2017 Gingerbread Houses... Well, Not Quite THAT Many!

Nearly two months later, but I just recalled that I had edited pictures sometime back of our annual gingerbread house decorating. However, I couldn't recall if I had ever worked on the post about them. 

Turns out that I did not.

So a little catch-up for this post.

Blank houses all set up and ready for action!

Zoe and Caleb digging in and getting their hands dirty.

Robby and Jonah doing much of the same.

A (somewhat fuzzy) wide shot capturing the action.

Sam is winding down on his new home!

And this is what Calebs looked like about three days later.

Hawaii Vaca, Post 19 - Day 7 Travelling from Hawaii to Kauai

This will be, what I hope anyway, the most boring post that you would ever see about Hawaii!   It's another day of travel as we are leaving the Big Island and heading to the much smaller island of Kauai.

We're finding out that when you buy little souvenir's here and there, you start running out of room to pack stuff up in.  Not too mention the weight restrictions for carry-on bags is much smaller on the island-to-island flights!

So we got everything packed up and loaded back into the rental vehicle.  Next we had to clean and remove our trash, not too big of deal but we did have a fair amount of garbage as we cooked here quite a bit. 

Caleb did his part by trying to take down the remainder of the Kona Coffee Ice Cream that we had purchased!  He did good, but didn't quite make it. He's a little worker bee so he did sweep the floors and helped haul the garbage to the dumpster as well.

That is the posture of a boy who wanted to live in this very apartment/condo or whatever you'd call what we're in.  He was not happy about the need to move on. Can't hardly blame the lad as we did some really cool stuff on this island, and right on the other side of that curtain is a balcony overlooking the swimming pool and another small body of water called the Pacific Ocean.

Exhibit A.  This pic was taken right as we arrived on Day 4.  Robby and Caleb were both wicked impressed with the place and quite frankly, I was too! 

Exhibit B.  I really can't say anything that would add to this picture.

And a really boring part...

All three of these indoor pics were taken with me standing in roughly the same spot, it turns out.  The kitchen from above, is immediately to my right, and the living room is behind me here.  The bathroom is the door on the left and that's the only bedroom. 

We had a bit of time to kill before getting to the airport so we went up town into the little shopping district.  Robby wanted a hat.  This was my favorite!

His favorite.

I love this kid!

Waiting to board and taking in the airport scenery.

We vacation hard!  That boy was zonked out AND he had the window seat!!!  He fell asleep before take-off and woke up after the plane landed and was stopped.  When he woke up, he said in a disgusted voice, "WHAT!?!?  We haven't even taken off yet!?!?".  We still laugh at that one.

After we landed at Lihue Airport, got our rental car and drove across the island to find the Waimea Plantation Cottages, we drove back to the town of Hanapepe to go eat at the Kauai Island Brewery.  The food and beer were excellent but you're not far off the ocean and everything is pretty much open-air. It was humid!!  I tried the Captian Cook's IPA, Cane Fire Red, Pakala Porter, Na Pali Pale Ale, and the Belgian Wheat.

We miss you...

After dinner, it was late in the day by this point, we stopped at a grocery store just up the road from the brewery, got some stuff to cook with and headed back to the cottages to crash for the night.

That's how day 7 went.

Hawaii Vaca, Post 18 - Hawai'i Volcanoes Ntnl Park, Pt. 4

We're about ready to close the chapter on our fantastic volcano adventure!  Frankly, I would have liked to do some additional hiking after a brief rest, but the kids were growling about being tired and hungry.  When they get hungry, nothing else matters... 😜

So after we finished up on the hike across the basin, it was time to start making our way back up the walls of the volcano.  As you can see in the pic, the sun was nice and bright and made being able to see the obstacles of the path a little bit dicey.  Happy to say, we all made it without much injury!

Mama working her way up the hill.  The kid in the red shirt belongs to the family that took our picture at the end of the basin hike (seen in Part 3).

There's Calebber McCheese who, if you'll properly note, is no longer running!  He is tired and hungry.  The joy of the hike is lost on him at this point.

The pictures of the local fauna do not do justice to how beautiful it truly is!

Uh oh, now he's starting to take rests!  We must fuel this boy UP!!!

That's not real encouraging...

You'd hike and hike and hike until you came up to the next corner on the trail.  Work your way around said corner and you're rewarded with a view as such, indicating that you will be hiking and hiking and hiking for a good while yet!  Every corner like this was more and more discouraging to a couple of very hungry little varmints! 

But we made it out eventually and (luckily) found bathrooms not too far from where we exited our hike back into the parking lot that is still quite a good distance from our car.  So what did we decide to do?  Even against the berating of the two hungry critters, we decided that we should do the short hike of the Thurston Lava Tube.  They were NOT happy.

There's a HECKUVA drop on either side of that little walkway entering the tube!  Best as you pay attention!

That's a shot looking straight down which I would hanker a guess at being about 50 - 60 feet as the vegetation is fairly tall too.

That's Caleb (in yellow) and Robby (in the black shorts) entering the mouth of the tube.  There was a unique smell that I simply cannot describe.  It wasn't a bad smell at all, but I would not have described it as pleasant either.  Maybe just wet vegetation (and a hint of sulphur, which is never pleasant on it's own) that I'm not familiar with.

Cool stuff!!!  We missed the Mt. St. Helens lava tubes a few years back so this was extra interesting to me. Lava tubes are a type of lava cave formed when a low-viscosity lava flow develops a continuous and hard crust, which thickens and forms a roof above the still-flowing lava stream. Tubes form in one of two ways: by the crusting over of lava channels, and from pāhoehoe flows where the lava is moving under the surface.

And this is the end of our volcanic adventure.  This is where you come up to ground-level from the tube.

We still had a bit of a hike to get back to our car, but that portion was only around the upper rim of the volcano so not too many ups-and-downs.  From there, we headed back to a restaurant that overlooks the steam vent that we saw in the post about the visitors center.  

Truly an amazing day!!

"When In Rome", Act Like the Orthodontist

What a difference a few years makes!  He would have been screaming, wailing and flailing about with not nearly enough people to hold him down.  Now, not so much...  :-)

Hawaii Vaca, Post 17 - Hawai'i Volcanoes Ntnl Park, Pt. 3

So the next part of our adventure through Volcanoes National Park is the hike across the basin floor of this particular lava basin. 

After our lovely pic in the previous post on this subject, of Mom and Caleb making their way down to the basin floor, we start to focus on the landscape that we're about to traverse!

It looks so simple, correct?  Not so!  Make sure you stop when you want to take in the sights surrounding you or you'll find yourself face down in a hurry!

Calebber amongst the rough terrain!

This is where we just came from.  Those people in the middle of the photo kind of give you a reference to scale!

This is where we're going...  Can you find Mama and Caleb in the picture?  It's like a family version of the game, "Where's Waldo?".

and here...

and a beautiful little Chinese boy amid the rough terrain.

When the wind stops blowing, you gasp for air because of how hot it immediately gets, but then, you encounter plants that are growing up thru the volcanic rock such as these.  Seeing where "stuff" can grow gives an interesting perspective on life in general!

Robby, taking careful steps because if you don't, shame on you and all of your injuries!

Rongbo the fantastic in a similar situation!

VICTORY!!

Walking across areas like this were slightly unnerving!

Some more perspective on the size of everything.

Caleb and Mama as we're reaching the 3/4 mark of the basin.

More amazing vegetation in the middle of wastelands.

Almost home!  Which truly means that we have a HUGE uphill hike and more...

We made it!

A close up to prove that we made it!