Spring! Sigh.

 You know by know that I'm just a sucker for flowers. Here is this year's crop.

Easter 2015

Crazy Hair

Rachael was pretty excited to do something silly for April Fool's Day. So we braided her hair upside down. Also, she's really been perfecting her lazy eye. That's about as crazy as it gets around here. Especially while I am so tired during my first trimester.

The Beauty of Bread

I must get it from my mother. I think that a good loaf of bread is a thing of beauty. I tried a new recipe and watched a few youtube videos on braiding challah (the dough is not a challah dough). I think the braiding turned out really nice. The dough was really easy to work with. I wasn't a big fan of the flavor of the bread. It was supposed to be a lemon easter bread, but it turned out too artificial tasting. I should have known when I saw how much lemon extract was called for in the recipe. Still, I learned a new skill.

My Little Cowgirl

Anna turned four. She is such a spunky little cutie. I can't believe how big she's getting. She kept telling me she wanted a "cowboy girl" cake. It turned out so cute if I do say so myself. She loved her cowgirl outfit that we got her. I also arranged with a friend for her to go on a horse ride. She was over the moon. After the quick ride, we went to the horse barn. She was so happy, she was skipping down the middle of it. I think we will have to do riding lessons eventually for this girl. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of her while we were there.

Surprise!

Once we got back from our anniversary trip, we just couldn't wait any longer. We had to show everyone the souvenir that we brought back with us.

Hawaiian Anniversary: Day 8

Monday was our last day in Maui. After we checked out, we still had the whole day before our flight back to the mainland. We decided to take the road to Hana (even though Tawnia warned us against it). The road runs along the coastline on the northeast side of the island. It was beautiful. It made me want to barf. There were so many hairpin turns. I ended up having to pick a tree in the distance to focus on until we passed it and then another and another. It helped. I did not lose my cookies. 

We made a few stops along the way. We saw a lot of mongoose. We learned that they were imported to take care of the rat infestation. However, rats are active at night and mongooses (mongeese?) are awake during the day, so now Maui has a mongoose infestation too. 

We saw a ginormous spider. Ick. There were waterfalls all over the place and we could see parts of the aqueduct system built to bring water from the wet side of the island to the dry. We had learned about the aqueducts at the sugar cane museum earlier on our trip.

We actually didn't technically go all the way to Hana. We turned off to go to the Wai'anapanapa State Park to see the black sand beach. It was so beautiful. After a short walk, we came to a small bay with black sand made from lava. It felt very weird to walk on because it was less dense than typical sand. There are a couple of sea caves there, but we didn't really get to look at them. Patrick was wiped out from our adventure, so I had to drive a good portion of the way back on the Hana highway. That part was not fun.

After dinner and a little last minute souvenir shopping, we made it back to the airport. Just in time to find out our flight was delayed. We did not end up leaving until after midnight. It was a pretty miserable plane ride. We were so tired, but it was really cramped. The guy I was sitting next to took up a lot of room so neither of us slept very much on the way to Seattle. Luckily, our next flight to Salt Lake was much better. We couldn't wait to drive home and see our girls.