Kaiya Turns 8!

For birthdays, the policy at our house is that the kids can have a birthday party with their friends every other year. This was the rule in my house growing up and now that I am a mother, I can fully appreciate it! Kid birthday parties are a lot of fun, but they can be a lot of WORK too! (That being said, I have no idea how I am going to implement this with the quints yet, since there are five of them....maybe the girls get to have a party one year and the boys the next---when I made this policy, I would never have imagined having quintuplets!)

This was Kaiya's year for a friend birthday party. Within about a month of her last birthday party (nearly two years ago) Kaiya decided that for her 8th birthday, she wanted to have a Hawaiian themed birthday party. I thought for sure she would change her mind in the two years she had to wait for the next party, but she stuck to it! That was fine with me, because I could think of lots of fun things to do with the "Hawaii" theme!

Party Invitation

When all the "passengers" arrived at the party, they boarded the "plane" for Flight 306 service to Honolulu, Hawaii.

All aboard Flight 306--10 very excited, very active, very LOUD girls get ready for take-off!

Once the "plane" had reached its cruising altitude, the passengers were served beverages and snacks.

Snack packs filled with macadamia nuts

The handsome flight attendant (aka Riley) serves drinks to the passengers

The flight attendant collected all trash and remaining service items as the passengers returned their seats and tray tables to their upright and locked positions in preparation for landing.

After the girls "landed", they were greeted with shell leis (which I picked up when I was in Kona in January). Then they completed two different craft projects. First they made some fancy flip-flops and then they put together their own candy lei.

Working on the flip-flops

Fancy Flip-Flops--The finished product!

Making candy leis

Riley models his lei (he didn't think it was manly to curl the ribbons like the girls did)

Next the girls learned a hula dance. I used to live in Hawaii when I was a kid, so I taught them how to do the hula to "Pearly Shells". Jayson took several pictures, but they must be on my other computer, so I will have to add them later :-)

After the hula, the girls played a game called "Boolah, Boolah", which we renamed "Hula, Hula" to go with the Hawaii theme. I remember playing this game at every birthday party I had as a kid, but I think it might be a game that my mom made up, because I have never met anyone else who knows what it is. It is basically a hot/cold game. Someone leaves the room and somebody else hides a prize. When the person comes back into the room, every one sings "boolah, boolah" over and over singing loudly when the person is near the prize and softly when they are far from the prize until the person finds it. The prizes for the game were these cute flower hair bows. I looked at the store for a more tropical flower to make the bows out of, but had to settle for these :-)

The game prizes: Fun Flower Hair bows

Goodie Bags for the girls to take home their loot

The evening ended with dinner! On the menu, Hawaiian Haystacks (which is rice, chicken gravy and toppings which included cheese, crunchy noodles, coconut, pineapple, and macadamia nuts), pineapple and cantaloupe skewers, and Hawaiian sweet rolls. To drink: tropical smoothies (with little umbrellas of course).

The serving table

The party girls enjoying their feast!

If after reading this post, you are thinking to yourself "Wow, she sure planned a lot of stuff for two hours!" You would be 100% correct! The girls barely started eating dinner five minutes before parent started arriving to pick up their daughters! We quickly sang "Happy Birthday" to Kaiya and sent everyone home with a cupcake.

Kaiya with her cake. The shape of the base of the cake is supposed to be an "8" for Kaiya's 8th birthday (it was pretty subtle, I don't think anyone caught on to that). The volcano was made by shaping rice krispie treats around the outside of an 8 oz water bottle. I filled the bottle with Cheerios so that the candles would say put and hopefully make it look like the volcano was exploding. The lava rocks near the base of the volcano are mini and regular sized chocolate chips. The "sand" on the beach is brown sugar. I picked up the hula dancer in Hawaii. The rest is frosting....lots and lots of frosting!

Make a wish!

On Kaiya's actual birthday, we celebrated with a small "family" party. We had GG and Ronnie and the Woods family over for dinner and birthday treat.

Kaiya opening her presents. Ryder was upset that he didn't get to open any.

The whole "family" at Kaiya's family party

I love planning parties, and Kaiya's party was a huge success, but I am glad I don't have to do another one for her for a couple more years! Now time to plan Riley's birthday party...

Kaiya Turns 8!

Four Days in Paradise!

For Christmas this past year, my parents gave me a ticket to HAWAII! My dad was in charge of a big sales conference in Kona for the company he works for, so they thought it would be a great opportunity for me to get away for a few days and also give my mom some company while my dad focused on his meetings. You know the old idiom, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree"? Well, that pretty well describes my mom and I---we are a lot alike. We both like shopping, photography, chick flicks, exercise, American Idol and eating out. We have similar tastes in decorating, clothes and even food (we are both chocoholics). Over the past four years she has been amazing in helping me with all the ups and downs of having quints. My mom is my best friend (next to Jayson), so spending four days in Hawaii with her was a BLAST!

Before I get into all the trip details, I must mention that I have the BEST husband and the most amazing friends on the planet, without whom this trip would not have been possible! As soon as my friends found out I was going on this trip, they immediately cleared their schedules and started "staking claim" on each of my kiddos. Ryder and Rustin ended up spending the entire time at their "church family's" houses. GG, with the help of Cassaundra and Barbara,
took care of the girls, and Natalie watched Riley and Kaiya after school everyday. GG made sure that my family was well fed and well cared for in my absence. In fact I started to wonder if my family would want me to come back! Jayson's responsibilities were actually lighter with me gone, than with me here! I feel truly blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life!

It took nearly all day to get to Kona with layovers and the long flight times. I was "forced" to read books and watch movies undisturbed for several hours...it was rough :-) (It is amazing how having seven kids can really make you appreciate being ALONE on long plane flights and layovers!)

The night I arrived in Kona (on the Big Island of Hawaii, for those of you unfamiliar with Hawaiian geography), my mom and I had dessert by the ocean side.

We stayed at the Waikoloa Hilton Resort (where my dad's meetings were). It was incredible! Right on the ocean, beautiful pools and scenery. It was also HUGE---there were boats or trams available to take you to your room if you didn't want to walk. One morning it was raining, so we weren't able to walk outside, so we just walked from one end of the resort to the other under the covered walkways. The GPS said it was about .6 miles from one end to the other.

Another view of the resort...

And another...

The resort had a large lagoon where dolphins swam.

Rachelle standing under the waterfall at the resort

My mom (aka Mimi) under the waterfall

The side of the island that we were on was the "dry" side. There was a lot of volcanic landscape.

With all the lava rock everywhere, people would take white rocks and make "graffiti" on the rocks. I couldn't resist....I had to make my own lava rock graffiti!

A cool beach swing

On our second night, my mom and I went to the LDS Kona Temple. It was beautiful!

On one day, we drove all the way around the island. When I was in elementary school, my family actually lived in Hawaii for a few years, though we lived on the island of Oahu. Oahu is very crowded and it was such a contrast to see how uncongested the big island is.

On the "wet" side of the island, we drove through miles and miles of these tall, tall trees.

Akaka Falls--WOW!


Rainbow Falls

It's Hawaii....I had to throw in at least one flower picture! I can't actually take credit for this one, though---my mom took it :-)

On our way around the island, we took a tour of the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory. This is a picture of the how the famous chocolate covered macadamia nuts are made. I was fascinated by how much of the process was done by people instead of machines---in this picture, four workers fill the boxes of chocolates by hand.

The most amazing part of the whole trip was seeing the active volcanoes. Here, my mom and I are standing by a steam vent from the Mauna Loa volcano. The last big eruption from this volcano was back in 1984 (which was when I was living in Hawaii, so I have vivid memories of it) and it could erupt again at anytime.

The Kilauea crater is a smaller volcano kind of on the foothills of Mouna Loa. By day steam billows from the crater.

By night, you can see the orange glow of the lava beneath the steam of the Kilauea crater.

On the other side of the Kilauea volcano, there are active vents with lava flowing. We were fortunate to be there on a night when there was a lot happening! When we first got to the viewing site, this is what we saw. In the spot we were looking at (above) there was actually a house two days earlier. Lava reached the house and within hours there was nothing left.

We walked a little further up and actually stood about eight feet away from the river of lava above. It was absolutely fascinating to watch the lava flow, start to crust on top and get dark and then bubble up again.

This picture shows the blockades that were set up (and how close we were to the lava)---when the lava first started coming nearer, the park rangers started moving everyone back, but after a while they gave up.

Bigger view of several different flows

More lava...truly a once in a lifetime experience!

Back at the resort, we had dinner sitting on the water's edge watching whales breach and enjoying the beautiful sunset.

Rachelle & Mimi

A whale offshore

The sunset! If you look closely, you can see two whales spouting in this picture.

On our last night, my dad was finally done with his meetings and we all got to have dinner together before catching the red eye flight back home!

When I arrived back home, I was greeted by hugs, kisses and this cute sign made by all the kids!

Four Days in Paradise!