Hawaii

I could title this post so many things:

10 Years

Hawaii = Favorite Place on Earth

The Shaw's Conquer Maui

The Trip from the Year of Jubilee

What is a Fern Grotto

Always ALWAYS Wear Pants in a Fern Grotto

Take Me Back

Jay and I just celebrated our 12 year anniversary a couple of days ago.  WAHOO!  

Well, this is not the year of jubilee, that was in 2013 when we celebrated our 10 year anniversary and went to Maui and Kauai.  (2015 is the year of the harvest).  :)

We left Elle and Caroline for the first time with Aunt Tracie.  I should really call her Saint Aunt Tracie because she is pretty dang saintly and all things awesome.  It was hard to leave our then 1 year old but I am pretty sure they would receive more natural nurturing and love from Tracie than they had ever received.

We departed from Nashville around 7 pm...

and landed in Maui around 9 pm Hawaiin time and 2 am Shaw time.

We were ecstatic!  And starved!  We went to the local SafeWay and got some peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches and some other snacks and then picked up a pizza and headed to our hotel.

The next morning we popped out of bed around 5 am local time and got to it.

It is simply impossible to take a bad picture of a place so beautiful!

While in Maui, our days looked pretty much the same...

We woke around 5 am, went snorkeling until lunch, ate PB&J's on the beach, then we would explore some other part of the island.  

The first day we went snorkeling at Palauea Beach.  We had an awesome book that told us all the best places to see fish, turtles, coral, etc.  I've got to be honest, at first my attitude towards snorkeling was that this was Jay's thing so I was going to go along and just enjoy it for him.  Well, I loooove it!  You feel like you are in another world.

This beach is still probably my favorite place we snorkeled... That being said the same day we were here a woman got fatally bitten by a shark.  She was out later when trade winds pick up and the water is a little murky, but still... 

Honolua Bay

Before leaving for our grand vacation, we did our research and knew that because there is so much tourism in Maui, there is also a good bit of theft.  Tourist often have lots of cash on them and then frolic out on the beach to come back to their bags gone.  The first day we were in Maui we saw a dad running after a man who stole his family's passports, travelers checks, cash, etc.  

Well, the Shaw's were one step ahead and put our valuables in a dry box.  

Side note:  My family sold canoes and kayaks for over 2 decades, along with dry gear.  I consulted  Dad and Gray about which dry box to get and they both said to get a Pelican Case.  The navy uses them and they are the best.

Well, Pelican Cases don't have a sticker on the front of their packaging that guarantees everything to stay dry.  Otterbox does.  

We snorkeled everyday with a bright yellow otterbox strapped to Jay's back.  Inside was our car key, a little cash and my phone.

On Jay's birthday we got out of the water and...

the inside was soaked!  My phone had bright blue acid bubbling out of the charger area and 

Jay TRIED TO SUCK IT ALL OUT!

If he dies from unknown causes, I will blame this moment and poor judgement.

Every beach was gorgeous and totally different.  It would be impossible to pick a favorite.  I just fell in love with each one.  

Our second night in Maui, we went to the highest point, Haleakala Crater, to watch the sunset.

The sun went down above the clouds and it was glorious.

My honey.

Side note, it was friz.eezing when the sun went down.  

Day 3 we traveled the Road to Hana.  Oh my word, if you go, you MUST purchase Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook.  The author lives in Hawaii somewhere and all he does each year is update his travel guide by eating everywhere and doing everything us tourist folk want to do and then rating them.  Without this book I believe the road to Hana would have been a bust.  All the well marked waterfalls and stops were not necessarily the best ones and some of the best ones were on random unmarked spots.  

This is now my all time favorite tree.  The Rainbow Eucalyptus.  I believe they will be everywhere in heaven.

Fresh coconut.

Many of the stops where hard to navigate... but totally worth it.

Three Bears Falls.

Random lava pit on the side of the road.

Black sand beach.  If I could record a sound and sleep to it every night of my life, it would be the sound of this very beach.  It sounded akin to a rain stick but so much better.  The rocks range from tiny sandlike pebbles to pretty big inchers.

Favorite color palate in Maui.

Red Sand Beach.

Banyan trees are everywhere in Maui and this one was at the start of the best trail ever, the Pipiwai trail.  It was 2 miles and the start was pretty typical hawaiian terrain, then we entered the bamboo forrest.  As the wind blew you could hear the bamboo chink while smelling mango and papaya.  It was unreal.

You could hear the falls grow louder and then the bamboo broke apart to this spectacular sight.

Waimoku Falls 

There is no way to really catch the magnitude of the falls through a lens.  It was 400 feet of power and peace all at once.

We decided to take the backroad out of Hana and travel through the back country.  We knew we may never be here again and wanted to see everything we possibly could.  The roads were partially unpaved and I can see why they don't advise it, but it was worth it.

Around nearly every bend I feel like we would say "this reminds me of the swiss alps" or "Lord of the Rings" or "quintessential Hawaii" or so on and so forth.  It was incredibly peaceful and I think we only saw two other cars while on the road.

Natural Lantana.

This was where we stayed while in Maui.  The Kannapali Outrigger.

We ate pretty simply while on our vacation.  This was Aloha Plate.

After four days we took a short flight to Kauai.  To be honest we were a bit worn out because we played so hard in Maui, but we hit the ground running as soon as we got there.  We landed, dropped our bags off and went to Waimea Canyon.  This is considered the Grand Canyon of Hawaii.  It was breathtaking.

We then went to the Napali Coast (northern part of the island) and did the Honopu Trail.  Let me tell you, this trail is not for the faint at heart.

It was maybe 2-3 miles long.  It started and I thought to myself, this kind of reminds me of the smokies.  

HA!

Enter the fern grotto.  Sounds like a place fairies live.  

I confidently believe more ferns live here than most horticulturalist have seen in their lives.  They start pretty small and innocent.

Then they grew.

On trails over 100 degrees in angle.

Until they were taller than Jay and me.  They were still beautiful, but the dead undergrowth was painful!  Our guide book "advised" wearing pants and long sleeved shirts... it should be mandated.

They enjoyed my Ray Bans for a snack at some point.

It was worth it.  Just check this view out!  It was magnificent!

I was slightly terrified due to the combination of cliffs, loose red dirt, and steep narrow paths.  Jay was in his element though.  The fact that we could plummet to our death never once crossed his mind.

This is a super zoom and you can see a tiny helicopter giving tours.

Looking back I wish we had packed more snacks and just sat there for hours.  It was truly breathtaking.

After, we got some local shave ice.

And then we washed our feet.

Day 2 in Kauai we took this little boat up the Napali Coast.  It held I think around 15 people and was small enough to go in some of the caves.  Our guide book suggested this particular tour and we were very pleased.

At one point a pod of spinner dolphins swam all around us leaping and spinning in air.  The captain told Jay to put his GoPro under the boat and he got some really cool footage!  He just lowered it down on the pole by the hull as we sped along and the dolphins just swam on around him.

We got to jump out and snorkel on the northern tip of the Napali Coast, ate some sandwiches and then headed back.  We then rented some paddle boards and headed to Hanalei Bay.

This maybe my favorite thing we did all week.  Some of the pictures of the dock are from the day after we paddle boarded and a tidge more overcast.  While we were there it was bright and sunny.  You could see three huge waterfalls in the distance, tons of boats were anchored to a mooring, the water was soft, and it was the epitome of peaceful.

We paddled up a little river off of Hanalei Bay a distance to find...

A fun little restaurant called The Blue Dolphin.  We literally pulled our paddle boards up the bank and ate (the best ever) fish tacos and sushi.  It was the quintessential hawaiian experience.

For recording purposes...

Animals we saw:

Spotted Eagle Ray

Octopus

Little Eel

6 footish Eel that National Geographic man was filming

TONS of Turtles!  (I got to pet one)

Monk Seal

We truly enjoyed every second of our anniversary trip.

Aloha!

30 Pound Club

I often worry Elle will be my "scarred" child.  She is the first born to a momma who didn't get an overly abundance of motherly intuition when baby entered the world.  As a result, I fear I am always over.reacting or under.reacting, and seldom appropriately.reacting.

When Elle was a baby she didn't keep much food down.  She threw up an awful lot.  Now that I've had another baby that ate well, I have gleaned a better idea of how bad her throwing up was.  When she was born she was a healthy size: 50% in weight and 75% in height.  

Well, month by month as we went for our check-ups this gradually fell until at 18 months we were at the bottom of the charts.  At 2 years, she grew nada and put on no weight.  Elle was then at 0% for both.  Awesome right?!

Last year, Elle was being made fun of at her little MDO class for being so small... "like a baby."  A little girl wouldn't play with her, and while I'm sure the little girl didn't intend to hurt my Elle, it did.  For months all I heard was how Elle wanted this girl to play with her, the words that she said, etc.  

Disclaimer:  my child is no saint.  I do not judge and realize kids are just kids.  They are learning what is okay and not okay to say.  They have remarkable candor and are just now learning that while sticks and stones may break bones, words do indeed hurt.  Elle has said her fair share of nasty and certainly not above saying unkind things.  We have however used this situation as a grounds for trying to teach her the power of words as well as how it can hurt to not have friends.  We have encouraged her to always seek out those sitting by themselves and try to be a sweet friend to them.  

The poor child, which I now deem scarred for other reasons that my stellar motherliness has been poked and prodded more than most people have been in decades.  Elle has a phobia like you wouldn't believe of needles.  She has been at times quite literally like a wild animal when she sees a needle.  At Children's Hospital I asked how bad her anxiety was on a scale of 1-10.  I figure they see children all day every day... surely Elle is not the worst right?  HA!  They said she was a 10 and it was in her charts to have all further procedures done downtown where they are better equipped to handle her and put her always under general anesthesia.

You can pray she outgrows this.

She started have blood work drawn at 18 months, and since then vials upon vials have been taken, we've had bone scans, stem tests, and an MRI.  Results: idiopathic growth hormone deficiency.  What does this mean?  Elle's pituitary doesn't work all that well and produces (hurray that it produces anything) "barely traceable" amounts of growth hormone.   Treatment: Elle takes growth hormone shots every night, 6 nights a week, until she goes through puberty. 

This was a 4 hour test Elle had to do where they manipulated her pituitary to see how much growth hormone it was capable of producing.  

This was also the day after we lost our Lucy.  This was a hard day.

After a MRI to make sure there was no tumor on her pituitary.

I have a file over an inch thick that includes documentation of all phone conversations I've had over the years with doctors, insurance, special pharmacies, etc. 

Well, we started treatments on Christmas night last year (2013) and Elle is now growing at twice the average growth rate for a child her age!!!  She very regularly will put her hands and feet in our faces and say with great enthusiasm "look how much I growed!"

Just last week Elle finally joined the 30 pound club!!!  This was taken in September 2014.  She is just a month shy of being 5.

We are so proud of her!  Due to Elle's aforementioned phobia of needles, we give administer her shots while she is asleep.  She sometimes wakes up, sometimes yells, sometimes thrashes about.  We've had plenty a bent needles and bruises.  For the most part though, she sleeps right through the shot, wakes up and we talk about her bravery.  

I am so thankful for modern medicine and our growing little girl who is about to be 5!!!

Here is my girl in her first big girl dress and big girl shoes!!!

Hungry Flower

Disclaimer:  The following blogposts are a montage of all that has occurred this past year in the Shaw household that I have meant to document but haven't gotten around to it.  After we lost Lucy I just kind of... well, I just didn't want to.  We have also had numerous issues with our computer and I just kind of forgot about it all.  These posts will most likely be out of order but I want to remember them nonetheless. 

Sometime last winter Jay surprised me with some flowers and he brought Elle a rose.

Elle was beaming!  

I'm fairly confident most children experience the same love language of sorts when they are 4... GIFTS.  

All gifts equal love and happiness.  At least that's the rule of thumb with my 4 year old.

Let me tell you... a rose has never been so loved, admired and nourished... to quote her she said it was "the most bee.u.dee.fulls flowers evers and evers."

Jay and I were talking about how much Elle loved her bright pink rose and contemplated nicknaming it "my precious" when I looked over and Elle was shoving peanuts into her rose.  

We asked her what she was doing and without skipping a beat

Elle said "I'm feeding my flowers because it's sooo hungry."

ps. she pluralizes everythings.

Intoductions

We would like to introduce the newest addition to the Shaw family.

Princess

Rainbow

Butterfly

aka "Rainey"

Jay wanted to name her Maui, I wanted to name her something that didn't sound like Maui, Hawaii, or any other city/state/island.  We did what most mature adults do and flipped a coin.  Jay won, so we were sticking with Maui.  That is until we introduced fluff buckets to Elle.  Elle had a meltdown.  How could we call her Rainbow Butterfly by any other name?!  (backstory:  Elle has had this puppy named PRB for months...)  I rain with Elle's sobs and petitioned for Rainey.  At this point, we were just so excited to have her home with us that Jay didn't put up a fight.  

I mean... could she be any cuter?

ps. Rainey rode the whole way back from the Mobile area like this.  As we were pulling into my parents we bonded via her throw up all over me.  It was lovely in a smelly kind of way.  :)

Here is Rainey's first bath.  Sidenote:  she is half her size when wet.

I'm not all that tech savvy, so I hope this video works.