New Year's Eve

On the last day of the year, we headed out to the farthest west beach, Polihale. It was pretty cloudy, so we weren't sure we would get a good sunset picture.

Right away when we got there, we started finding a MILLION shells. It was so exciting.

Pam and I were little kids again and so so excited!

After a while, we all had rootbeer floats, and played some more and had a great time.

The tank is always Solace's favorite part.

As the sun started setting, we realized we were going to get  a great sunset!

And there it is. You can see Ni'ihau in the background too which was a great surprise. What a lovely world. This was the last view of the sun for 2017.

We went home, put the kids all to bed and cleaned our shells. It was a great way to spend our New Year Eve.

visitor season

Paul's scouts leader from his childhood, Eric Ritz, came with his family to Kauai. It was SO fun to see him and his family and get to chat with him a little bit at church. We got to spend a few days hanging out with them too. Winter, aka, visitor season, is always a busy time for us.

paddling adventure

One morning we took the Reaves and Grandma paddling up the Wailua River to see Fern Grotto and Secret Falls. It had rained a few days before, but the river was clear and went for it.

The kids switched boards a million times on our way up, and Matix saved a large pink moth from drowning all before getting to the dock at Fern Grotto.

We got papayas to go with our picnic lunch and continued on our way up to the grotto.

After our lunch stop, we continued on the river to the trailhead for secret falls. We parked our boards and headed in for the long hike.

What was normally a dry, easy and quick hike, turned into a few hours of slow and hard hiking thanks to the ridiculous amount of mud.

The kids weren't excited at first, but then got really into it. Being a mud monster has it's perks.  Plus the river crossing, gave them a fresh start again, which was nice, although we all got muddy again shortly after.

We finally made it to the falls, and they did not disappoint. This is one of our favorite hikes here. It's so beautiful.

By the time we had hiked out, it was getting dark. We didn't want to be stuck on the hike after dark, so there were drier portions that we all had to RUN, and then we got our boards and paddled hard to get back in time. We made it, but it was an ALL day adventure, for sure.

We ended the day eating an extra frozen Kauai pie, yes please!