Ok... so here's a quick recap of the last week and a half...

May 25th - Dan and I loaded up the car and drove 14 hours to Fort Collins, CO to stay with my little sister Cari and her husband Scott.

May 26th - Cari and I left Fort Collins at 7am (with Carter) and drove 17 hours (only stopping for gas) to Chico, CA to stay with my twin sister, Erica. Scott drove Dan to the airport that morning (thank you, thank you, thank you Glen and Audrey) so Dan could fly back to St. Louis to wrap up Joe's Place stuff and the school year.

May 28th - Surprised my Mom at her surprise 60th birthday bash.

It's been years since Erica, Cari and I have been at the same place for more than an hour. It was so much fun to have some time where it was just the three of us.

May 29th - Had breakfast with my Mom and Cari and then spent time with our really good friends... Luke, Beth and Maia. It was so awesome to finally meet Maia.

May 30th - Cari took the Amtrak home to Denver. It was so sad to say goodbye. Here is a pic of the 3 of us the night before she left.

June 1st - My Mom and Dad flew to Kona.

June 2nd - Erica, Lexie, Nate (Erica's boyfriend), Carter and I drove to the Bay Area. First we stopped to see my Aunt Gail and Grandpa...

Then we stopped to pick up Dan from the airport in Oakland. After that we headed to San Francisco to stay the night before our early morning flight to Kona the next morning. We also got to see my best friend Lisa for a few hours at the hotel.

June 3rd - Flew to Kona. Carter did not stop moving the entire 5 1/2 hour flight. We kept giving him juice to keep him quiet. Not good. About 4 hours into the flight I smelled something really bad. Lets just say all that juice went right past the diaper. Thankfully I had thought to throw a change of clothes into our carry on. We thought everything was fine until we were landing. The smell was back and was all over our seats (and Dan's pants). He won't be having juice on the way home.

My Dad had someone greet us at the airport with lei's. That was awesome.


We were out of the airport with our rental car in record time. We are staying at an incredible house with an amazing view of the ocean and an amazing yard.

The amazing yard has a great lawn and a lot of different native plants. Dan, Carter, Lexie and I were out enjoying the yard that first night while everyone else headed to the grocery store. Lexie was sprinting down one of the lawns when she tripped and fell. Dan and I knew the scream was not good so we called everyone else to come home. They came and ended up turning right back around to take Lexie to the ER. This is what she came home with...

A broken arm our first day in Hawaii. Dan and I feel so bad. She's been an amazing sport about it.

Here are some more pics from last night and today....

Carter's first official time at the Pacific Ocean.

Today Dan and I drove down the road from where we are staying to look for a place along the beach to rent snorkeling gear. We ended up finding a place to rent kayaks and the gear. So we kayaked out a ways to an amazing place where we saw so many different types of fish. On the way back from snorkeling about 8 dolphins passed us just 10 feet from our kayak. We were so close we could hear them and see their eyes. It was so beautiful I thought I was going to cry.

On that note... I think I'll head to bed. Carter has done amazing with being in 4 different time zones in the last 8 days. We're still adjusting with the 5 hour time difference from St.Louis.