat him out. (One of those that you really wonder if the kid even helped or if Dad just went to town on his own. ) By the time the plane was due, Conor didn't have time to decorate it the way he wanted so they hurried and spray painted it all black and hoped for the best. Conor came home from school so so excited. Mom you are never going to believe this! I won best in design. I just don't understand how I won...I mean it was just black and there were some really cool ones. That is when we had a discussion about what design actually meant. I thought it was cute and innocent. Needless to say he was thrilled to have won.