Hawaii, Day 1

Yes, it is, in fact, beginning. For those of you about to log into grunzilla's fileburst, I haven't uploaded there. I have stolen your pictures, integrated them (resistance was futile), and am ready to start here. What I haven't done is sort through our pictures for what you will want to see... hopefully within the week. Or whenever Steve or Laura harasses me (you could harass Ray, but that would be about useless in this case...just easier on me!).

Okay, so, way back in May, we went on this totally awesome trip to Hawaii and stuff?
(my parents are rolling their eyes... that was for Ray).

Anyway - you already heard about the Portland part of the trip out. The flight to Hawaii itself was exactly as glorious as flying for way too many hours with a toddler sounds, so lets skip that part. We did, eventually make it to Hawaii without being jettisoned out an airlock or emergency exit or whatever. Ray's brother Steve was there to greet us (and share a car) when we got there.
The brain trusts in this crowd quickly decided that since we couldn't take luggage on the buses (What? I know! Ridiculous. No one wanted to hear how you can take bikes, snowboards, alpacas on Boulder buses.), we needed a rental car. So we got one.

Camping: Buffalo Creek

Jana has kindly provided me with her pictures of our camping trip a couple of weeks ago. With that, we are ready to ROLL (the ball pun I'm making here? See below.)

Our camping weekend started out chaotic. Ray was going to be home Friday early, then he wasn't, then he was, then he... wasn't. Saturday morning, we're packing up, and Alli calls to say that they abandoned the original campground for its complete lack of level space and headed to Buffalo Creek Recreation Area instead. Throw in some horrid cell signal, the fact that Jimmy had already gone up and ended up camping alone, and this could have been bad. Fortunately, Alli and Isaac gave decent directions quickly and then went to fetch Jimmy. Jimmy, of course, enjoyed a mellow evening of solo camping and was lazing by the river. So, all was good.

We got up around lunchtime. Everyone else was set up and on epic hikes, rain was threatening, so we set up camp quickly. Ray and Eamon worked together.
Jimmy showed up with Sadie just as the rain hit, and Sadie kept Eamon entertained while we got the rest set up.

Sometimes, it takes a whole village for two parents to eat dinner.
(Those of you who know Alli can see why this cracks us up. She so kindly took Eamon for a bit and ended up running buffalo daycare.)
These little kids loved Eamon. They wanted to touch him, know how old he was, etc., etc. It's good to be bigger than someone, I think.

Efrain's may be forgiven their somewhat subpar food last week just for the buffalo.

ps: Points to Ray for catching those eyelashes with an iphone!