Easter Fun and The End of Innocence

We have had a fantastic Easter Weekend here at the Hart house. Friday kicked off the weekend with an Easter Egg Hunt (tradition) and then a trip with 3 kids to the beach. This ended with some sassiness from my kid, who as it turns out doesn't do so well around other kids, but we managed to have a fun day playing in the sand and stalking some sea turtles.

Saturday was an adventure to see a lame Easter Bunny in Mililani and started Eve's questioning of the Easter Bunny's authenticity. In hindsight, I should have skipped this step. Saturday afternoon we went to another beach and then came home and dyed eggs.

This morning we woke up to the Easter Bunny and such. Eve opened her basket and started munching the candy and the questioning started. She said to me "I'm trying to decide if you are the bunny. Your handwriting looks like the circle on the paper I left asking if the bunny is a boy or a girl, you know where my Easter pail is, and you are a girl.". It seems that she wasn't quite buying into my story that the Easter Bunny circled the paper herself and that because she's magical knows where baskets/pails are kept. She stopped for a while and we went to the Farmer's Market, webcammed with family, cooked and ate a huge Easter meal that I made from scratch (mostly), and stopped off at a beach for pics.

After dinner, I took her to the beach for a walk where we saw a million (or 10) sea turtles, hung out for a few hours playing in the sand and water, and ending with sunset.

Once home, she started in again on the bunny stuff. I would not confirm nor deny, but she's totally onto it. I'm super sad because I know that essentially this is the end of the childhood magic. Once you figure one out, you connect all of the dots.

Purplicious

I had the pleasure of attending the annual Waialua Elementary School story telling contest this morning, where Eve Hart was a contestant. She was contestant #10 and she ROCKED it with her rendition of Purplicious. There were 16 contestants picked from her school to perform and she took FIRST PLACE. I'm further pleased to announce that all three of the winners came from her classroom!

Birthday Fabulousness

Turning 35 was pretty freaking awesome and it resulted in a 4 day celebration! It started on April 7th, when I came home from school early to a lovely steak dinner prepared by CRH that I enjoyed with Eve Hart and CRH. They gave me my birthday gifts and it was a great kickoff!
Friday, April 8th (my actual birthday), I woke up and got a sweet song from my Baby Pooh Bear. I had to go to practicum that day, but they were kind enough to let me out at 1:30pm. I picked Eve up and took her to see Soul Surfer. If this is playing in a theater near you, you MUST go see it. It's amazing and totally inspired my kid. She got the message and I was super proud of her. After the movie, we caught the end of sunset and Eve insisted we have dinner at Luibueno's.

Saturday, the day after my birthday, I celebrated with a FULL day on the beach. I went out around 9:30am and I came home for meals (which I then took out on the beach to eat). Eve and I returned from sunset that night around 7pm. It was totally like being on vacation, but at home.

The festivities finale was Sunday at the Kokua for Japan concert. We saw Willie Nelson, Mick Fleetwood, and Jack Johnson all perform along with some other great artists on the lawn of the Hilton in town. There were maybe 4,000 people there and we had pretty great seats. I came home to another fabulous dinner and some great wine.
Fantastic weekend!!

Perfection

There are days in life where things just go the way you hoped, all the way. Yesterday was one of those days. I leisurely woke up, had coffee, played on FB, etc. and then I took Eve and 2 of our neighbor children to the beach.

We went to Papailoa, my favorite spot, and had lunch, laid out, watched turtles, and swam and played for four hours. Yes, 4 hours of awesome. I've been really stressed lately with school and my practicum, so it was amazing to have such a gorgeous, cloud free day where the kids all got along nicely and the universe smiled on us (yep, I said it).