Favorite Memory

It is the last day of January and of course it is snowing again. I had to laugh yesterday when Smiley said on the way to church, "it is spring!" I WISH. I had to burst his bubble when I told him it was still winter and would be for some time yet. I am freezing and even as I sit at the computer typing this I must pause to get another hoodie on ... that's better. Sorry cute turquoise sweater but warmth over fashion wins. Of course now my outfit doesn't match... dang! No wonder my family makes fun of me. Oh well.

A cold day like today takes me back to our family trip to Hawaii a few years back. You probably got green with envy the second you read the word Hawaii right? Am I right? Who wouldn't? Any time I heard someone say Hawaii that was my reaction. Of course that was before I found out about weather in Hawaii in December. I didn't know that Hawaii had a RAINY season. I should have suspected that because there is a rain curse in our family. I am starting to suspect that I may have inherited it from my father. He has a rain curse. When he takes holidays it rains. True story. Our next-door neighbors would even ask my dad when he was taking vacation so that they wouldn't take theirs at the same time because they didn't want it to rain during their summer vacation. Honest. One time my dad took an unexpected vacation day and didn't tell our neighbor. It rained. Our neighbor called up because he had also taken a vacation day that day and said, "Bill, did you take a holiday today and didn't tell me???" When my sister got married in Arizona they had been experiencing a drought. My parents when down for the wedding and it rained so hard it flooded.

So we went to Hawaii and it rained every day except for one day. The one day it DIDN'T rain they had wind so bad that it blew the shingles off of the roofs. We went to a popular beach to swim and couldn't because the wind blew in the man 'o war which made it too dangerous to swim there. After the first few days of rain we decided we would just have to make the best of things and go sight seeing in the rain. We went to various waterfalls and the rain made the waterfalls full and beautiful.

One waterfall was very difficult to get to however and required going down a very muddy trail on which we slipped and fell many times.
We tried to keep the boys as clean as possible but it really was mission impossible. By the time we got back to the rental van they were covered in mud. Thank goodness for the 24 pack of bottled water in the back of the van! We had a lot of fun slipping and sliding and at the end of the hike I shot what has turned out to be one of my favorite pictures of my boys:


If only winter could be a little warmer...