Hawaii - Autumn's birthday

One of the main reasons why I went to Hawaii when I did was because Autumn was turning ONE! I've had the great joy of being with Marc-Andre and Luc for their first birthdays, so I just had to go for Autumn's first as well! It was so much fun!!

We started off the day doing a family present opening. It was so cute watching Autumn try to figure out how to unwrap the presents. She would get a little piece of paper off, and then just play with it...or try to eat it. :) She didn't quite grasp that she was supposed to take ALL the paper off because the present was underneath. And then, once she got one present opened, she was perfectly content to sit there and just play with it, even though there were many more to go. She's so cute!

Teresa and I wrapped the pool present from Great Grandma Mary. But we decided to wrap it with the white side of the paper on the outside so that we could draw all over it. We had fun getting creative while Autumn napped.

Then it was time for Autumn to open up my present. Just when she learned how to unwrap presents, I throw her a curve ball. I wrapped mine in a bag and tissue paper. I'm an Aunt that encourages continual learning. :)I bought her three cute little sundresses (one of which she can grow into) and a fun little pair of shoes. She was SO cute in them! She even wore this dress for her big birthday party. I was a very proud Aunt.
I just love, love, LOVE this little girl!!!

Then came her big party with a few families from their church. They did a great job decorating the house and cooking a fun Hawaiian luau / owl themed party.

Teresa and I researched a bunch of cake designs, and Trees tweaked a few and came up with a really awesome owl cake design. From start -

To finish -She did SUCH a good job!!!! It was definitely a hit at the party.She was a confused, and a little freaked out, by everyone staring and singing to her. :)

This photo, that I just think is adorable, was taken with my phone so I could upload it and send it to our family immediately. They had to be a part of the big day!

And I just love this one. Clayton is reading Autumn her birthday cards. He's such a good daddy.

Happy 1st Birthday, Autumn!!!

Hawaii - coconuts

Trees and Clay have coconut trees in their front yard. So, I just HAD to husk one. :) It was a bit harder than I thought. I didn't know how fibrous and thick the outside husk is. We went out back and ripped off the husks with old railroad ties.

Then we drank the coconut juice.

After that, we cut out all the meat so we could make coconut milk. We actually did one coconut each, so we had a LOT of coconut meat to get out of the shell.To make coconut milk, you take the fresh coconut meat, add water, and blend. Blend, blend, blend.

Then you separate the meat from the milk. We used one of Autumn's old onesies to squeeze it through.

Look at it all! Fresh coconut milk on the left; fresh coconut meat on the right.

After that, we used the coconut milk in our curry dinner that night. Gosh it was good.

Hawaii - random

Okay. This post is going to be a grouping of the random shots from the trip. They don't fit into any particular grouping, so I decided to group them together.

I'm making Autumn a large cross-stitched animal collage. Hopefully it will be ready by Christmas time. Here, she's getting a sneak peek. :)

One thing I love about Teresa and Clayton is that they are game people. We played a game almost every single night I was there. Ticket to Ride (pictured below), Settlers of Catan, Agricola, Puerto Rico, Lost Cities.... Clayton won all but one game: we played Agricola and Teresa won that night. But, sadly, I never won. Not once the entire time. *sigh*

Teresa and I went kayaking out by Chinaman's Hat. It was there that I flipped the kayak...twice. I definitely ended up soaked and bruised from climbing back in the stupid thing. But I had fun! We even kayaked right next to a sea turtle! I think Teresa even went right over the sucker.

One day Teresa took me to her campus. It was a lot bigger than I expected. I really enjoyed getting to see where she spends her days studying and working in the labs. We headed over to the bookstore so Trees could purchase her books and bus pass for the next semester. And we decided that Autumn needed a little U. of Hawaii spirit. :)

Clayton made a cherry pie. Not the kind with the canned pie filling. No, that's not nearly good enough for him. He spent hours cutting and pitting fresh dark cherries. And boy was it worth it. I normally don't like cherry pies. I just don't like that canned stuff. But this was darn tasty! Well done, bro!

We went to a macadamia nut farm. They had samples of a ton of different flavoured ones. My favourite was the Kona Coffee Crusted Macadamia Nuts. Yum! They also had this little section where you could try shelling the nuts the old fashioned way. It was really fun!

Hawaii - Pali

Teresa and Clayton then decided to show me the other side of the island. So we headed over to Pali. Great view. Much cooler (it probably dropped about 15 degrees on our drive up there!). And very windy.

Very very windy. My lens cap flew in front of the lens right as I took the picture. I love it!

Here's a sister shot, sans lens cap. :)

And an Ingalls family photo

Hawaii - Natural bridge

After snorkeling, we decided to traveled over to the natural bridge. It was really cool! The waves were just crashing up onto the rocks where we were standing, and sprayed us with a nice cooling mist. Hawaii is really a gorgeous place.And this is the only group photo from the whole trip! Good thing it turned out well!

Hawaii - Snorkeling

We went snorkeling at Turtle Beach and Shark's Cove. I, unfortunately, didn't get a waterproof camera. But it was awesome! I got to swim with huge sea turtles! We were supposed to stay 6 ft away, but that was impossible. The water at Turtle Beach was quite murky, and therefore it was hard to differentiate between the turtles and the rocks. Once, we were swimming along and I'm looking around. Rock. Rock. Rock. Underwater scream! All of a sudden, a turtle head the side of a cantaloupe was about 3 inches from my face. Needless to say, it startled me a little. :)

Then we headed over to Shark's Cove. The water there was supposed to be a lot clearer, and it certainly was. And it was a lot deeper, with a lot more sea life. I loved it!

Clayton and I snorkeled together. We started off sitting on a rock, discussing our strategy. The last thing Clayton said to me was "Just make sure you go past that rock before you stop". That didn't happen. haha As soon as I started snorkeling, I saw an awesome turtle..in waters so clear that I could see a lot of the details on the shell. I had to stop...and I had only gone about 4 feet. :) But, once Clayton saw was I was staring at, he understood. I think we floated there for about 5 minutes before moving on. hehe

When snorkeling in the East China Sea in Okinawa, my favourite fish was the parrot fish. It's colours are so vibrant! There, they were about the size of one of my shoes. But here...here, they were the size of large grouper. I saw one that was about 2-3 feet long. HUGE. And we could even hear it eating off of the coral below us. "Chomp. Chomp. Chomp." What an awesome experience!

We had Autumn with us, so only two of us could snorkel at one time. Teresa and I went snorkeling in Turtle Beach. And Teresa went with Clayton first at Shark's Cove. While Clayton and I were snorkeling there, Autumn got to eat. This is a great shot of her announcing that she was finished with her bottle. I love it! :)

And as a treat after all that snorkeling, we went to a supposedly well-renowned shrimp shack : Romy's. We now know why it was so well known. Man was it tasty.

We ordered one of each kind, and split them all. There was fried, sweet & spicy, and garlic butter. We all liked the garlic ones the best. Yum!

Hawaii - Punchbowl

One of my sister's favourite views of the island is at Punchbowl overlook. It's actually a huge military cemetery, very much like the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC.

Amongst the sobering views of acres and acres of gravestones, there is an amazing panoramic view of the Oahu coastline - ranging from the valley north of the Oahu airport down to Diamond Head. It's gorgeous.

Teresa told me that this was one of the rare native Hawaiian flowers. It reminds me of fireworks.