Life With Cason AND Molly

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Hawaii: Travel and Day 1 {Welcome to Paradise}

WE WENT TO HAWAII!!!!! My wonderful, amazing, loving parents took my family as well as my sisters family on a trip of a life time. I absolutely loved EVERY SINGLE MINUTE. This vacation has been in the works for about 2 years and it was a little difficult figuring out the logistics of 12 people in Hawaii BUT it was well worth the wait.

Day 1
We all got to the airport on time and had no troubles checking in. Our family consisted of my parents, Toby and I, Cason (6), Molly (4), Allison and Brian, Reid (6), Camille (4), Bennett (2) and Collin (2 months). It was crazy at times but we laughed ourselves through it.
We left DFW about 11:30 and flew to Phoenix. This was Molly's first time to fly and our first time to fly as a family of 4. The kids (all 6 of them) did great! Our layover there was only about an hour then we were off to Lihue, Hawaii! The flight to Hawaii was 6 hours long. Once again, it was a good flight except for the kid who screamed the entire flight. Don't worry, he wasn't related to us! We arrived on the island of Hawaii about 5:30 their time which was 10:30 Texas time. To say we were tired was an understatement. But everyone held it together and made the 45 minute drive to our condo. We were immediately awed by the beauty of Kauai. It had cloud covered mountains, was green and had beauriful flowers everywhere. Our condo was in the town of Poi-pu. To travel there we had to drive on 2 laned roads only going 40 miles an hour. And that was only some of the time. The roads in Poi-pu had a speed limit of 25. The island was definantly slower paced! By the time we were checked in and had our luggage in our condo we were SOOO tired. It was only 8:30 Hawaii time but 2:30 am Texas time. We got in bed as soon as we could.

At DFW

We're flying!

Funny story, I had talked to Cason and Molly several times about us needing to sleep. I told them NOT to wake up early. Just because it was light outside that didn't mean we had to get up. Well....I can say that the kids did sleep. It was the adults who suffered from jet lag the most. After a middle of the night phone call about my parents rental car lights being on, I didn't sleep very much after 4 am. By 6 am all us were up and we decided to go explore the condo and the beach. So much for sleeping in!

our condo

An example of the flowers

As we walked down to the beach a man told us to walk to a a neighboring beach because there were sea turtles resting on the beach! It was amazing to see them in their natural enviroment.

Our first Hawaiian sunrise

Sea Turtle! Cason was excited because he had already found 2 pieces of coral. He is our little collector.

Sea turtle going back to sea for the day.

Good morning Hawaii!

On the way back to our condo it rained and we saw 2 rainbows. God created so many amazing things!

After breakfast, my mom, sister, Collin and I went to a local grocery store to buy a weeks worth of groceries. I went back 2 more times that day!

My sister's min van was packed from front to back! You can see Collin's little foot. My poor mom had to squeeze in the back.

After lunch we went to swim at the beach by our condo. The water was so different from anything we had experienced before. The waves were bigger and had a much stronger undertow then we were used to. The kids loved to "ride the waves". We were all tossed around some. I was even knocked down by the waves a couple of times.

That night we had family dinner with the whole crew.

Friday, August 14, 2015

New Addition

One lazy rainy Saturday in May we were just finishing breakfast. I opened up Facebook to see what everyone was up to. One of my friends posted a picture of an adorable German Shepard puppy up for adoption at the Garland shelter. I showed Toby the picture in passing, not really thinking anything about it. He suggested we go take a look at it. AND I SAID OK! (I don't think he expected that)

Back up a few months.
Toby and I had been discussing getting another puppy off and on for a while. Toby really wanted to get another dog because he wanted the kids to grow up with a puppy. I was completely against it but told him if we did ever get another dog, I wanted a big dog. Like a Great Dane. Toby shot that down so I settled for a German Shepard. In college one of my roommates had a German Shepard and I loved him. But like I said, I did not want another dog. I wanted to wait until Herky died.

Going back to May
Toby asked if I was serious about going to look at the dog and I said, "sure, why not. Just because we are going to look at it doesn't mean we are going to get it." FAMOUS LAST WORDS. We told the kids to get their shoes on because we were going to look at a dog that needed a home. We told them that we were JUST LOOKING. Not to expect anything because the dog could be mean. Of course they were super excited anyway.

When we looked up the address we looked up the address for the Garland Adoption Center which was part of the shelter. We just assumed that's where the puppy was. We drove to the adoption site and decided it was best for Toby to get out first and go look because we didn't want to get kids hope up. Toby was gone for quite a while. When he finally came back he said the German Shepard wasn't there. I asked him what took him so long and he said he was talking to some people about a Rottweiler Mix puppy. I told him we were NOT adopting a Rottweiler but he convinced me to come look at her. We were led to a play yard in the back and introduced to a 4 month old Rottweiler puppy named Xena. X

Xena's previous owners had moved from Virgina to Texas and weren't able to keep her at the apartment they were living at. Toby actually met and talked to the owners. They told him that she was house trained, crate trained, could sit and shake on command and most importantly had lived with children ages 6 and 4. What are the odds that a puppy was already used to kids the exact same age as ours?! As we played with her one of the volunteers told us that she was a well behaved, gentle dog. She was at ease with our children and loved the attention. After some convincing on my part I agreed to consider adopting her. I only had one reservation. She had some kind of skin condition that I was scared was ring worm. I had a bad experience growing up when my family adopted a cat with ring worm and I did not want to go through with that. I said the only way I was adopting her was if I could take her to our vet to be checked out first. Amazingly the volunteered agreed and came with us! Long story short, Xena had the non contagious kind of mange. So yes, we adopted a mangy mutt.

Xena fit in with our family immediately. Her and Herky play for hours together. She has been good for Herky. He seems happier now that she is around. The kids adore her. Especially Cason. It can get awfully loud when Cason and the 2 dogs are playing together. Cason is also in charge of feeding the dogs each day.

So......HERE IS XENA!

She is a Rottweiler/Lab mix. She is sweet, loves to cuddle, loves to have her belly scratched, would play all day if she had someone to play with her, would sleep in our beds if we let her. She can be rambunctious and still has some manners to learn but we have never been more happy then to have her as part of our family!