Pumpkins & Halloween

Another fun year at our neighbor’s family pumpkin patch. The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed the company of our longtime friends, Jessica, Owen and Henry. The girls also enjoyed carving their pumpkins and dressing up as Elsa & Anna for Halloween 🙂

Woodland Park Zoo

Another fun adventure with our van crew. The kids enjoyed petting goats, finding pretty birds, and eating ice cream 🙂

Swimming

Ada loves water and looks forward to her lessons every summer. We signed her up with her good friend Owen for her 2 week class and they had a blast. Ruby enjoyed the kiddie pool and will get to start her lessons next year. At the end of summer, Ada participated in the country club’s swim meet. She won 1st place in both of her races!

Cougar Mountain Zoo

One of our many summer adventures was a visit to a lesser known zoo on the outskirts of Seattle. We rode down with a group of friends and had a really fun time seeing the animals and getting to hand-feed a few of them.

Ruby turns 3!

Back in April we celebrated Ruby turning 3 with a unicorn themed party. She had a fun-filled day with all her friends playing games, eating cake, and opening lots of presents. Grandma Cindy even made a surprise visit for the day, driving 7 hours round trip. Ruby is so full of life and we look forward to how she will grow and change in the coming year.

Goat Farm & Haleakala Crater

Our last big excursion with Tom & Cindy was driving up to Haleakala National Park. Along the way we stopped at a goat farm where the girls enjoyed petting and feeding a few goats.

The crater was beautiful for about 3 minutes, then the clouds rolled in and we couldn’t see a thing. It was also extremely cold and windy, so we didn’t last too long outside with the girls.

Iao Valley

Tom and Cindy were now in Maui so we all took a drive to Iao Valley. We spent the morning at Iao Needle State Monument and hiked around for a bit. Afterwards we stopped at Kepaniwai Heritage Gardens for lunch. After lunch we discovered a narrow bridge that led to some old ruins along a forest trail.

Kealia Pond

One morning we drove to Kealia Pond to visit the walking trail and visitor center. The facility had a nice interactive display for the kids and a path along the ponds. It was a hot day so we didn’t stay out on the trail very long, but we did see a few bird species such as the Hawaiian stilt, Hawaiian coot, egrets, and white-faced ibis.

Road to Hana

The third day into our vacation we decided to drive to Hana. It was a beautiful drive with lots of windy roads. We also learned Ruby gets car sick on windy roads. Thankfully I brought 2 outfits, a swimsuit, and lots of baby wipes because we needed all of it! She got sick going and coming, poor thing. Despite the car sickness we had fun stopping to see turtles, an old church, a black sand beach and then finish the day with donuts 🙂

Maui (first day)

I finally got through the summer posts, now on to Hawaii. We were in Maui for 17 days, and it didn’t seem long enough. Tom and Cindy joined us for part of our trip which was lots of fun! Having Grandpa and Grandma there made it extra-special for Ada and Ruby.

We spent a lot of time at the beach. We tried a few and found our favorites for snorkeling. My highlight of the trip was swimming super close to a large turtle while it munched on algae in the reef. It didn’t seem to mind my presence so I stayed awhile, could have stayed all day watching it.

Ada loved swimming, snorkeling, boogie boarding, and surfing (anything in the water). Ruby enjoyed swimming and playing with her sand toys. We all enjoyed trying new foods and with so many good restaurants and food trucks in the area we found our favorites. We ate lots of poke (raw fish), fish tacos, kalua pork, and acai smoothie bowls 🙂

Not that many pics from the first day, just getting our bearings. I also took a mix of iPhone and dslr photos throughout the entire trip.