May/June 2014

I'm totally behind with this blog but I'm going to try and at least document a few important things that happened in the past year or so.  In a nutshell, my parents visited us in Dec 2013 which was awesome!  Then Christmas and Oliver's birthday were upon us (both were great).  January 2014 brought swim lessons into our life for the next 4 months and Tory started coaching Parker and five other little 5 year-olds (and Oliver who tagged along) in soccer.  Penelope also started soccer.  We had a great spring break in March (see the 3 previous posts for more on that).  In March/April we made the difficult decision to leave Hawaii and move back to the mainland.  May and the first half of June were spent packing and finishing school while trying to enjoy our last few weeks in Hawaii.   Here are a few pictures of May and June:

Penelope at her cinco de mayo dance recital:

 She loved her dance class especially since her friend La'akea was in it with her!

 I got to do a mother's day tea with my Oliver at his preschool, it was so much fun!

Since we had a big birthday bash for Parker and Penelope last year, we weren't planning a friend party for their sixth birthday.  But when we realized we were moving just after their birthday we decided to have a big swimming party so we could see all our friends before we left.  We reserved the pool, got a bouncy house, ordered a bunch of pizza and had a great time!  It really was fun.  I think the highlight was having Parker and Penelope's church teachers come.  They LOVE the Bryces!!

As luck would have it, Parker and Penelope had a field trip on their birthday.  They got to ride a train and have lunch at the train station.  They were so excited, especially since dad came along as a chaperone.

Then came moving day, we sold our house and moved out (that was so easy to type and SO hard to actually execute!) so on the twins' actual birthday, we walked out of our house for good.  As it worked out, our vacation rental wasn't ready til the next day so we crashed at our friends' house (thanks again Youngs!)  for the night.  They were so nice to take us in and Parker and Penelope thought it was so exciting to sleep there on their birthday.  Tory had seminary graduation that night so we went out to dinner and when we got 'home' sans dad, our friends had made a cake for the twins which was so nice.

After school the next day we finally got into our rental and felt a huge weight lift as we unpacked in a great vacation rental at Ko Olina. We spent just less than a month there and it was a perfect last hurrah for our wonderful 4 years in Hawaii!


The last day of school for my kids was quite sad for me.  We were so blessed when it came to good teachers this year.  And knowing we wouldn't be coming back to these schools made it all the more hard (for me).  Here is Oliver with Ms. Christine:

And here is Parker with Mrs. Hasebe:

And finally, here is Penelope with Mrs. Shirk:

We had lots of pool/beach dates with our friends before leaving Hawaii:

 And this one kept us on our toes all through the packing and moving process!

 So that is May and the first half of June in a nutshell!  More to come soon.......

Spring Break 2014 - part III

After our hike we headed to Sea Life Park.  For those of you that have been to Sea World, take that and divide by 10 or maybe 20 and you'll have Sea Life Park.  Its small, but we still had a good time.  We found a grassy area and ate our lunch, then headed to the dolphin show.  The kids LOVED it!  Especially Lily, she squealed at every jump, it was pretty cute.

Then we looked around, saw the few exhibits they have and 15 minutes later we headed over to the other dolphin show.  We had some time to kill so we decided to take pics of our darling Lily:

She's really into prayers!

Dad and his kids!

Sea Life Park isn't Sea World but our kids loved it and it was fun to see them get so excited about seeing dolphins do flips and other tricks.  It was a great outing for Spring Break 2014!

Spring Break 2014 - part II

On Thursday I decided to bite the bullet and head to the other side of the island knowing that we wouldn't make it home for Lily's nap time.  We first hiked to Makapu'u Lighthouse.  We've done it before but not in a while and I love that its paved and we can bring our bob (stroller).  It may not look it, but pushing that stroller up the path with 3 or 4 kids in it was no joke.  I was sweating and huffing and puffing for the 5 minutes I pushed--I let Tory do the rest :)

I was hoping to see some whales but no luck this time, it was beautiful though. 

For the most part, Lily did really well, on much of the way down she was tired of being in the stroller so I carried her most of the way but then I was done carrying her so she wailed in her stroller for the last 10 minutes, we got a lot stares as we hurried down those last minutes!

Spring Break 2014 - part I

A few weeks before spring break, I called to charter a train ride with the local railway society.  They only offer runs on Sunday so in order for us to go, I had to set up a special run.  We needed 38 people to make it financially possible or I would be on the hook for $200.  I put it up on facebook and boy did I get a response.  By the day before the ride we had 200 people coming.  Luckily only about 100 showed up so we weren't packed in like sardines!   We got there a little early and hung out with our friends and played on the train they have for kids to explore:

 Finally it was time to board the train.  Parker's best friend from school, Lily, came and he had to sit by her.

We were all excited to ride the train, especially Oliver since he was too little the last time we rode this train.

 

Time for a few selfies before the train pulls out:

The train ride was 90 minutes and while it certainly isn't an amusement ride, it was fun.  We waved to a lot of people, got to see Costco, Target, Ko Olina and best of all, the ocean!  The kids had a great time and it was so fun to hang out with our friends on the train!