Sunday In Lahaina

I don't want these posts to turn into simple recaps of what went on each day of our vacation. It may be inevitable, and I do want to capture all the fun things that we're doing, so just bear with me.

Neither Jennifer nor I like being late, and we've already been late a couple of times this trip. So we determined last night that we were not going to be late meeting everyone for Church this morning. Thanks to the kids waking up earlier than usual (relatively speaking), we were the first ones to arrive at the designated meeting place. Baby stepping be on time, baby stepping be on time. . .

One of the funny things about flying here from Salt Lake is that about 1/2 the passengers on the plane ended up in the Lahaina 1st Ward this morning. The meant that the meeting was filled all the way to the back of the gym, which is exactly how it should be. :)

More than a few months ago, we hung a nice arrangement of picture frames in our entry way, with the intention of going through all our photos and filling the frames. There are seven in the arrangement, and so far there are pictures in exactly one. The only reason that one made it in was because it was Nathan's school picture, and it happened to be handy at the time we got the frames. We took pictures outside the chapel after the meeting this morning, and now we have one more picture hang.


Just down the road from where we are staying is the Lahaina station of the Sugar Cane Train. We ride at least once each trip, and the boys love it. This trip we bought month passes, so we can go whenever we want -- perfect for filling a couple of hours of downtime and avoiding the rowdiness and fights that would inevitably happen instead. Today we used it as an incentive for the boys to behave during quiet time.

Our boys love riding the train, and it is fun for us to see how excited they get, and also how much they pay attention to while they ride. Today we sat up front with the "entertainment" and enjoyed a wonderful island breeze as the train chugged along the track.




With the exception of a little flying ham and turkey as a result of too much wind on the 8th floor lanai, dinner was fantastic. The entire family working semi-chaotically to get all the kids plenty of what they will eat and just enough of what they don't want to eat, finding the right arrangement of underage cousins and supervising aunt and uncles, and actually sitting down to eat and talk as adults for a few minutes is quite a sight to behold. At the same time it's my favorite way to spend mealtime. We're almost finished putting our backyard together at home, and I can't wait to begin the steady stream of backyard barbecues with family and friends.

Even though we had the obligatory sad/cranky/disobedient kids at a few points throughout the day, this is how it always ends:


I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.