Al-O-ha!

We're back! Sadly, our Hawaiian vacation is over and it's back to reality, but we had a lot of great adventures we wanted to share. We went to the big island this time around, and took Papa, Grandma, Uncle Matt, and Auntie, Uncle Rizz, Abbi, and baby Kenny with us. We stayed in a beautiful, big house with it's own pool and scenic ocean bluff view. Kona is a beautiful island with a huge variety of things to do. This post will be our snorkel post, one of Aaron's favorite things to do. He was able to take Haylee, Brady, and Jaron on a kayak/snorkel adventure to one of the island's best snorkel spots and got some great underwater shots. Enjoy.

 

Like father, like son.

  

Aaron was able to get some great shots of the huge variety of fish and coral life.

  These turtles were literally this close to Aaron. It would have freaked me out, but he loved it. We went to the Hilton's pools one day to swim and they have a man made cove where about half a dozen turtles were hanging out. Aaron said swimming with these guys was the highlight of his trip. I'll settle for looking at the pics. I know, I am a wimp.

Blog Worthy Bruise

Okay, so if you didn't catch it from the post before, yes we are expecting Swanson #6 in October. We are thrilled to be adding our final member of the Swanson clan, half a dozen seems about right. Now, don't call CPS on us just yet. I had to post these pics of Jolee so we could document a double black eye. Aaron said that out of all the times he has hit his head (and it's a lot) he has never blacked both eyes before. This whopper happened when mom and dad weren't home, and let's just say that NO ONE is allowed in our room and especially on our bed anymore!! Jolee hit her head on the corner of our night stand, right in the middle of her forehead. When we came home, she was asleep in Haylee's arms with a HUGE lump on her head. You know the Clingons from Star Trek? Yes, I had a clingon baby for a few weeks. Here are some pics of what it looked like 2 weeks later, still a football player in training. It has since been almost three weeks, and she still has bruising, but she is almost back to her beautiful self. Now, hopefully I won't get horrified stares at the grocery store!

Don't freak out Grandmas, she is okay. 

family fun night

New Sport

Like we needed to add another sport into our family's schedule, but Haylee is giving volleyball a try. She has the height and fairly good natural timing, so we signed her up for a local club team and so far, she is enjoying it. Here are some pics from her first tournament, and considering that the rest of her teammates have been playing for at least a year, Haylee did great. Once she gets some confidence, she could follow in her Auntie's sneakers. 

 

We could only get some action shots during warm ups between games, but look at that girl bump! Are her eyes closed?

 

Auntie, Kennedy and Jolee cheering Haylee on. 

Miss Personality

Most of you who have the pleasure of spending much time with our Jolee know that she has quite the different personality. She can be very sweet and loving...when she wants to. I don't know if it's the 5th child syndrome, or the fact that she didn't start walking until around 16 months which left her a literal sitting target for other kids to do whatever they wanted to with her, but she now knows exactly what, who and when she wants something. She is known to give the best hugs and kisses, but some pretty wicked claw marks across the face too. Jolee also has a pretty big shy streak in her. The other day, I was standing in line at the grocery store, and a nice lady was trying to flirt with her a little. Jolee was not in the most playful mood and she proceeded to give this nice lady the evil eye...many of you have seen this one from Jolee.  I have yet been able to capture it on film. Bless the lady's heart, she still kept trying to be Jolee's friend, but Jolee, while maintaining the evil eye, just dipped her head lower and lower until it finally came to rest on her hands across the shopping cart handle. 

I got some cute shots of Jolee at the hockey game last week that show just what I am talking about. She is having a ball with her brother... 

...when her sweet cousin, Abbi, decides she wants to give JoJo a big hug. 

 Awww, how sweet so far. Jolee is up for a little cuddle with Abbi.

 Abbi just adores all of her cousins, and decides a little hug just isn't enough, but Jolee was done. I just love Abbi's face here. Jolee begins to run away, but you'll notice in the next shot that Abbi is too quick for her and holds her put with a good grip on Jo's hood.

 

What is Jolee trying to say here? I am just glad there was no clawing of the face. Long story short, don't mess with JoJo!

Long Time Comin'!!

This weekend was high school hockey region championships. Most of you know that Aaron has coached Soldotna High School's hockey team for 5 years. What you may not know is that when he started with the program, he had 19 kids total, only a handful of whom could stand up on skates. The last few years have been painful, but a rewarding experience for Aaron and the players who have come to admire and respect him as a coach and an example. Many of his players come home from college and drop in for a visit. Soldotna's hockey program has been in existence for 27 years, but has only won a regional title 4 times (most back in the mid 90's). 

After a very successful season of 9-1-1, Sohi took home the Region III title on Saturday night with an overtime win against Palmer High. It was a total nail-bitter of a game, all that a region championship game should be. There were times my mom couldn't even watch the game (mostly when the puck was in our zone). I thought Haylee was going to get us kicked out of the rink with all of her screaming at the refs! You should have heard that crazy girl. Despite some horendous reffing, and our goalie getting wiped out twice, Sohi took it home with an amazing OT goal scored by Brad Dewey. Apparently one of the parents got it on video and said it was brilliant. He ended up getting crashed into the goal, with the goalie checking him and as he was flying mid air, he somehow managed to poke the rebound in for the big win. What a night for Sohi and I am thrilled for my very happy husband. Go Stars!!

Here is Aaron, taking his usual game stance behind his players.

 

Aaron giving his exhausted players the game plan as they head into OT.

 

Celebrating the big win. Aaron is in the middle of that pile somewhere.

The final score. I hope the team doesn't have to wait too long for their banner.

I am SUPERMOM!!

I don't normally make a point of bragging, especially about myself, my kids and hubby...yes, but not about myself. But after the day I had today, I have to toot my motherly horn. I took the kids into the local health clinic today to get caught up on their vaccinations. Our school district has passed a new policy that all students 6th grade to kindergarten must have the chicken pox vaccine starting next year. Since none of my kids have had the chicken pox, I decided it was time to take them all in (that's 5 shots). Little did I know that Jaron, Chloee, and Jolee all needed a flu booster (that's 3 shots). I decided to get Chloee's kindergarten shots out of the way since she will be going next year (3 more) and Jolee need her 2 year shots (3 more). If you are keeping track, that's 14!!! What was I thinking?? All in all, it went as well as it could. They all tried to be brave, except Jaron who is deathly afraid of needles. So far, we have no fevers, but very sore, little legs.

    

Here are the crazy, band-aid clad kids. I think my expression says it all.

  Here is my poor little Jolee. Every time she looked at her band-aids, she would relive the trauma.

 

 

The back story with Chloee is that the last time she needed a shot, she did so awesome and was so brave! Well, that was only one shot. This time, she went in with a smile, and came out crying. She tried so hard to be brave, but that darn DTP shot burns like crazy! Notice from the previous post how Chloee has modified her bangs! I still can't talk about it.