Saturday morning beach and lunch

Today's plan had worked out perfectly! We hit a beach called Salt Pond, located on the south western part of the island. For lunch we had the "worlds best coconut shrimp!" I must say it was pretty good!

Tonight we're headed to shipwreck beach for our group picture and the Hyatt for our trip fancy dinner at Tidepools!!

Should be a GREAT night since we're all pulling an Oricks, taking a nap!

Morning walk with a little rain!

Yesterday morning Derek took the older kids for a walk on the resort and the rocky coast line! When they returned, they encountered a great deal of rain!

Planning and planning!!

The afternoon fun, looking at our books and planning our next adventures in Kauai! We've been an amazing team!

Poipu...here we are!!

After lunch we headed to the resort, Point of Poipu. Checked in very early and after we unpacked, we hit the pool! The kids all loved the pool!!

Then the girls, Melissa and Val, headed to Costco for the huge food run! Meanwhile, the boys handled the girls and Brady at the pool! We even took a walk on the beach, kinda rough and rocky!

Dinner and hopefully a good nights sleep!

The real pictures will all be up once we get back, for now, just glorified iPhone pics!!

....and we're all here in Kauai!

4:20 wake up! Airport was smooth, flight was really smooth, no melt downs! We watched videos, looked at clouds, read books, listened to music, read magazines and we even had free Mai Tais from Alaska Airlines!

Lunch at Poipu Tropical Burgers!!

The love of my life, 20 years and still counting!

I, Derek, CANNOT begin to tell you how much you have meant to me Melissa! The past 20 years have been amazing! Amazingly bad and amazingly GOOD! Its all part of the journey! But thru the hard times, we have come out stronger than before! Consequently, we're pretty strong!!

We have come along way, from two kids in elementary school not having a clue on life, but I knew I would marry you! And now we have such an incredible family, two AWESOME children: Brady and Drew, a home, college degrees(and then some), happiness, cats, jobs(that we went to college for...), friendship, travels, health, trust, honesty, a couple of cool bicycles, the best circle of friends anyone could ask for, love and soooo much more!

I'd marry you again in a heartbeat Melissa, with a smaller wedding on a beach and alcohol at the reception!

Happy Anniversary Melissa!

On our way to Kauai!

We are in Oakland, waiting to fly out at 7:20am! We had an hour to kill, so we started our vitamin D program at the pool!

We met up with The Orick's in Emeryville for dinner and some playtime too!

Early wake up call folks! Goodnight!

Gone Fishin'!

This was the kids first experience fishing.  Mommy heard about the "free fishing day" and thought what better time to have the kids try it out?  Our neighbor Byran let us borrow the rods and we went down to our local bait shop to pick up some hooks and worms.  Mommy did not realize that she was going to have to hook the worms when she signed up for this gig...but she did it anyway!  Brady enjoyed the experience as did Mommy...Drew started out great but then had a little mishap with her shoes and stepping in prickly plants.  Lets just say, we spent more time in the bait shop than at the fishing hole! I suspect Brady and Mommy will be seen fishing yet again!

One handed fancy fishing!

Yes, there were smiles before the crying fit!

Legos baby!

After a few attempts at introducing Brady and Drew to Legos, it finally caught on! YEPPY! We've really enjoyed building and creating the sets, in addition to the crazy things we all build! Most of Brady's creations are garbage related, Drew likes all sorts of creations and Derek sticks to houses and cars!

Yesterday we took a mini field trip to the Lego Store at Arden Fair Mall! Holy cow they had some cool things in there! You can buy kits, blocks by the bag and cup, gift cards, create little people, workshops etc! We saw the coolest Star Wars Death Star, only $400, still, it was amazing! Lego even has an "Architecture" line that you can build famous structures from around the world!

Here's Derek's cool Go-Kart creation from last night! Once a Formula 1 kid, ALWAYS a Formula 1 kid!

2012 4th of July

 Another year and yet another 4th of July, our 6th year, at Kim & Bruce T's pool party! We love this holiday because of the friends we see, such a great chemistry between all of the adults and children! The food is always a great collaboration among the friends, fireworks and loads of laughs! Because of the continual tradition, for Brady and Drew, going to Kim & Bruce's IS 4th of July to them! Its all they know!

The awesome Laurie Lane and Melissa! Two amazing women to put up with their cycling obsessed husbands! They deserve a great deal of credit that's for sure! Saint hood perhaps!?!? INDEED!

 Our girl Drew loving the pool!

Check out Drew catching air!

This is one of the slowest moments for Brady! He got the courage to swim all over and he was NON-Stop!

The love of my life, she is truly my savior! I love you baby!

 This is Drew thinking about the jump! Took a bit, but once the first jump was under her belt, it was ON!

Brady boy!

The slide!

Drew and Kenny sharing a moment! These two love each other! Such a cool friendship these two have! Drew LOVES Uncle Kenny!

 This was the huge highlight of the afternoon! Brady jumped before his crazy sister! Folks, you have NO idea how big this is for this little boy!  AWESOME!

Tour De CalFit - Natomas

Home gym! Yup, this is our home gym due to the facility; pool, Kids Klub (which we should use), Spinning in the winter, indoor pool and location! We have spent many days here in Natomas, we could've actually done the review without a tour stop, but that's no fun! So lets begin the review of our gym...

The pool area has two pools; a beach style and lap pool, plus a kid spray park! The beach style pool was roped off due to the swim lessons, cutting it in half.  Things worked out fine, so the small area wasn't a huge deal! The kids quickly found swim friends, making the experience a better one! The spray park, closed until 3pm! Really? Does that mean I can get a club discount? The pool had 25 kids in the roped off section, had the park been open, it might not have made the small pool smaller! Hire someone Cal Fit, its summer and kids are off in the summer, step it up management!

The seating area was great! The pool area is basically divided in half with the spary park acting as a divider! So if an adult wants to lay out and not hear kids or parents screaming at the kids, then this is a great spot! each side has plenty of lounge chairs, but the beach style pool has 5 tables with umbrellas!The landscaping was certainly more appealing then Laguna and Citrus Heights with palm trees and open fencing rather than 100% walls, well done!

 

The gym also had three swim instructors on hand, one was a school teacher earning a few extra bucks in the summer! The bathrooms were also easy to get to since they are accessible from the pool area! Brady asked to go to the bathroom, I suggested he go alone and he was totally cool with it! Perfect!

This shot shows the division of the two pools with the closed spray park in the middle! As you can see some homes get to see the gym all day long! Hope a criminal with a binoculars doesn't live in one of these homes! 

The closed spray park! When it is open, its a blast and usually CalFit has a "deck supervisor" managing the structure to avoid injuries and of course lawsuits! The "Get up lil kid and suck it" policy doesn't cut it at CalFit!

My final thoughts, its a great pool area for parents with small children exploring in the water because of the beach style pool! The beach style pool is a fantastic confidence builder for young swimmers! My rating drops because of the closed off area in combination with the closed Spray Park! The overall vibe was great too! The kids found friends and I even spoke to a fellow dad for a while, plus I did some serious Kauai research in a cool book! =)


Overall: 9

The new piece of Furniture!

 So here's the update!This new piece has replaced an old piece that belonged to Melissa's grandmother Betty! Sorry Betty, but your lil angel ran out of room!

 M has spend yesterday and today getting her things transferred over and looking great! She's HAPPY!

The closet blew up!

Yesterday afternoon I got back in the house from dropping the kids off at Nana & Papa's and this is what I found in the closet! The rods fell and it looked like a bomb went off in there! Interesting that just the day before Melissa mentioned that she wanted to work on the closet this weekend! Someone must have heard her request!

 This morning we ran off to Lowe's, Home Depot, IKEA, Lowe's, home and then back to Lowe's! This still in progress as you can see below! We picked the killer dresser set at IKEA(pics later) and now Melissa will spend a chunk of her weekend going thru clothes! Should be fun and extremely productive!

Tour De CalFit - Citrus Heights

Today is a special stop, Melissa was in attendance today! It added a bit of fun energy to have us all go! Not sure how we decided on this location, but it really doesn't matter right? Its a tour stop! 

We unfortunately arrived minutes before an aqua class started, which meant the pool was closed for free swim! Bummer, I understand the rules etc; however, there was plenty of pool space to rope off the class area and leave the shallow end open for swimming! The excuse was that the class, with its violent movements, stirred up the pool making it unsafe for young swimmers! Really?! So we sat out for one entire hour and got good and warm when the pool was open!

In the meantime, the splash area was open, no one got in it by the way! My guess, the locals knew the class time frame! As soon as the class approached the end, other members began to appear! 

Another angle looking out to the pool with the splash park in the foreground! The pool facility was pretty small. Only three umbrellas and tables, 8 lounge chairs, but many small & low chairs that Melissa liked! The hot tub was outside like many other clubs so far! The access to the men's locker seemed easier than the women's locker room!

Shhhhh, the cellphone policy! Drew has been progressing really well with her swimming! We're currently working on using her arms in combination with her legs! WHAT A CONCEPT!

Few trees in the area, just these from the neighboring homes! That stud getting out of the pool is Melissa! Six weeks of Insanity is paying off, she's got gun people!

The pool after it was opened! Lots of families with younger kids! A few of those who attended the class stayed to enjoy the sun! The weather was PERFECT, 80's!

The special guest, Melissa!Thanks for coming Melissa! It was great having you there with us!

Due to the small area, few tables with umbrellas and the pool not being roped off for free swim, I gotta drop the score a bit! I understand the policies, but this is our blog and we set the rules!

Overall: 7

Cat will be cat!

So our cat, Snow, decided to roam and explore a bit on this particular day and ended up 9 feet up on the small window of our shower! He's been up there a few times since, he's pretty cool now that he's mellowed out a bunch! The kids love the heck of these cats, I do like the cats, I just can't handle the cat hair! Balance!

An Afternoon with the Orick-Novaes'

For Christmas we gave Val & Gabe a weekend get-a-way, ie. watch the kids while they had a weekend to themselves! They booked an overnighter in Amador or ALL-Mador as Val calls it....She's Canadian eh?! Ains and Mila stayed with us and they were GREAT! The neighborhood kids love playing with them and they as well! It's a win-win for all of us! 

Once Val & Gabe came home we had some yummy food and drinks in the yard with our neighbors' Angela and her boyfriend Jim, he's Canadian too, so you know he has a buddy....eh?!? and hoot!!!

 Thats poor 'ol Drew and her busted toe nail! Ouch! But she's tough!

Melissa gets the "Super Mommy" award for the weekend! While V & G were away, so was I! I was out pedaling Saturday(training ride) and Sunday morning for the LiveSTRONG Challenge Ride out of Davis! Melissa had her hands full, but in the end, because she rocks, it was a breeze!

 I LOVE YOU and THANK YOU Melissa!

Ains, this girl rocks! Never ending energy! She might be an interior designer when she grows up! Always moving things in one of the houses, but she's learned to chill over here!

My boy Brady! Look at those teeth y'all! I took a few seconds to try to capture him on the swing! 

Brady and I both love this shoot, the lines are way cool, in addition to his awesome smile!

P.S. Gabe, Mila and Drew were here too, the camera came out for about 5 minutes and that was it! You three KNOW you're be in here in a matter of days!