I took pictures of his big sister all throughout her first year and now she has a little brother. He’s as cute as a button!

This precious little girl is so beautiful, isn’t she? She was born only two weeks ago but already she’s got her parents wrapped around her little fingers. She was so sweet and cooperative for our session this weekend. Welcome to the world, and congratulations to her family!

We went on our whale-watching cruise last night and saw lots of whales. It was fun just to ride on the boat, very comfortable and lots of good seats available. We saw pods consisting of mom, baby and an escort male. Another male was trying to move in, so of course there was a little bit of showing off, trying to convince the mom of who the best whale was.

We had some visitors yesterday – a pod of whales. It looked like 2 adults and one calf. They surfaced quite a few times, slapping their fins and playing around.

This morning a turtle has been playing around on the beach – surfacing every few minutes and then swimming underwater for a while.

We’ve had a busy few days. We went to the south end of the island and saw Kihei and La Perouse bay. It’s much more crowded than where we are, so we’re glad to be in Kahana! We did see a natural area, which is fancy talk for “big field of lava that you can’t walk on and wouldn’t want to even if you could.” If you’ve never seen lava up close, there are two types. The type you can walk on and the type you can’t. The type that is very painful to walk on is called a’a – because when you walk on it you say Ah! Ah! as you cut your feet open.

We also went to “big beach” which is really quite big. But the swimming wasn’t good that day as the current was pretty strong. The lifeguards posted their flags and warned everyone that it’s the #1 site for head, neck and spinal injuries on Maui. So no swimming. But we did see some palm trees as we sat on the beach!

We went to Warren and Anabelle’s magic show/dinner on Monday evening and it was great! Warren is hilarious and the food was amazing. If you ever go to Maui, look them up. I did take some pictures of the divine cheesecake, but you probably don’t care about those so much – it’s not really a Hawaiian specialty or anything, although it was delicious!

Yesterday we went up the road to Hana. All you hear about is the road to Hana. Everybody talks about it as if it’s the most amazing road ever. We’re going to be the lone dissenters…we weren’t all that impressed. It was pretty, but we would have rather spent the day doing something else. It’s a long trip, the nature is nice – but we didn’t think it was that nice. Actually, we are probably spoiled – the winding road is supposed to be one thing that you notice, and it was pretty similiar to Oak Creek Canyon – which we’ve driven lots of times. And the vegetation is very green and lush – but we’ve seen that before on Oahu. So altogether, the road to Hana was just OK for us. I did get some nice pictures of it though.

The road itself is surrounded by greenery.

There are little shops all over the place. Not real big shops, but huts and stands selling food – shave ice, banana bread, etc. I got a lilikoi (passionfruit) shave ice. It wasn’t all that great, basically a snow cone. And there’s a BIG difference between snow cones and shave ice! But what can you get in the middle of nowhere?

We saw lots of plants and several waterfalls. Christmas berries are all over the place. They look edible, but they aren’t.

We also saw tropical fruit trees growing along the road – coconuts, bananas, mangos. And we saw some HUGE spider webs everywhere – with huge spiders to go along with it!

There is a black sand beach near Hana – very small but pretty and different from the usual beach.

The central area of Maui (which you have to drive through to get pretty much anywhere) is flat – it’s the area between the two volcanoes that built the island. It’s used now for sugarcane. 37,000 acres of sugarcane, all grown by one company. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the C&H sugar commercials. It’s not C&H, but the fields look like the commercials!

We had a LONG day but at least it wasn’t too long! We had discussed going up to Haleakala in the morning to see the sunset but when it came right down to it, neither of us felt comfortable making the twisty, turning drive in the dark. But we did happen to wake up around 3 am and notice the beautiful moon outside our balcony, shining down on the water.

We drove up to the summit a little later in the morning and got to the top around 11:30. The view was great, it was weird looking down and seeing clouds! The ground is covered with little lava rocks and it looks like the moon up there! You can see the Big Island from the top – or at least, you can see the tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa peeking out from the clouds.

We had a leisurely lunch right on the harbor then headed over to the I’ao valley. We saw some very green scenery, a beautiful stream and a whole bunch of cats.

I surprised my husband with a week away in Maui, just the two of us. It was a long day and a long flight, but now we’ve arrived and we’re relaxed. We woke up early this morning (still on AZ time!) and watched the sunrise from our balcony. Well, not really the sunrise since we’re facing west – but we watched the light play on the water and the islands started to appear. Now the sun is up and we’ve already spotted several whales breaching and a turtle playing right outside our balcony! Actually, the Hawaiian term is ‘lanai’ – but I figure for those who haven’t been I should just say balcony!

Here are a couple of shots showing the view from our balcony. One entire side of our room is glass, so we don’t even have to get out of bed to watch the whales! The sun was just coming up, the sky was still pinks and purples and you can just start to make out the islands in the distance.

We’re visiting the grandparents for the holiday and Grace was busy building a gingerbread house. Of course, that means she was also busy EATING the gingerbread house! Here she is with her masterpiece.

Of course we’ve opened our gifts now and everyone is busy playing around. Grandpa got an iPod, Marie got a new Nintendo DS game, Grace got some new hair flowers. But the most fun gift of all was the two-pack of Snuggie knock-offs I bought from Amazon. When I saw the picture of them I thought they would make an awesome gift for my parents – and so versatile! Of course they can be used for the intended purpose of keeping warm, but they can also be used for dressing up as a Jedi Knight or a monk.

We spent the morning at the zoo. I told the kids to pick out which animal we would be taking home for dinner, and they had lots of options! In the end we decided to leave the animals at the zoo and eat some ham instead.

Here she is! She was so beautiful and slept the whole time. Welcome to the world, Sophia!