Valentine's Day in Hawaii
Simon's mid-Winter break started the day after Valentine's day. Luckily, this break coincided with the mid-Winter break of the Seattle Kagle boys. Once this coincidence was realized, a vacation was planned. We left for our Kagle Hawaiian adventure on Valentine's day so we celebrated our family love a day early (and Simon's school party was two days early).
Simon made a valentine for every child in his class (per modern day requirements). Here he is once all of them were complete...
As is our tradition, we celebrated the holiday by making and decorating a giant chocolate chip cookie...
When it cooled, we stored half of it in the freezer and packed half of it up for our trip across the Pacific.
We dread taking Adlai on planes these days. He is just not all that pleasant when he can't have what he wants when he wants it and sitting still buckled up for five hours is definitely not his idea of a good time. A few screaming and hitting fits later, we managed to make it to Hawaii in relatively good condition. And except for a few restaurant induced anger episodes, Adlai was in rare form through the entire trip. He loved running in circles with the other boys around the living areas. He found Bradley particularly funny and interesting - especially when Bradley let Adlai pinch his nose over and over and over again. And Jeff taught him that, if he was pushed, Adlai was so strong Jeff would immediately fall to the ground. WHAT FUN!
Adlai loved the beach but found the sand (and sand toys) much more interesting than the water (probably because it was a bit cool). Simon, of course, wanted to be in the water every moment of every day - even when his lips had turned a very unfortunate color of blue. While Simon took turns sleeping next to his cousins, Adlai slept between Matthew and I each night listening to the tide below. He and Simon fell in love with fresh pineapple.
We spent an afternoon at the Dole Pineapple Plantation where Adlai was overjoyed to find himself on a train with all the Kagle boys looking at fields of bananas, pineapple, and other tropical fruits. There was even a "ding ding!" which we passed (!!) both ways (!!). Another afternoon took us to a macadamia nut farm where we were treated to a fire dance, a boat ride, and instruction on proper coconut opening. The leader called all the children to the front and Adlai was the very first boy to run forward. They were each given woven crowns with flowers. Adlai was so excited, he jumped and danced for the crowd and became the darling of the tour. Take a look at his face in this photo after receiving his crown...
Here are some more shots of the adventure...
On the return flight Adlai passed out for nearly three hours on my lap. I couldn't have asked for more - except maybe the few times he woke up confused and very very angry. But I didn't feel like selling him at the end of the flight which I take to be the sign of a good flight (and a pleasant vacation).
