Peel Fam

6/23/2012

Heather's Birthday in Hawaii!!!

Heather's 40th birthday was quickly approaching and my brother in law Josh, asked if we'd like to go to Hawaii with he and Amy to their time share to celebrate her birthday. Fine! I guess that will be ok...hahaha. We had the BEST time. Honestly the most relaxing vacation of ALL time. We did a bunch of...nothing really. The morning we left we had to wake up at 4 a.m. to drive to the airport for a 5:30 a.m. flight. We arrived in Kauai at around noon, drove to Costco to load up on food for the week and went to our room at the Kauai Coast Resort.

At the Kauai Coast Resort looking at the ocean.

We immediately drove to Bubba Burgers (a local favorite) for lunch

When we went to Hawaii a few years ago we met this same woman ("Bea") and bought some of her coconuts. She remembered us!

I believe this was called Waimea falls.

The birds loved Josh-he had all of the goodies

This is what we did with most of our free time: boogie boarding. I wish I had a video of this but there was one time when we were all out there on the water, caught the same wave and rode into shore together. We were all laughing our heads off during the whole thing.

In Hawaii they hire live scarecrows (real people) to sit on a chair in the middle of a field to thwart the enemy birds. You kinda have to squint to see this guy. 8 hours sitting in a chair in a field...guess it wouldn't be that bad.

Yes, a pretty chessy picture but oh well-it was Heather's actual birthday.

This was taken just outside the restaurant "The Beach House" where we ate for Heather's Birthday.

We went on the famous Napali Coast hike the next day and arrived at this secret beach and saw this sign. Of course we saw many people getting in and swimming in the water there.

Such stunning views

Josh and Amy coming up the trail

A perfect day

There were wild chickens all over the island. It made Heather and I miss our 4 chickens back home.

This is a famous road called "Tunnels Road"

One day we went to this beach called Polihale Beach. Little did we know that it was also a missle testing area. While we were laying on the beach, you guessed it, a rocket was launched (you can see the faint smoke trail in the sky). It scared us when the sound finally hit and it just rumbled for about 2 minutes straight and it took off in the sky. It was amazing to see.

Guess what this cool building is? It's the local LDS meetinghouse. We were priveledged to hear the words of the local seminary students and their testimonies that day. Such a great spirit there-one of our favorite memories about our trip.

Heather and I got up early one morning to hike the "Sleeping Giant" trail that one of the church members just raved about. It was awesome. We climbed to this level after only about 20 minutes. One of the perks of the hike was finding the wild strawberry guavas (next picture down) and eating them while hiking.

It was so peaceful and gorgeous up at the top.

Our last meal at the Hukilau Lenai before going to the airport to come home.

A sad moment for all of us. We had such an amazing vacation in Hawaii but were anxious to see the kids again. We knew however, that they were in good hands: Tim and Taihana Olsen stayed with them for a few days, then off to Grandpa Danny and Grandma Jeannie's house then finally Dad and Mom flew up from Cali to stay with them for the last few days. We were excited to come home and find out also that Chloe had made 9th grade officer!!

Happy Birthday H!!!

5/26/2012

Spring Break!!! The return to California...

SPRING BREAK...RETURNING ONCE AGAIN TO CALIFORNIA!!!

Since Kate is always looking for money making opportunities she offered to rub Grandpa's head...for a price haha

Liam took this pic:

Kate was BUSY during General Conference. Busy drawing portraits of everyone in the room. Then she spread them all over the floor and had a "For Sale" sign for them.

We needed some game time happening so Mom and Dad broke out Blockhead (truly a classic). This was Kate's final move with all of the pieces being used. Good job!

Monday we decided to head down to Knotts Berry Farm. It was a ton of fun (besides the fact that our cell phones died after splitting up the group and the "meeting" place was incorrectly understood). The cute part of that story is that Heather told Kate that they should probably pray to find us. Kate stopped then and there, put her head down and began. A few minutes afterwards, the group was reunited once again! By the way, the dude in red in this picture is Eli's best friend Connor.

I loved this ride like crazy. It was called Perilous Plunge I believe, but we just called it

"The Plunger"

Here's a clip of Eli and Connor going down the Plunger:

Here's what they looked like after:

Let me introduce you to a ride call the "Xcelerator". Eli and Connor really had to work their magic with talking me into riding this thing. It is extremely fast! This video shows the take off at the station:

This next clip is what happens once you leave the station (at this point your going about 90 mph):

Dad and Mom were having a good time too

We rode on the mellow train when we needed to calm down a bit from all of the thrill rides

This is JUNG (pronounced Young) who painted Chloe's initials while we were there. It was so cool to watch him use his small pieces of leather to do it.

Cute hot dog

We were all looking forward to this day when we drove to Newport Beach and spent the day basking in the sun. It was a perfect day.

Eli was pretty proud of his bed head

Off to Hollywood...it was a pretty interesting day

The kids were diggin' on seeing some of their favorite movie characters

...and holding a huge snake

Hey, Shrek even had a star in the walk of fame

We decided to drop by Chinatown while in Hollywood. This was one store that was pretty crazy-it was full of spices, teas, and animal body parts...all for sale

This is a hat that Liam bought but that Eli couldn't resist wearing

So we run into this dude playing live music on the streets of Chinatown. You couldn't help but love this guy, and his talent of playing so many things at the same time (check out the clicker things he's doing with his feet!). In this clip, the guy gave Eli some rhythm sticks to play along with him. Recognize the song? There are awesome people everywhere-even in Chinatown.

Eli and Conner were dying to see "Titanic" re-release in theatres in 3D. I must admit, it was pretty cool to see.

We decided to go to Laguna beach down by Eric and Jenny's house for the morning and afternoon before going over to their house for Andrew's bday.

So jealous of the MV Peel's backyard-the kids loved it!

Andrew mentioned that he had a pair of pink onesie pajamas. I didn't believe him until he showed up a few minutes later with this on...

The view from thier kitchen window...Our view is the side of a neighbor's garage that's falling apart.

Oh yes, almost forgot to mention that Eli stepped on a sharp rock at Laguna and Heather had to go into doctor mode and help him out.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention one of the greatest things about our vacation: The breakfast buffet which was always sitting out when we got up each morning-Yum!

The trip was awesome and before we knew it we were driving back to Utah. Thanks Dad and Mom for letting us crash your house and for all of the great food you provided. Can't wait until next time...

4/23/2012

Kate's Bday party

Kate's b-day party actually took place a month before her "real" birthday. Her cousin Max was celebrating his birthday at the new Get Air at the sportsplex and so they decided to have a combined party. There were lots of friends invited. Kate invited her friends that were girls and Max invited his friends that were boys. It was a riot on many levels with that many kids. This was a full group shot.