There comes a time in a life when you become the Elder and while my dad is still alive and living in Montana, when my Mother (the Big One) left, I essentially became Big Mama. It is a weird transition to go through, this Becoming but now that I have come to terms with it, I have embraced it with all of my heart. While I know that I am far closer to the end than the beginning, I am determined to make each day count for something and this is why Rod and I decided to do something grand, for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. We took a family vacation to Kauai.
I have been back in the studio a week, working like a demon to finish the orders that came in, while we were away and this is the first chance that I have taken to record a bit of the magic of this journey.
We got the East Coast Souza's out here a couple of days early, so that they could adjust to time and temperatures, before making the 5 hour flight to the Islands.
In honor of Syd-Biskits going on her first vacation, her Teachers painted her toes and those of her classmate "sisters". I just fell in love with this and she fell in love with the warm, soft air of Kauai, right away. Here she is; a new arrival.
Jacob was my seatmate on the way to the Islands and we had a lot of fun watching movies. He got his second lei, the first one being for Mama & Brian's wedding party. Another happy, new arrival.
It takes quite a bit of wrangling to get 8 humans and all of their luggage into nice neat piles and we found lovely "uncles" at each end of the trip, who helped get us to where we needed to be and in this case, women and children waiting at the curb with all of it, while the men headed off to score the rental car(s).
We wouldn't done these long pants again, until our mopey about-face, a week later!
We decided to rent a house for the week, so that everyone could be comfy and have their own bedrooms. I was trying not to jinx anything and put off worrying about the photos of the house being old and that the house might be shabby. I have to say that we were blown away by this beautiful big home, right on a private golf course and felt so very much at home, so much so that we never wanted to knock each other out. :o) Seriously, this is the view from the "back yard".
Yeah, I know...shut up, right? We had a pond out behind where I was standing and at night, the Nene (Hawaiian Geese) would fly in to hang out.
Yes, I miss it. We all do.
Not wanting to stop at Costco, with the children, we opted to spend our first two meals OUT. Lauren and Brian had stayed close to this place and so after our first night's dinner at Kalapaki Joe's (their lamb chops are to DIE for) we had breakfast here.
Window shopping after breakfast led us to a wonderful little surf shop where everybody got their snorkle gear and the first boogie board. We were set for The Beach!
Everything on Kauai is pretty close together and staying in the Poipu area turned out to be so very ideal. We all fell in love with the two distinctive beaches and day one was spent, in a blustery windy warm time, on Poipu Beach, where the snorkeling was wonderful and the sunburn took hold. Hah.
We fell in love.
