Picking the best pumpkin!

And, here they are with their pumpkins!  they look beautiful on my porch for a few more days until we carve them!

 

 

Pumpkins

The kids at the top of the hay stack inside the corn maze.

I can't figure out how to flip this picture...  Joshua really wanted to get this huge pumpkin.  We told him he had to be able to carry it, he couldn't. 

Then the girls wanted huge pumpkins too!  Too bad the squirrels ate everything I planted or we could have grown pumpkins!  Not that big, but something! 

Pumpkin Patch

One of my favorite things to do is visit the pumpkin patch and go through a corn maze!  We were lucky to find a kind of cool day when Donald was off work and take the kids.  We did a wagon ride, the corn maze and fed a bunch of animals and then picked out pumpkins. 

 

 

 

Special Jr K

Elizabeth got to be the "Special Jr K" a few weeks ago at school.  She was thrilled.  We printed some family pictures for the bulletin board and she got to be line leader and special helper and on Friday, the class interviewed her and, surprisingly, asked her really good questions.  She was just thrilled and loved being the center of attention all week!

 

 

Beach and tree tunnel

Last Hawaii post!

More of the beach in front of our hotel.  Notice the lack of resorts lining the coast?  That was what I liked best about Kauai, it was very green and less developed than the other islands we have visited.

 

I loved this tree tunnel that we drove through on the way to and from our hotel.  It just felt magical.

And, the sunset, which we never take the time to watch at home!

Around the island

Waimea Canyon

A few from my phone that I really liked.  This is at Waimea Canyon. 

 

 

Hotel grounds

I didn't take very many pool pictures, but we did spend a lot of time in the pools.  My favorite part was the lazy river.  Donald even bought me an over-priced tube so I would have something to float on! 

 

This is the salt water lagoon.  There was sand on the bottom and with the ocean right on the other side of the sidewalk, you really could close your eyes and believe you were floating in the Pacific!  One night we went down and watched the stars, which you could see so clearly, especially compared to Southern California! 

The actual ocean - Shipwreck Beach.  It was really pretty, but at least one of the days we were there it was a high surf advisory and the waves were 8-12 feet.  No thank you.

Looking back up at the hotel.  They had huge Koi fish ponds and one day while Donald was at his conference, I got to feed the fish! 

And finally, our room.  We had a "garden view" which really means parking lot, but I didn't mind, when we were in the room we had it closed up with the air conditioning on!

First day in Kauai

 

I found more pictures that I want to add from our Hawaii trip, so although they are out of order they are things I want in the blog book this year!

 

 

 

The view from the lobby in our hotel.  I love how everything in Hawaii is open air like this and they have the view framed up like a picture for you to see as soon as you walk in.  The rest are some of the grounds at the hotel.

Joshua's 9th Birthday

Happy Birthday, Joshua!

 

 

Joshua turned 9 on October 12th. He really wanted to have a
swimming party, so we heated the pool and invited his friends to a Spiderman
party. He has made friends with so many nice boys at school and he had a
group of them over to swim. He also had them throw spiders into a web
(clear packaging tape) and crawl through a string maze. He had a great time
and got a lot of cool gifts. Since it seems like we just have birthday
party after party this time of year, we consolidated and had the boys here
the first two hours, then we had the family come over so we only had to do
cake once! Joshua was happy with it and it was much easier for me!

Tubing the sugar cane canals

 

Donald had heard about a place on the island where you could go tubing down the old sugar cane canals.  We decided to give it a try and it was a lot of fun!  It was really pretty up at the top and we went really fast down the canals, going through several miles of tunnels!

 

 

We had headlights inside the tunnels.  Sometimes you really couldn't see where you were going and would get spinning around!  It sure was fun though!