Lydgate Beach Park in Kauai

On the first day of our week in Kauai, we headed north to the eastern side of the island, near Kaapa. There was a Coconut Festival going on that we wanted to check out, but first we wanted to visit the kid-friendly Lydgate Beach Park. After renting some snorkel gear, we headed to the beach. We had heard that the southern part of Kauai (where we were staying) is more calm and sunny during the off-peak season, and we quickly found that to be true. On the east side it was cloudy, the water was a little cold and the waves were a bit rough, even in the man-made kid pond part of the beach. We still enjoyed the morning there, but headed home at lunch time for naps. We would return later that day to explore the huge wooden playground made by the local community (Gabe LOVED it)!

P.S. Notice the crowing rooster – in Kauai there are chickens EVERYWHERE!

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Room With a View in Waikiki

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Our hotel room in Oahu was on the 38th floor of the Aston Waikiki Sunset Hotel. Since we were only visiting in Oahu for a short time, we wanted a room with a good view of Waikiki.  You could see Diamond Head, the beach, some of the city and more – it was great! Here’s a (somewhat distorted) panoramic view from the balcony:

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Waikiki Beach in Oahu, Hawaii

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We spent our first night and day in Hawaii on the island of Oahu. After a nice big breakfast, we took a lovely walk along Waikiki Beach while Julia slept in the stroller. We enjoyed the scenes, hung out with some tropical birds, watched the surfers and even got to witness a crew shooting a scene for a movie “currently entitled Battleship”. It was all very fun and exciting :)!

By-the-way, I am totally hooked on this new software I am trying out, called Shape Collage!  I used it to make the photo collage above. With the free version, you can instantly make a photo collage in any shape to add to your blog posts, Facebook, etc!! It is super easy and fun to use – I’m hooked :)! The creator of the software is letting me try the upgraded version too in exchange for a review on my scrapbookideas.com site. This gives me some extra features and control over the collages – I think you will be seeing a lot more photo collages from me from now on :)!

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A Few More Gloucester Pics

I can’t believe VBS week is already finished and so is the weekend! I can tell this summer is going to fly by!! Here are a few more photos from our visit with Sarah. I think you can tell we had a great time :).

Pilgrim Memorial State Park

On Saturday morning, Chris and I took Julia, Gabe and their cousin Avery to Pilgrim Memorial State Park in Massachusetts.

It was a lovely day for a walk along the coast. We played in the parks, looked at Plymouth Rock and posed in front of the Mayflower II.

We found the perfect place to eat lunch with exactly four stools at the counter. We rewarded Gabe and Avery with ice creams for being such good kids :).

Gabe had lots of fun with his buddy – he was so sad when we had to come back home. Hopefully it won’t be long before they can play together again!