Wow. It's taken me a month and half to finally get this trip on my blog. I finally just had to stay up late to get it done! And now I get to put a big fat check mark on my to-do list.
July 30-August 8
Ohana Retreat
Kona, Hawaii
The highlight of our summer was the week we spent at the Ohana Retreat in Kona, HI (the big island). My family (parents, all siblings, all living grandparents and the 6 oldest Stone grandchildren) had a reunion there and it. was. the best.
It was Sean and Hayden's first time to ride an airplane. I love how excited they were.
At the airport early in the morning waiting to catch our plane
We took our four oldest, and left Sydney and Bennett home with Uncle Mikey and Aunt Amber. Sydney still talks about you guys, by the way. The other day she thought she heard someone in our family say Mikey is mean, (I can't remember what actually was said, although I know it wasn't that) and boy, does she have your back, Mikey! She set the record straight that Uncle Mikey is NOT mean. He is really, really, nice! Thank you soooo much, Mike and Amber for taking such good care of our littlest Garietys. They love you, and we love you guys too!
Ohana Retreat
Isn't this funny? There were flowers in the toilets when we arrived at the home.
The home where we stayed is on a plantation in Kona. There are actually two 8 bedroom/bathroom homes on the property, but this time we only rented one. They have a pool, a tennis court, a shuffleboard court, ping pong, and we can pick any of the fruit and flowers growing on the property. We picked delicious mangos and starfruit, and limes galore. When we were on the property, the kids were almost always in the pool. We also had lots of family dinners, a movie and even a family dance out in the pavilion which is equipped with a serving area, tables, chairs, tiki torches, a big screen TV and a sound system. We would plug in our devices during dinner and listen to the Hawaii channel on Pandora while we ate. :) We read and played games, ate and took naps, rested in the hammock, listened to stories from our Grandparents and had family home evening. We did a temple session together, the bros-in-law went golfing and the girls went to Costco to get a bunch of food. (That might not sound like much fun, but it actually was pretty fun.) We went hiking and snorkeling and fishing and swimming and basically, just made wonderful memories together.
a view of part of the house from the pool
A trip to costco. We almost needed two cars to get all this food home.
Hayden
Dallin, juicing limes
The beautiful nieces in a polaroid picture,
courtesy of Jemma's polaroid camera
gecko
ping pong
shuffleboard
fish tacos for dinner at the pavilion
more geckos
Deep Sea Fishing
We got up bright and early to head out to sea for some deep sea fishing. Kona is supposed to have some of the best deep sea fishing in the world, and we were keeping our fingers crossed that we'd have some fish for dinner that night. This was the most disappointing day of the trip because our boat didn't even get a single bite. We just went for a 6 hour boat ride in the ocean that cost more than I'd want to pay for a boat ride. And poor Uncle Brian was sea-sick for most of the trip. But Arthur was able to use the experience as an analogy in his most recent High Council Sunday talk, and it was a really good analogy. Also, I got to go to the bathroom in a fishing boat, and I guess that was an experience. Wow. I'm okay if I never have to do that again. ;)
The other boat, however, had more action. They got three bites--a marlin they fought for awhile but he got away, and then 2 tuna that they reeled in. Reed and Jade were at the pole for those two.
Snorkeling
Snorkeling--We went snorkeling several times, and everyone tried it. One of my favorite things was going out in the water with the kids and hearing their voices (muffled through the snorkel gear) exclaiming, "Look! A yellow fish! Look! A turtle!" I think we saw about 10 turtles between our different snorkeling trips. Those were definitely my favorite.
Friday--Family Fun Day
For a few days, we had the entire place to ourselves but on Saturday, there were some people coming to stay in the 2nd house. So on Friday, we made sure to party-it-up there at the plantation before there were other people we were sharing facilities with. So we had a Stone Olympics of silly events in the pool. Boogie board paddle races, biggest/smallest splash, who could jump on a boogie board and stay standing the longest, and also a water-volleyball competition between the original Stone siblings VS the in-laws.
Now, here's the thing about the Stone siblings: most of us are not very athletic. Additionally, none of us are very tall. Those are both big strikes against you when you are playing volleyball. So even though there were 9 people on our team, and only 6 on their team (one of them being Dallin) they STILL had a HUGE advantage. So we had to tweak the rules a little bit. Basically, the rules were the Stone's started with a 5 point lead, and could hit the ball as many times as necessary to get it over the net. We played three games, (increasing the lead by 5 points each game) and we lost all three. But it was a BLAST! I haven't laughed so much in a very long time!
We also had a family dance, which my kids were so excited about! They asked about it daily until it finally occurred, and had been planning out the songs they wanted played for weeks and weeks prior to the vacation. Our good friends, the Shepherds, who were our Stake DJs for the youth dances until recently, stocked us up with lots of favorite dance tunes for our "Stone Family Dance."
We also were treated to some ukelele sing-along tunes from both Grandpas, which was super fun, and Grandpa Stone even wrote us words to a little song for our family reunion! I still hear the kids singing it from time to time.
Grandpa and Grammy Stone
Grandpa Packard
The Hilo Side: Akaka Falls/ Tidepools/ Mt. Kilauwea
One day we drove over to the Hilo side of the island and spent the day doing things over there. We walked to the beautiful Akaka Falls, and had a picnic lunch afterwards.
After lunch, we drove a little further around the island to some tidepools for some snorkeling. They are a little tricky to get to and parking is scarce, but they are such a great area for kids to snorkel because the water is very sheltered.
I love this picture of Jen!
Arthur helping all the girls
Isn't this cute?
These are all my living grandparents watching the rest of us out snorkeling.
I didn't actually get to snorkel there because Sean and Hayden kept having emergencies. They scraped themselves on the lava rocks and were bleeding and Hayden thought he would surely die of his fatal wounds. And once he got over that, he had to go to the bathroom. Not the kind you can go in the ocean. the other kind. And there were no bathrooms at these tidepools, so I had to drive him down the road to a state park to use the port-a-potties there. Sean came too, and Hayden was yelling from his port-a-potty to Sean's, "Hey, Sean! Did you go poop yet?" Sean: "No." Hayden: "Sean! There's a whole bunch of poop in my toilet. AND some cheetos too!" Nice.
By the time I got back, the others were packing up and leaving, but I got in the water to check it out really quickly when Hayden declared that he really had to go to the bathroom AGAIN! So we took another adventurous trip to the port-a-potties and had another fun experience that I won't put on the blog. Believe me, you are glad about that.
After we stopped for dinner, half of the group headed home, and the other half went to go check out the Mt. Kilauwea, the active volcano on the big island of Hawaii. It was rainy and misty as we drove up the mountain which made it seem very mysterious! We got to the park just minutes before they closed the museum, so we looked through as much as we could before they turned out the lights and kicked us all out. (It was a pretty small museum, so we actually saw most everything.)
Behind us, you can see the glow of the lava lake located 200 feet below the crater rim.
It was really cool to see at night.
After viewing the lava glow, we found this cool lava tube that you can hike to, and since it was dark, we were the ONLY ones there! A lava tube is basically a cave that was formed as lava flowed from the mountain out to the shore. The lava on the outside of the tube cooled and solidified and the molten lava would flow through the tube. Evidently if you go during the day, this tube is packed with people from all the tour buses. But we had it all to ourselves, and the uncles made lots of scary jungle noises as we walked thru the jungle in the darkness that really had those kids CREEPED out! It's rather fun to be scared now and again.
Captain Cook Monument--Hike and Snorkeling
Some of the best snorkeling in the Hawaiian island is at a little bay called Captain Cook. The only way to get there is to charter a boat or kayaking excursion. Or you can hike down. It's 2 miles downhill, and then 2 miles back up. A group of us wanted to go check it out, so we woke up at 5:30 a.m. and hiked down. Once again, we had the place to ourselves. It was BEAUTIFUL! We saw so many different fish and colorful coral. We had a wonderful time snorkeling and were ready to leave just when we saw the first boats and kayaks of the day begin to arrive.
This is Captain James Cook's monument.
He was an English explorer and at first the Hawaiians thought he was a diety. But when they discovered he was in fact mortal, relations became strained and he was killed by a group of Hawaiians not far from here. The monument wasn't as impressive as the snorkeling, for sure. And I LOVED being the only people there that morning. So beautiful.
On the way back up, Grandpa Packard wanted a little head start because he was worried about the steep climb out. I volunteered to go with him since I figured I was the next slowest person in our group. Well, we missed the turn off and probably added an extra 1/2 mile or so out on the black lava rocks just getting hot and using up our water. So instead of beating everyone back, we were lost for awhile and got back to the cars dead last! I tell you what, though, that man is trooper if I ever saw one! We had to stop every few minutes to let him catch his breath and get some water, but he just kept pluggin' away. Glad we survived, Grandpa!
Hapuna Beach
Our favorite beach on this island is Hapuna Beach. It is exactly what you imagine a perfect beach is: clean white sand, clear turquoise blue water, and no rocks to stub your toes on or seaweed or anything else creepy brushing up against your legs while you are in the water. The kids could have played here all day. Sean and Hayden were just little maniacs jumping in and out of the waves. (I was glad over and over again that I stuck to my guns and made Hayden do swim team this year--he pretty much lived in the water while we were there.) And what is it about the beach that compels me to take so many pictures! (Believe me, there are lots more where these came from. . .)
Aunt Melanie made sand mermaid tails for all the nieces.
But there were some rogue waves that kept coming up and washing the tails away. So Uncle Reed made a human barrier and protected the mermaids from the water that threatened to destroy them.
This is just a cool lava tube that we saw off the main highway. When you climb up you can see little cave and lava tubes whose ceilings had collapsed all over.
Sunset on Sunday
Nine Stone siblings (who stink at water volleyball)
had to do it--the fake laugh picture
me and Daph
Shaved Ice
I can't even remember the name of this place where we get these ginormous shaved ice with ice cream inside. And those are the Keiki sizes! (children's sizes) So many flavors, so very delicious.
The Last Day
Pretty much everyone had flights that left in the morning or during the day sometime. But Grandpa Packard and our family's flights didn't leave until late in the evening, so we had a whole extra day to enjoy. The best part was that the next group to check into the house weren't coming for a couple of days, so the manager let us check out late at no additional charge. So we spent our last day at our favorite beach, then went back to the house to shower, finish packing, and eat some dinner. On our way to the airport we stopped to get some delicious shaved ice, and then at Costco to stock up on our hawaiian chocolate snacks. Finally made our way to the airport to head back home.
shaved ice one last time
saying good-bye to the house
We made such happy memories at our Stone Family Reunion in Kona. And we cannot wait to go back in 5 years with all our kids and rent BOTH houses!
Family Pictures
At the temple
At the plantation, wearing our awesome STONE t-shirts designed by my brother Jacob.
Arthur and I with our kids, my parents, and my three living Grandparents.
All of us
