a few more from the valley

After hiking down the road and then back up again, we finally got the Jeep and drove down the same road to the beach - it was beautiful. The drive wasn't bad at all - probably should have just driven down in the first place!

I had to keep stopping on our hike up the road. James took several pictures of me about to keel over. Too bad I didn't have my heart rate monitor on! I bet I burned 500 calories just on the way up.

Waipio Valley Continued

The highest waterfall on the Big Island! We didn't hike far enough to get to the bottom of it. Too bad we left our zoom lens in the Jeep!

Here is part of the one lane road I was talking about. The pictures really don't do it justice. There are signs periodically going down telling the downhill bound cars to stop and let the uphill cars pass first. Luckily, there weren't that many cars on the road. (If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see the road more clearly as it winds its way up the side of the cliff.)

One Picture at a Time

For some reason, Blogger is having problems and not letting me post several pictures at once. So, here's one we took while walking down a super steep, 25% grade, one lane road that goes down 1000 feet in a mile. We decided it would be nice to get some exercise and hike down and then back up the road. We must have still had some jet lag, because that was a crazy idea. Our quadriceps were tired just going down the hill, it was like walking down stairs. And going back up was very demanding! But we made it, and then decided to drive the Jeep down the road anyway (they only allow cars with four wheel drive to use the road). I'll try to see if I can post more pics later...

Oh, and this was at the Waipio Valley where the ancient Hawaiin royalty used to hang out. If you click on the picture to see it larger, you'll see the black sand beach at the bottom. We went down there - very beautiful. Soft black sand, blue waves, big cliffs...

A Room With a View

This is what we saw when standing on the lanai (balcony/porch) of our hotel room! With the sounds of the ocean, the waterfall and birds chirping everywhere it was very relaxing.

Extra Special Birthday

I'm not usually one to make a big deal out of my birthday. This year, however, James and I planned our first vacation without kids in over five years. (Maybe six?) It just happened to work out that it was the week of my birthday- one of the few weeks this summer that James could take the whole week off.

Anyway, we went to the Big Island of Hawaii and it was fantastic! My friend Allison was thoughtful enough to call my hotel and order some flowers to be sent to my room. This tipped off the hotel that it was my birthday and they had a delicious chocolate/mocha cake waiting for me! It was a perfect ending to a day of kayaking, snorkeling, seeing dolphins and visiting a coffee farm (Kona coffee...yummm).

I'll post more pictures soon!

Rockets!

Aaron finished up science camp this week, "Rockin' Rockets". He had fun and came home on Friday with a rocket he made himself. Here's a video of his first launch!

Testing out a new gadget

Some storm photos

I took these photos from my backyard right before the storms hit last night. We had been under a tornado watch all day, and then it turned into a warning around the kids bedtime last night. We had lots of lightning, thunder and some small hail. I think we got a little over an inch of rain (yay!) but luckily that was it. There was a suspected tornado in Cedar Park and a confirmed tornado at 183/Anderson Mill. Some lightning hit a house in Avery Ranch and caused a fire (this happened in a few places in Austin). I am glad to hear that nobody was hurt and I have not heard of any major damage.

**note: I took these pictures with my camera accidentally set on the "sports" setting. oops. I also missed some really good cloud pictures because I didn't even think to get my camera until it was almost on top of us! Next time, I'll try earlier.

**2nd note: I just looked at these after I completed this post and they really aren't all that exciting. I need to figure out the settings on my camera so the pictures look more like it real life. They were some pretty impressive looking clouds but that didn't seem to come through in my pictures. oh well!!

All tuckered out

After two days a seaworld