Fillmore Family: July 2008

Retirement project

Just thought you'd like to see what your dad is doing. He still needs to cover the sides of the stairs and carpet them. But it's coming along nicely. He made the steps so a walker will fit on them and they are only 4" deep (instead of 8") so that our parents can easily go up and down them.

Hawaii 2008

Following Eli's example, Jim also found this on Maui.

One of our fun activities was snorkeling from a catamaran:

Sunset view from our room

Another fun thing we did was to drive the "road to Hana"
This road has 617 twists and turns in it's 30 miles.
There are 50+ one lane bridges.
Best of all was the scenery!

This is the "Sugar Cane Train" - no, it wasn't used to haul sugar cane, although other trains were.

\On Oahu, we went "Snuba-ing"
This is like scuba diving, but instead of a tank (like you see below on our guide),
we had a line that connected us to a tank that rested on a float on the surface.
It was a lot of fun!!!

You can see Jim's tube behind him.

We also went snorkeling in the lagoon at Ko Olina.
Our time share is in the background.

We went to the Polynesian Culture Center one day.
I looked across the lagoon and saw this Fijian "warrior" on the other side.
I decided to go visit. Found him sitting next to this really big knife.
(You can seet it on the platform next to him.)
He was carefully cutting up a coconut that he had just husked.

And was feeding it to:

Interestingly, his major at school there is computers. Didn't fit the stereotype!

Here is a video clip from our snuba dive:

We also went on a submarine. Of course, this is not the sub we were on, but it was very similar:

fun with grandkids

One of our summer goals has been to spend some time with grandkids.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from these times.

Video clips: (all very short)

I LOVE Parker's grin!

Chloe really swims like a fish.

Colby's favorite activity

Morgan

Chloe and Morgan know teamwork.

jimmy kayaking

Here's jimmy on his first kayaking trip. it lasted about 20 mintues. He loved it - although he spent half the time screaming that it was his turn to paddle. Then when we got out, he tried to launch the boats back in the water.

New kitchen

Okay, this is the last blog! promise! these are the after picts of our kitchen remodel. The window seating and shelving are all new - the photo where you can see the sink shows the refinished cabinets in the actual kitchen. The seating and the kitchen face each other - like two halves of an "O". I love it. There are still a few finishing touches that Seth and I need to add, but it's coming along. The last photo is my little project - I bought chalkboard paint and made label spaces for my storage jars. i often change these around, so it's nice to know what's in them right now. The other other day I made bread with pancake mix - so you can see that something had to be done!

Thomas

A few weeks ago, we took Jimmy to ride the local train as Thomas. He was thrilled. He loved his thomas tatoo and showed it to everyone before it wore off a week later. He keep yelling, "that's Thomas! That's Thomas tank engine!" The highlight of his trip was meeting Sir Toppenhatt - He gave him five.

kayaking

I went river kayaking with a friend last week. It was amazing. We were in very very calm water, so It was more floating than real kayaking. Next week Jimmy is coming out with us. We'll see how that goes.

berry picking

Jimmy and I went to a local farm and picked raspberrries and blueberries the other day. Jimmy helped, so we had a lot of green berries. He thought it was okay - I think I liked it more than he did - but he liked the irrigation more than I did - so I think we came out even.

4th of July

Okay, so many things have happened so I am sending a slew of photos. Here is jimmy at our neighborhood 4th of july day parade. A neighbor and I decorated the wagon the night before to surprize the kids. I made special parade hats for all his giraffes and he found the jewelry himself from a big pile of decoratations that the parade lead had brought. He loved the idea of the parade unitl right before we started, when a little boy pulled up in a toy firetruck. Jealousy. Jimmy jumped out of the wagon and announced, "That's Jimmy's firetruck!" So he started the parade in my arms, screaming and yelling

. He finally calmed down when we caught some candy being thrown and then all was well again. After the parade, he had an ice cream cone. But he wouldn't just go sit down and eat it - he insisted on standing behind the table with the servers and greeting everyone who came by.