You ever feel like a change every so often? Well, my blog was itching for some spiffing up, so many thanks to ShabbyBlogs.com and their awesome tutorial on how to adapt one of their headers for your own use. It was as easy as pie and looks cleaner than the old photo which was a little pixely anyway.
So enjoy the look. You never know when I just might get the urge to change it again.
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I love hearing from other mother's whose journeys are similar to mine. So I have decided to link up with The Homeschool Mother's Journal on Fridays.
In my life this week…
We are wrapping up our final math lessons. Both girls will be doing some reading over the summer. Goat Princess is working on Dragon's Gate at the moment and H-Bob has a stack of I-Can-Read books from the library to work on her fluency.
In our homeschool this week…
I have been trying to get in as much gardening time as possible to make up for our long, wet spring which isn't over yet.
Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…
I loved our charter school experience last year but have made sure this year that the classes the girls are taking outside of the home will NOT cause me to pull my hair out with driving to and fro.
I am inspired by…
I thoroughly enjoy the 'adult' conversation with my fellow Christian Youth Theater parents. There is always something that someone says that inspires me in someway.
Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
We just returned from our 25th wedding anniversary and entire family vacation in May, so we'll be staying put for quite a while now.
My favorite thing this week was…
I just realized that I didn't set my tomatoes or cucumbers out last year until the middle of June, so I'm not too far behind this year.
What’s working/not working for us…
After purchasing a laminator last winter, I'm able to print up charts that I can turn into dry-erase sheets. Chores charts on the refrigerator, reminders for myself of daily routine items, and check-off lists in H-Bob's summer school binder are becoming well used.
Questions/thoughts I have…
I'm wondering how to carve out some uninterrupted time to plan Goat Princess's freshman year of high school and H-Bob's fourth grade studies for next year.
Things I’m working on…
I've been busy gardening, though I'd love to update some of our living room accessories and brighten up the room.
I’m reading…
Well, I have stacks of stuff from the library to read, but I never seem to get to them. I do want to start The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson before it has to go back.
I’m cooking…
Dinners have used a lot of venison and elk from the freezer to help balance our food budget this month.
I’m praying for…
I need a daily summer schedule that keeps me focused throughout the day. What I need is the wisdom to determine my priorities at this time.
A photo, video, link, or quote to share…
This is what summer homeschool should be about in our family...having the time to head out to the woods and pick salmon berries. I'm not fond of them, but hubby and H-Bob sure are.
Enjoy your weekend!
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No more paradise for us. Time to head out and return to our normal routine. We definitely had a superb time in Hawaii with each other as a family. A trip like this will never be repeated. Our 21-year-old will graduate from college soon and our 17-year-old will be in college before long. Those two oldest children will be moving on with their lives and this opportunity may never present itself again. Oh, there will be many more adventures to come with the two youngest, but this was a snapshot in time...always to be remembered.
So aloha, Hawaii. It was fun!
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The last day here....unbelievable.
But a 7:30 a.m. alarm set by hubby? No way. I reminded Bill that I had decided that this was going to be my morning to sleep in, and sleep I did. Adequate sleep at home is hard to come by, so at least one vacation day of sleeping until I felt I could wake up energized needed to happen. Unfortunately, we were thoroughly adapted to Hawaiian time, meaning my snooze until 9 a.m. this morning was the equivalent of sleeping until noon at home. Tomorrow will be a rude awakening as our flight leaves shortly after 8 a.m.
Today's agenda included driving up the road to one of the other sandy beaches around the resort...a calm bay, a little area for snorkeling, not enough waves for boogie boarding though, and lot of fine white sand. Being that it was a public beach, it provided for plenty of people watching including two snorkelers who came up on shore with their harpoons, a bag full of fish, and another one full of octopus. Never know what you will see here.
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The days are definitely beginning to blur together. I can imagine how living in a paradise like this might become a blur. But a good blur.
Today was our day to once again become adventurous tourists and to visit a coffee plantation. Of course a plantation to us, or at least me, meant acres upon acres of coffee trees on a foggy hillside covered with pickers filling their burlap bags with bright red berries. Wrong. That image apparently comes from television. Coffee actually grows on bushes that are severely pruned back to the stump every few years and resembles the structure of our butterfly bushes back home. Since the beans don't begin to ripen and turn red until the fall, there were no pickers. And there were no acres and acres of plantations. Most of the coffee is grown in the backyards of everyday citizens who tend to their plants after work. They bring their beans in to a processor like Greenwell Farms who then removes the pulp and roasts them. Very interesting. We learned a tremendous amount from our Greenwell tour guide. Back at the tasting shed we decided that we all loved the chocolate covered peabody coffee beans (peabody referring to beans that were single and not split upon opening) and their reserve blend. They both went in our shopping bag along with some local honey from the blossom of tropical flowers we couldn't even pronounce. They are a diverse operation and grow fruit as well as coffee. The avocados looked amazing.
Deciding there was not much further south along the coast we really needed to see, since getting to Cook's Bay to snorkel was not going to happen due to its lack of accessibility, we traveled the short way back up to Kauila-Kona and hit a local beach. The snorkeling there was phenomenal according to Bill and the kids. The kids got their fill fairly quickly, but Bill would have, as expected, stayed all day.
By now we had the first clear skies, or almost entirely so, since arriving in Hawaii. We drove up Ali Drive into the touristy, older harbor area of Kona. We parked by an outdoor market and made our trek through it to look at everyone's wares.
Then Bubba Gump's called. Here was lunch. And so tasty. Too bad there's not one back in Oregon. The surf came right up to the sea wall there, and you could stand and watch the waves crest, full of the brightest yellow tropical fish. Very amazing sight. We always have room for coffee, so we hit up the coffee shop father along the boardwalk for iced coffee. The Kona coffee here is so mild we drink it plain with just a tad of cream. Back home it would need to be sweetened and flavored for my taste. Now I'm wondering how I'm going to make our 8 oz of Kona coffee last a long, long time.
We had decided to have big, fat tasty steak one night on the outdoor built-in grill at the villa...a treat considering we only eat venison and elk at home. So knowing there was a Costco in Kona, we stopped there for enough groceries to hopefully last us the rest of the trip. And more sunscreen. Although the prices elsewhere on the island where considerably higher than the norm in our part of the States, Costco prices appeared to be steady. If it weren't so out of the way, we should have definitely shopped there first. Back to the resort, quick change of clothing, and back to the pool and beach.
When you're on vacation time and not checking the clock or packing your cell phone everywhere, it's amazing how time can slip through your fingers. Before we knew it, the sun was setting, and I was caught without a camera. The sky was such a deep blue and the light was fading, the moon was overhead, and palm branches were swaying. Would've made a great shot. So instead of spending time trying to compose the 'perfect' photo, we hiked around the point across the lava shoreline hoping to perhaps come across a hidden sandy beach. Nada. Not here. Definitely land of the lava. We did have a bird's-eye view into the backside of some pretty incredible homes here though.
Another late outdoor dinner. This time a Korean taco kit from Costco, Tazo passion fruit tea lemonade...still glad I packed those tea bags...and some homework by the kids. Tonight we remembered to set the air conditioning before going to bed. A tragic mistake last night. No windows to leave open all night to catch the ocean breezes here...the one lovely thing about the last rental location. I did rather miss the frog chorus too.
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