Hello Everyone!!

July brought lots of fun in the sun for us!! We've discovered that Rowan LOVES water....we've spent lots of time in our friends' baby pool in their backyard, we also went to our friend Heidi's going-away party in Brentwood where Rowan went in a baby "raft" for the first time, and then to top it all off....we went to Hawaii and went in the ocean for the first time! So far our adventures in the sun and water have been so fun-no sunburns, and he has actually been keeping his hat on!
Our adventure in Hawaii was just that--an adventure--We were invited by my dad to go to Kona for a week, how could we say no? It was Mike and I, my dad, and my brother Jason in a 2 bedroom condo in the Waikaloa area 26 miles north of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. We were a little nervous about the plane ride, our longest one yet, 5 hours to Honolulu and then 25 minutes to the big island....Rowan did fine on the way there, didn't sleep much (only 45 minutes), but also didn't fuss too much--phhhew! While we were there, we went to Volcanoes National Park and went inside of a Lava Tube, and also went on a hike around the crater of an active volcano, pretty cool, but we didn't get over to where the lava is actually spilling into the ocean...as it was we had driven 2 1/2 hours to get to the National Park and to get to where the recent lava flow was, it was going to be another couple of hours, too much driving for us-recently Rowan is not too fond of long car trips...We also were able to get to Capitain Cooks Bay, and snorkle, but only I was able to swim with Spinner dolphins!! This Bay is famous for a pod of dolphins that come to nurse babies in its sandy, calm shores, and I was lucky and took my snorkeling shift first (the others stay to play with Rowan), and as I was swimming out to where we had seen the dolphin fins, about 10 baby and mama dolphins swam about 10 feet underneath me!! I even got to see a nursing baby with its mama--it was really amazing and although I was super flustered, and startled to see the dolphins so close I was able to snap a few photos on my underwater camera... we'll see if there turn out, haven't developed them yet!
All in all the trip was a success, just a little different from the kind of travel that we're used to, backpacking, and moving around a lot...our schedule was a lot more restricted due to our good baby napper-who took 2 two-hour naps each day with a 7pm bedtime, but we still got to do a lot of good snorkeling and hanging at the pool!
Our departure was the most adventurous part of our trip-strange as that sounds....we actually missed our flight home, due to me not checking our itinerary, I had looked at the flight time of our connecting flight in Honolulu at 1:30pm, but our flight out of Kona was at 11:30am! I believe that was the most expensive mistake I've made, basically there were no more flights that day and we had to stay an extra day, go back and rent another rental car, get a hotel room, and wait until the next day to leave- I can't really complain about being stuck in Hawaii, but it was a bit stressful, what am I talking about VERY stressful to go through with a baby in tow...but we're all fine and back home and even back to work, for Mikey that is, I still have a month with my baby boy before I have to go back! Hope this finds you all happy and healthy, and thanks for reading, I know I rambled in this post!! Love, Angie Mike, and Rowan