Anchorage has an indoor water park...H2Oasis. On Monday Jillian and I met Lara and Allison there to play. Allison LOVED it......Jillian, not so much. I think the high noise level and new environment were a tad intimidating.
Lazy River....we took the girls around a few laps.
Lara and Allison riding the waves in the wave pool.
Jillian is looking down at the lazy river.
Jillian and Allison. :)
Tina, our favorite German lady, brought bratwursts to share....YUMMY! Left to right, behind Tina who is holding the brat, is Gwen (Joy's Mom-in-Law), me, Lara, and Joy.
Jillian wearing Jeremy's shoes and taking a walk with Uncle Tim.
Bob and Tina used to be one of our neighbors in Anchorage. We just love them....even though they always made us look bad because they have the prettiest yard on the block. Their oldest daughter is pregnant with their first grand-baby and they are just thrilled to pieces. Jillian really bonded with Tina this trip and gave her lots of practice playing with a little one! Thanks Tina for all the fun!
Josh, Audrey and Luke saving the world....playing video games. ;)
Clean-up crew...Gwen, Joy, Tina.
Here we are with the Vanhoozer family. Andy and Jeremy used to work together. They are so fun! Andy and Lara have a 2 year old little girl...Allison. This was the first time that Allison and Jillian were able to really play together....and they had a ball!
At the little girl table. :)
Yummy, dessert! The girls pigged out on chocolate pretzels, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream and pie. With that menu, can you believe there was a time when Jillian wasn't allowed to have any sugar at all??????
Uncle Tim and Auntie Joy....could they be any cuter? :)
Josh and Luke....could they be any more handsome? :)
OK....between Joy and I (who are scrapping girls) & Tim and Jeremy (who are supportive husbands) we took enough enough pictures in 2 weeks to fill an entire scrapbook. Many, many fun pics from the 49th state to come.
Yesterday, while I was doing some last minute yard work, Jillian escaped. I didn't realize she was gone until I heard happy noises coming from our bathroom window. This is what I found when I went to investigate. She decided she needed to take a bath in my bathroom sink. :) Water play is awesome! :)
We call our favorite beach in Kona, Kukio. It actually has a different, hard to pronounce name. We call it Kukio because it is right next to the actual Kukio beach and to get here you have to take Kukio Nui Drive. It is a small-ish beach, protected by a border of rocks....so the water is very calm and still, like a pool. Jillian will actually get in the water and play and swim here. When we go to beaches with a rough break, the waves are too intimidating for Jillian. The beach has lots of pretty trees that provide great shady areas. There is also a bathroom with showers...which is fantastic to rinse off all that sand before heading home. Oh, and the best part...it takes us 10 minutes to get here. :) If you come to visit us, we'll be bringing you to Kukio. Promise! :)
We got lucky on this day and had the beach to ourselves for over an hour. Lots of little crabs live under these rocks, see below.
Our favorite treat to bring to the beach is popcorn. Yummy! It was still pretty early in the morning, so I also had coffee...not a terribly great combo.
This little crab just walked over and started crawling on Jeremy. It must have thought he was a big rock.
This is the biggest crab we could catch on this day. They are super quick! Aren't they funny? They don't bite and their little pinchers are too small to do anything but aid in crawling and climbing.
Last Friday we visited a Kona Coffee Farm.....Greenwell Farms. We went to get coffee and ended up having a little adventure.
We took the tour and ended up not taking any pictures on the actual tour....what was I thinking? There were two girls working that day and both were really great with Jillian, showing her all kinds of neat things. Jillian is being shown "sleeping grass". It is a fern like grass, that when touched withers, browns and sleeps. Then after a bit, it wakes up and looks normal again. Too funny!
The shop....very cute. They have a resident cat at the shop who Jillian fell in love with. Jillian gave her lots of hugs....and the cat (named Kitty) was very tolerant with all the love.
All around the shop are the biggest citrus and avocado trees. In fact, since we just planted lemon, lime, orange and banana trees in our backyard, I started wondering if we made a mistake. Anyway, lizards (a member of the chameleon family) live in the lime trees. The girl working, I think her name was Samantha, said that 7-9 lizards live in each tree. We were on a mission to find a lizard....she found one and we each got to hold this very cute and very calm baby female.
Well, Jillian opted not to hold the lizard and simply enjoyed her from a safe distance.
On Thursday one of the moms from MOPS coordinated a play date at our favorite playground. She organized crafts and snacks for the children. Jillian had a blast. She is sitting next to her buddy Grace. She stopped playing on the playground for a brief moment to paint.....then she said "see you later" and was back to running and climbing and sliding.
Sliding down a slide.
Sweet girls......Teghan, Jillian and Grace. Because of the little rocks, Jillian wears tennis shoes or no shoes. If we go in flip flops, she kicks them off and runs around barefoot because it is too annoying to get those itty bitty rocks in her shoes.....then by the time we leave her feet are filthy! I felt so smart remembering real shoes! Hee hee....clean feet for an afternoon of errand running.
I was there too! :) I'm usually the one taking the pictures....I grabbed Jillian for a quick shot and you can see that she is not happy that her fun stopped for a photo op!!!! :)
