The Sorensen Family Adventures

Thursday, January 5, 2017

2016 Sorensen highlights

So many great things happened in 2016 and I have been very slow at recording it all.

*Matt and I celebrated our 15th anniversary by booking a trip to Kauai
*Zack turned 13
*Derek turned 10
*I went to Arizona to visit Matt's sister and her family and my cousin
*Lots of skiing
*Easter was a wonderful celebration of the Resurrection. Also the day Ellie swung a plastic tape measure around, hitting me in the eyebrow. We super glued the heck out of that thing because we were days away from leaving for Hawaii and I was worried I wouldn't be able to snorkel with stitches. I still have a lovely scar ;)
*Kauai!!
*Backpacking the Kalalau trail with Matt.
*Getting stranded by a flash flood and being forced to spend an extra night in the wilderness, with soaking wet gear and no food.
*Sydney turned 6 years old
*Camping in Canyonlands
*Ellie turned 3
*The Lodge
*Rafting the Snake river
*50 mile backpacking trip for Matt and Zack and the YM
*Lots of family hikes
*The Lodge again
*The Unintas camping trip
*Matt turns 39
*I turn 37
*School starts
*Milestone: only one kid at home all day with mom
*Austin turned 9
*Begin basement finishing-dig outside stairs and knock out wall to install door
*Amazing church history tour of NY, Penn and Ohio with mom and Polls
*Wonderful Thanksgiving
*Jamison and Eden's wedding
*Christmas

Thursday, August 25, 2016

End of School/Sydney's birthday

May was busy, as always, with the end of the school year.

I got to go with Sydney and her friends to the Aquarium for a Kindergarten field trip.

Derek and Austin got to cut down a dead tree. They thought that was pretty cool. And no one lost any fingers. So that was good.

Guitar concert for Zack.

Baseball for Austin.

Visiting family graves for Memorial day.

Our ward color run was a blast.

Lots of fun adventures at the Scout Expo.

Pinewood Derby. (Derek's last one)

Sydney's gymnastics Expo.

Tragedy.

Sydney's 6th birthday!! She loves her new bike!

Easter 2016

I am not sure why we only took pictures of Ellie on Easter, but whatever. We had a wonderful Easter weekend, visiting family, learning more about the life, death and resurrection of our Savior and preparing to leave for Hawaii a few days later. On Easter morning, we were having a little family devotional, watching one of the LDS Bible videos on the Resurrection. Ellie had found a little plastic tape measure that I had been using the day before and started swinging it around. Before I could take it away from her, the plastic shell made contact with my eyebrow/eyelid area. I grabbed my face, in pain and when I pulled my hand a way I saw lots of blood. I ran into the bathroom to see the damage, leaving the rest of my family staring at me in shock. Once Matt washed all the blood off we could see a decent sized gash that hurt a lot. Matt pulled out his trusty liquid stitches and closed it up for me. I had a nice black eye for a few days. Thanks, Ellie. Note to self: always, always put away your tape measure.

We had a very nice rest of the day, going to church and visiting our families. I am so grateful for the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Kauai Food and other random pics

We spotted this beautiful LDS chapel one night in Kauai. There are not that many LDS buildings on the island, I think we might have seen all of them as we drove the island.

Our hotel

Watching General Conference without kids is so peaceful! (Ha, thinking of my sister and her hubby and their five kids, pretty sure they did not hear a single word said at Conference with my kids thrown into the mix!)

Pool at the hotel. I hung out here while Matt watched the Priesthood session.

There are wild chickens EVERYWHERE in Kauai.

Beach day

I will have to come back and add the names of the places I forgot, this was Hamura Saimin

L&L

Bubba's Burgers

Sushi from some random grocery store that was SO good! We needed a lighter meal.

Breakfast buffet at our hotel

Shrimp Station

I don't like shrimp, so I ordered the only other thing on the menu, a hot dog and a salad. This is my hot dog. Below is my salad. Lamest meal ever.

Huge pancake at Kountry Kitchen. It was seriously bigger than my head.

Mmm. We are missing a few. One night we ate sandwiches at Costco. A few times we made sandwiches in our hotel room. Matt got a breakfast burrito at McDonalds almost every day for breakfast. There were a few more shave ice, ice cream, hula pie, etc , that didn't last long enough for a pic.

Kauai Photos

First morning in Kauai, waiting for the sun to rise!

Worth waking up at 4 am. Just kidding, I was long awake by 4 am since I had gone to bed at 4 pm the night before. That time change is a killer!

Day 2: We spent our second day kayaking. We rented some kayaks and packed a picnic lunch.

After a little kayaking, we headed down a trail to Secret Falls.

One of the prettiest hikes I have ever seen.

Coming out of this little foliage tunnel and it looked like we were on the set of Lost or Jurassic Park.

The Falls. It was busy. As soon as we stepped into the water, I slipped on a rock and sliced open my heel. So I stayed on the rocks while Matt swam (there was some warning about the bacteria in the water and open wounds...eeek.)

Matt under the waterfall

Me just chllin'

I couldn't resist trying to climb this tree that was growing sideways!

Back on the kayak and we decided to explore further up the river.

We were the only ones on this part of the river and it was so quiet and peaceful.

We paddled up to the Fern Grotto. Cool, and bonus, they had bathrooms!

Day 3: Beach!! I think this was Ke'e beach. Matt did some snorkeling, and I napped. We hit up several beaches that day. The snorkeling was so fun! No sea turtles, but tons of colorful fish and sea urchins.

Day 4: On Saturday we headed out on a zip line adventure. It was beautiful and fun, but too pricey for the experience in my opinion.

This area really was where parts of Jurassic World were filmed.

Matt went upside down, of course.

Sunday we spent in the hotel watching General Conference and preparing for our epic hike!! The next few days were spent there. (See previous post).

Day 8: After returning from Kalalau, napping, showering and finally feeling clean again, we headed out to explore a bit. This is on the beach next to the Marriott Hotel. We went to Duke's to check out the Hula Pie. Fabulous.

Day 9: Our last day, we decided to drive up to Waimea Canyon. It was a long, winding road. We were both a little sick by the time we got to this viewpoint, and decided to turn around.
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We had already check out of our hotel and we had several hours before our red eye flight, so we went back to the beach, attempting to get a little more color before heading home. (we both got fried.)

After a night time flight, we arrived in Phoenix bright and early, like 7am? My brother in law and sister in law and their daughter were there to hang out with us! What a fun way to spend a layover. We were so excited to get home to the kids, who basically didn't miss us at all, but we had a wonderful vacation. It was so much fun to hang out, just the two of us. I think we would both do this vacation again in a heartbeat, even the crazy backpacking trip. In fact, I think we would do a longer backpacking trip....