Our preschool issue sorted itself out this week and I felt much better. I went to Laney's class on Friday, then went to another teacher's class on Monday. We're going to switch. I was glad I did the observation since it gave me a much better idea of what the problem was. It wasn't the kids. The class is extremely structured. I think Laney will be happier in a more free wheeling class that isn't quite so ordered. I was really stressed out about the whole thing, particularly when it turned in to a "what is wrong with your kid" issue rather than what is wrong with her class. But regardless, I feel confident that we will have a happier kid when school resumes.
Tucson is in the midst of Fall break. I think that between all the various holidays and half days, Tucson kids don't really spend too much time actually at school. It is handy for us however since we're heading to Hawaii tomorrow. So excited!!
The travel day tomorrow will be really really long. That's the downside of frequent flier miles. You get there...eventually. But we have our reservations for the dolphin encounter and luau.
Kenna is still being a brat to the poor little girl at school. I am not sure why. She seems to feel very competitive with her. Maybe because the other girl is also very small and Kenna doesn't get to be the baby? Who knows. Griffin is just happy most of the time unless he's having a toddler moment.
Laney started swim team this week and it went very well. She's a competitive soul. She won't swim meets until she moves up to the blue team but already she wants to win. She does pretty well, though her attention wanders a little bit every so often. After the rebuff we received last year, the team changed leadership and is now accepting young swimmers. Maybe we'll add G and K in the spring. I don't know though. I think that we might try out some other sports for Griffin. He picked himself out a book on football the other day. He's pretty pro-sports considering his father never watches them. Ever. And Kenna wants to do 'nastics and dance.
Kenna told me that the sun looked blue the other day (?) and that if you ate it it would taste like gum. Griffin has a lengthy story to tell about all sorts of things. He told his dad that he had special monster killing shoes that shoot lightening bolts out of them today.
I need to go try to finish a project now. We almost completely packed and ready to go. Two small suitcases and a backpack each. If I feel crazy, I might try to post while we are in Hawaii. Or I might just Facebook. Yes Mom, you should probably get a Facebook account one of these days. I am so jazzed that I finally got my camera fixed. Whoo hooo!
We had a lot of fun in Hawaii. We stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa on Hawaii. Getting there was something of a trial, but I've had worse trips. We had to fly in to Hilo and then drive around the island. We got there at almost 11 at night (started at 9 our time, so that was actually 1 am our time) and then drove 2 hours through the dark along the coast. The kids were WIDE AWAKE the whole time. Our room was in the Lagoon tower and overlooked the ocean and the dolphin pools. This picture is looking directly down from our balcony at the sand pool connected to the main pool. This is where our children spent the majority of the week. We played in the pools, went down the slides, explored the gardens and waterfalls, looked for honu (sea turtles) in the lagoons, and checked out the barracuda in the canals. The boats that usually take people from one tower to another weren't working so that was a bummer, but everything else was great. Picasa isn't letting me upload to my web album right now so I don't have all the vacation photos to show yet. We went to a luau--only Kenna remained awake. I didn't think their luau was the greatest, but we had a good time. With the help of some lovely Japanese ladies, we peeled lychees. And this was the result:
On the last day we drove the rest of the way around the island (Griffin got car sick. Twice) and went to Volcano National Park. This time we were able to drive all the way down to the ocean and that was really cool. I think last time we were there they were having a lot of poisonous fog and we couldn't do it. You decend 4000 feet in 9 miles. At one point it looks like you are about to drive straight off a cliff. I made Charles let us out to do some viewing. He's such a nervous nelly about heights and potentially poisonous fog. Truly. His expression stayed like this pretty much the whole trip that day. It was a really, really long day. We got up at 6:30 Hawaii time and didn't get home until the next day at 11:30 in the morning. So this week we've all been relatively wiped out recovering from the travel.
