glimpsesbymelanie

It is cold this morning with a heavy frost.  I am sitting here with my cup of hot coffee thinking of warmer places and I thought about when I was in Hawaii.  My husband was a Marine and we were stationed in Hawaii when our second daughter was born.  My parents were there when my first daughter was born in Pensacola, FL and, even though they had never flown before in their lives, they came to Hawaii.  You know how the doctor gives you a “due date”?  Well Sharon was 6 weeks late.  No one thought that it would happen again but, it did.  Mom and Dad had to turn in their return ticket because she wasn’t born yet.  Mary Beth was 6 weeks late also, so they had an extended stay in Hawaii.We really had a good time while they were there.  Sharon loved having her grandparents around.

I have mentioned before that my second daughter was born in Hawaii and that is why  when the girls wanted to do something special for me on my 70th birthday they decided to take me there.  They couldn’t have given me anything better.  We went earlier than my actual birthday because of their work schedules.  We were there over Thanksgiving and had a seafood feast for our Thanksgiving meal.Here we are at Hualoa State Park on Oahu.  We had rented a car and went somewhere different every day.  All of us love the outdoors and this is a fabulous place to do that.

Here are my girls on the beach at the Barking Sands Naval Base on Kauai.  They have completely furnished cottages on stilts at the beach where military families can stay for a very, very reasonable price.  It was wonderful and we enjoyed every minute of it.

We had a kitchen so, we shopped and fixed breakfast and, sometimes, dinner at the cottage.  We went to a farmer/s market and bought fresh fruit which was delicious.  This was one of the strangest things we bought and I don’t know what it is.  When you cut it open there was a seed and a little bit of flesh to eat.  It didn’t have much taste but, it was interesting to look at and photograph.

When my parents came for Mary Beth’s birth my Mom bought a couple of mumu’s .  Here, 41 years later, is the birth child wearing one of her Grandmother’s mumu’s.  I am very sure that Granny was smiling and doing the hula seeing this.

Well, I am all warm and tingly inside.  This is why I love photography so much.  I can keep all these memories alive and not worry about them fading.  I have about 1000 images from this trip.  It was nice of someone to come up with digital photography.  I don’t have to pay to have them all developed to look at them.

I hope you enjoyed our little trip to a warmer place as much as I did.  I hope you have an exciting day and remember: Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.- Wilfred T. Grenfell.  Melanie