New Year's Visitors

One of the biggest adjustments in moving to an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is the lack of family contact, especially if your family is a close-knit one like mine.  We may go a while without hearing from one another (hopefully not too long!), but as soon as we're together again, we are immediately comfortable and can pick right up where we left off.  So it was my great good fortune to be able to start 2012 with lots of family visiting!

First off, on New Year's Day, my Dad arrived.  We immediately whisked him off to our friend's New Year's brunch, followed in the next few days with little trips to town, a soak in the warm pond, working on the lanai (see previous post), as well as much laughter and talking and taking turns cooking for each other.  It was a lovely and relaxing time.  He got to stay for a good long week, overlapping with our next visitors: Lori, Dave, and Acacia.

Poor Lori arrived with a broken toe and had caught a bug on the long flight over, so the first few days were pretty low-key. This did have the bonus of allowing baby Acacia time to get to know us and her new surroundings.  We had a fun beach day at Carlsmith Beach Park with lots of our friends who wanted to see the kids and the baby. That's kind of a cool thing around here: when someone has grandbabies visiting, we all share the pleasure of their company so the other tutus (grandparents) get a grandbaby fix as well.




 
We visited the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo and Liliu'okalani Gardens, spent a day up at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, attended a very special wedding... and took more trips to the warm pond. 
 
 
 
 
 

Not every day was full of activity, though. Sometimes we just stayed home and let Acacia play in the sprinkler, or we'd take her out to the piggies who she found most amusing, or I'd play my guitar for her and she'd bounce and dance along to the music. Such fun! One friend brought over her sweet little doggy to Acacia's absolute and utter delight! Another young mama came over for a playdate. A toddler does tend to keep one on one's toes. Nevertheless, we managed to get in loads of quality visiting, while enjoying our granddaughter's antics.
 
 

 

It's a marvelous thing to see your grown daughter become such a capable young mother in her own right. I love watching Lori with her little girl. She's a good mama, and it brings back many fond memories of my time with my own babies.



Altogether, it made for a happy house-full for almost a month! A good start to the new year. 






Aloha and a hui hou!