Aloha!

Before we get to all the fun Hawaii pictures, here are some fun ones right before we left.

The girls love to watch out the front windows, especially if it is snowing.

 For Chinese New Year we decided to make some yummy Asian dishes: spring rolls with bok choy, glassy noodle stirfry with peanut sauce, and I can't remember the other thing but it was good too.  Makes me hungry just writing about it.

 The girls liked it too, especially the peanut sauce.

 That's right! Two pigtails! So excited for her cute hair to be growing out.

 Kind of random but I was cleaning off our fridge and was going to put these bibs in our keepsakes box and decided to take a picture of them.  These were from all the races I did this year: North Park Stake Fun Run, Provo City 5k, Freedom Run 5k, Pioneer Day Classic 10k (2nd Place), Dirty Dash 10k, America Fork Family Halloween Fun Run 5k (1st Place).  The BYU Cougar Run was Anne's that she got running the 200m Kids Run.

 A fun new eating style we have adopted, thanks to our friend Alexis: Green Smoothies.  I've never really been into smoothies before but I really liked the idea of putting in lots of veggies, especially for the girls.  So they are now part of our daily food intake and we all love them! They taste surprisingly good despite the fact that they can have spinach, chard, bok choy, kale, brussel sprouts, or cabbage in them.  Of course to make them taste good they can have frozen berries, bananas, apples, pears, kiwis, grapefruit, oranges, and agave nectar. Mmmm, I've missed them while I've been gone.  Tomorrow we will make a bunch of smoothies and granola, yum.  Can you tell I'm hungry?

 The girls just being silly.  They sure love running around naked.  I don't know where they got that from....

 Music time at the Thatcher house.  I played the violin in Church a few weeks ago so every day we would gather around the piano and Anne would play the piano and sing, I would play the violin, and Rachel would dance and sing and hop on the piano every now and then.  These girls love music.  We'd go through all their favorite primary songs.

 Oh Rachel :)

 Green Smoothies

 As a way to not watch so much tv during these isolating winter months, I've instituted Movie Friday.  During the rest of the week we only watch a tv show, but on Fridays we snuggle up, pop some popcorn, turn up the sound system and watch one of their favorite movies.

Any takers? ;)

 Ok, here it is, the big Kahuna.  This will probably be the first of many blogs about our Hawaii trip because they are just the pictures off of our camera.  I will be gathering the pictures from our phones and also the awesome pictures Jon (Dawn's boyfriend who had an awesome camera and eye for taking pictures) took while we were there.  But here's what we have so far.

About a year ago Dawn (Zac's sister) called and asked if we would be interested in taking a family trip to Hawaii as a surprise for Debbie's (Zac's Mom) birthday.  She would think she was going just with Dawn and then all her kids and grandkids would surprise her when she got there.  We were already planning a trip there so we were defenitely in.  Dawn rented a house right on the beach in Hauula, just south of Laie, big enough for all fourteen of us.  Everyone was able to go so there was Debbie, Dawn, Jon, Us, Ben, Vivian, Luke, Gabe, Jennifer, Brooke, and Brock.  We had an incredible time.  Hawaii is beautiful.  The Thatcher family is beautiful.  Thank you all for making it such an incredible experience for our family.

We arrive Thursday night, Feb. 9th, so we were only able to go down and look at the ocean behind our house.  The girls were so excited to see the ocean and the waves.  This was Anne's second time (though her first was when she was two months old) and Rachel's first time to see the ocean.

 Cute breakfast bar.

 Our kids woke up at the crack of dawn, literally, every morning.  We would often find Anne in the front room just gazing out the window.

 Ready to go to the beach.

 The color in these photos is not enhanced, that's the actually color of the water in Hawaii.  Crystal clear. You could see everything on the floor even a couple feet out into the water. (Jennifer, Brock, Gabe, Anne, Zac)

 (Above with Gabbie)

 It took a little while for Rachel to be ok with the idea of sand but by the end of the trip she loved playing  in and with it.

 I guess since it was winter even in Hawaii, there was quite a bit of wind and it was pretty overcast.  But to us it felt refreshingly warm and we soaked up every ray of sunshine we could.

 Anne loved to go out into the water as long as she was being held.  She'll say now that she loved "Splashing in water with Daddy.  Waves got me, I fall down.  It was fun."

 Dawn with Rachel

 On Sunday we were able to go to a Hawaiin ward in which everything was said in Hawaiin which was really neat.  They have such a beautiful spirit there and sang much louder and with much more feeling than here.

 I don't know what illicited this look, but I thought it was funny.

 The beautiful Laie Hawaii temple.

 Classic Rachel

 Cute Russell bum.

 Jakoozy time with Gabbie.

 Jon took a bunch of nice family photos at the temple grounds, those will be in a blog to come.  Here's just some random pictures during that event.

 Dawn and Brooke

 Gabe and Brock

 Jon

 Jennifer, Gabe and Brock

 Luke

 Brooke

 On Wednesday we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center which was amazing.  We loved seeing the different cultures of the islands.  The girls loved all the dancing and singing.  During the show that night Anne was literally dancing and singing in her seat.  She would clap after every song and talked about a ton the next day.

 She also liked her "stamp".

 At the luau dinner.  Can you tell the girls were hungry? (Dont worry that butter knife was not sharp at all, though still not an awesome idea.)  The food was amazing.  Everyone liked the purple taro rolls and the ahi sushi.  I loved the poi and taro/poi (I can't remember which is which) the purple potato salad stuff.

 Our family took a trip down to Kailua to see where I was born to take pictures of our house and the hospital where I was delivered.  We were stationed there when I was born and moved about a year later so I don't have any real memories of that place.  But as I took pictures there I felt a strong spirit and connection to each place, knowing this is where my life started. This was our house at 378 Illimalia Loop in Kailua.  The current owners have fenced everything in so this is all I could get of the house.

 The street in front of the house.

 Castle hospital where I was born.  My Mom said that the military hospital was full at the time so she was able to deliver here, making me the only one of my siblings to be born in a civilian hospital.  My Mom liked it because she was able to stay longer.

 Incredible trees in front of the hospital.

 After sight seeing we let the girls play at a park accross the street from the hospital.

 The entire time we were in Hawaii the girls loved playing with the birds.  Anne would say "Come here birds! They coming to say hi!" And Rachel would say "Bir! Bir!"

 And "Bye bye birz!"

 Last day at the beach.

I wrote a detailed account of the trip in my journal which I'll put in here on a later blog.  And you'll see more of the activities that we did once we get all the pictures.  But this was a start.