Ookala and Lapahoihoi

I love these amazing trees, they are so beautiful, big, old and fun to play in!

The vine swing

The girls at Lapahoihoi

Nash and Grandpa

The big strong waves

Tsunami memorial

Worn out kids

And a napping sea turtle

Zoo, Waterfall and the Dairy

Even the Big Island has a zoo...we thought this white tiger was pretty awesome

Not every zoo can grow its own pineapples!

Bryn is such a ham, she wanted her picture by every beautiful flower she found and they certainly weren't hard to find!

One awesome thing about down syndrome is that you have this whole family of people connected by downs and you never know where or when you will get to meet them

but its always exciting when you do...we met this awesome man who was visiting his brother in Hawaii and had fun talking to him and his mom

There are so many beautiful things to see in Hawaii!

(Notice how nicely Bryn is displaying her ukulele, she was a little excited about that too!)

It's not bad waking up to a beautiful sunrise every morning!
No wonder mom and dad haven't come home yet!

Brady was excited to get to go pig hunting on the farm

Gross

Nash had fun scaring the cows

It is such a beautiful place to farm, those cows have it good! Poor cows who have to live in the snow!

Coconut Island

We took the kids to Coconut Island which is a perfect spot for kids to play in the ocean

Nash wasn't too big on swimming this summer, but he loved the ocean! He thought the sand and waves were amazing! Bryn getting chased by her shark daddy!

It took Ridge a little while to warm up the the ocean

One thing I love about Brynlee is her ability to quickly make friends everywhere she goes

The boys loved this ginormous sand box

fun times!!

Back at "home" Grandpa wowed kids with coconut opening skills

they were very impressed! (Side note: I love when Ridge press his face against the door, he always does it as home when he wants to come in from the backyard, it makes me laugh every time!)

Visiting Hawaii

The kids have been so excited to visit Grandpa and Grandma Allen in Hawaii! Brynlee could hardly handle the excitement, we tried to get the kids to bed early the night before we left since we knew we would be getting up really early to be at the airport by 4:30 am but Brynlee was just too excited to sleep. She finally fell asleep around 10:30. At 2:30 in the morning she was at the side of my bed asking if it was time to go yet. I let her crawl in bed with us hoping to get a little more sleep but she couldn't hold still and had too many questions about the airplane and Hawaii so we got up and got ready! Here they are bright eyed and bushy tailed waiting to get the show on the road!

Does she look excited? She gave a detailed narration of everything that was happening as we took off, it was pretty good and made it way more exciting than it actually was but I made her stop the first time we hit a little turbulence because then she started saying the captain wasn't holding onto the wheel anymore and maybe we would go straight down for awhile and it seemed to make some of the people around us nervous. =) Luckily it was a great ride all the way to San Francisco!

The boys had a great time playing at the airport while we waited for the next flight

Bryn was just anxious to keep moving

The kids were fantastic on the flight, eating snacks, playing with their toys and making friends with the people behind us.

I think the kids were a little shocked by the humidity when we stepped off the plane in Kona! They were super excited to see Grandpa and Grandma and happy to be in Hawaii!

Brynlee put Grandpa to work reading her Charolet's Web almost as soon as we got to their house

She didn't waste any time getting started on her list of things she wanted to do in Hawaii which included...

see the ocean

make lei's

pick a banana

catch a gecko

smell all of the beatuiful flowers

and most importantly, be with Grandma and Grandpa!