Simpsons in Seattle

Our Nora girl is now 7!! This lucky duck got to celebrate her birthday in Hawaii. A few months back she was requesting a Hawaii themed birthday party so this was even better and way more authentic! :) For her big day, we started it off in true Nora style with Chocolate Muffins for breakfast. Then, we went on a Mommy and Me trip to the nearby grocery store to pick out a cake. She also wanted to get a goodie bag for her friends, so we picked out some Hawaii souvenirs for Evie, Kinsey and Kingston. The rest of the day was a blur of playtime, tv time, lunch (her request was jook!), LOTS of pool time, shave ice (of course!) and then grilled burgers for dinner. We completed the day with (what else) chocolate cake!  At 7, Nora is just still the biggest goofball. She revels in being the baby of the group and likes to be silly and relies on her big sis to do a lot. Most of the time, she can get away with it because she's so durn cute and sweet! She's very affectionate, and quite boister

So what other fun stuff did we do in Hawaii? LOTS of beaches!  At the top of our list of beaches to check out was going to the Captain Cook monument, which is known as one of the best, if not THE best, snorkeling spot on the island. You can spend $60/pp to take a boat ride over to this cove, or you can hike 4.5 miles (rt) down to the remote spot. Of course, we chose to hike it and it was quite the experience! 4.5 miles isn't long, but to get there, you have to fight your way through 10-ft tall grass for probably about a mile before descending through some rocky, hot terrain with no shade all the way down to the water. It was quite the long trek going down because the kids were not happy with the hike! Once down there, there's no real beach - just lots of rocky shoreline, and lots of ferrets (mongoose?) just waiting to steal food from you. The snorkeling itself was okay - super clear so lots to see but I think for the effort to get there and how hard it is to get into the water,

We had the incredible good fortune that our good quaran-team pals, the Wongs, loved our trip to the Big Island earlier this year so so much that they actually bought a place (after a few virtual tours with a realtor) there and invited us to stay with them as they settle in and wait for their STVR license to make it a vacation rental! It's so nice that we can work remotely right now and since the kids don't have school, we decided why not go again? Not sure if it was our timing, but we lucked out on the flight out because Scott got 2 seats upgraded to first class. Yay for me since he gave me his seat! Evie sat in the other seat for half the trip and then swapped halfway through with Nora. It was a nice way to start our trip.  First time in first class! For dinner - a fancy cheese and fruit platter, a smores tart and quinoa and mango salad. Same as our trip last time, Scott and I worked for most of the 12 days we were there. We flew in our Friday after work so that meant we had 2