Full Bloom, Full Blown: June 2015

Saturday, June 13, 2015

First Ballet Recital

Warming up

Performing

Pretty poses...

...and flowers

Monday, June 8, 2015

25th Anniversary Vacation -- Days Three, Four and Five

Impressive Kauai mountains--that don't look impressive through my camera lens.

The Kilauea Lighthouse

The camera doesn't do the water color justice--it was GORGEOUS--just like you see in the vacation guides.

That's my guy

A pretty little church in Northern Kauai that had some beautiful stained glass and a few century old grave sites in it's yard.

A garden lizard

Flowering trees everywhere

This particular one was massive

Our baby car--Fred called it our Go-Cart (it got us where we needed to go)

Vegetation everywhere

Taro Fields

Gorgeous cliff faces

Another pretty, old church

Incredible stained glass

More highway vegetation

The beauty and colors of "Tunnels" Beach

Wading in the warmth

Beautiful cliff faces

Massive cave mouth across from the beach

The view from our lanai

Sunday dinner on our Lanai

Everything is big here

And all the birds are colorful and friendly

We stayed by a huge grove of Coconut Trees

Our Sunday walk

Monday--on the "South Pacific" beach where Nellie "Washed that man right out of [her] hair".

The Entrance to the Ritzy St. Regis Resort on the North Shore

Movie Scene Locations for Jurassic Park

(We recognized this one immediately as we drove by)

Tuesday in the Tunnel of Trees

Spouting Horn

Banana trees inside of the Hyatt Resort Hotel on the South Shore

This was the indoor courtyard with the most impressive open ocean backdrop ever!

Outside of the $1000 per night Suites

The manicured grounds

The ocean view from the Terrace

Appetizers for dinner

The blowing of the Conch Shell to start the Torch Lighting Ceremony (among my most memorable experiences in Kauai)

The moment that it hit me that I was actually in Hawaii (I actually got all teary eyed)

Hawaii music and hula dancing

A little girl bestowed flowers to each of these men in the audience and asked them to come up front to learn some hula. Fred was horrified and tried to object, but the girls face dropped and he could resist. I still owe him for this one (since I was the one who wanted to come to the show).

A handsome prince we met on the way back home that night.

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived." (Marjorie Pay Hinckley)

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human being s should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." (Howard Zinn)

“God made the world for the delight of human beings--if we would see His goodness everywhere, His concern for us, His awareness of our needs: the phone call we’ve waited for, the ride we are offered, the letter in the mail, just the little things He does for us throughout the day. As we remember and notice His love for us, we just begin to fall in love with Him because He is so busy with us--you just can’t resist Him. I believe there’s no such thing as luck in life, it’s God’s love, it’s His.” (Mother Teresa)

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing the things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” (C.S. Lewis)

Pages

Saturday, June 13, 2015

First Ballet Recital

Monday, June 8, 2015

25th Anniversary Vacation -- Days Three, Four and Five