Hawaii 2012 - Day 1

HAWAII 2012
For those of you who don't know, us Texas Zooks just got back from our "every 5th year" Hawaii trip extravaganca....and let me just say, it was AMAZING!!!  oh how I wish I was still there.....
This year, we had several "FIRSTS" for us.....first time to go with kids, first time to go on vacation with a mutual friend, first time to see red lava for all of us.........I could keep going.  and I will. 
I'm planning to update the blog with pictures from each day so that I can share our trip with you out there in blog reading land.

So here are the details:
"who" - Erica, Matt, Natalie (age 3.5 years), Rachel (20 months) and Lisa (BFF)
"what" - a crazy family trip with two little rug rats, a best friend and two people in love
"when" - April 27 - May 7
"where" - Big Island and Maui
"why" - because Hawaii ROCKS!! and Matt and I decided to go every 5th anniversary (this is our 3rd trip) 

Day 1 - our plane left DFW in the afternoon, stopped in LAX and landed in Kona at 8pm that night (2am to us).  We traveled for over 12 hours and we were tired. dead tired.  The girls did great and God blessed us with lots of room on the plane rides for the girls to stretch out.  Since Rachel was a lap child this was a HUGE blessing and Natalie enjoyed stretching out (.....somehow she managed to escape the camera the first day). We spent the night at King Kam Beach Hotel in Kona.  I highly recommend it.

Easter 2012

Playing together

Rachel pics

Spelling with Natalie

Dancing Queens

Bathing Beauties

Yum Yum Chocolate Cake!!

Sister Love

Rachel LOVES her some big sister hugs.....I just love that our kids love each other so much!!

Aunt Lisa rocks

Christmas 2011 Wrap-up

Christmas Eve festivities

We've had so much fun over the last week leading up to Christmas! Both of the grandmothers are here visiting and the girls are just in heaven! Lots of spoiling going on in this house.....and we wouldn't have it any other way!! One of the things this year that we've been able to do is play games with Natalie. She is showing her Cadden roots and has become a real card SHARK! She can't get enought of Go Fish and somehow she manages to win EVERY game!!

We've also enjoyed our time off work (Friday - Monday) and have had fun hanging out with girls too. Plus we got to celebrate a milestone birthday with Grandma Zook (70 years young!!).

Another thing we enjoyed doing was making christmas cookies for Santa Claus. Rachel helped me eat the icing and Natalie helped me decorate them. They did such a good job. And the grandmothers helped us eat them!! DELICIOUS......

This was the first year that Natalie has really gotten into the whole Christmas/Santa thing. We also had our first visit from Buddy (that's the name of Natalie's elf) and he's been hiding in such silly places. I am going to miss that little guy....we just mention his name and Natalie stops whining so that she will get a good report that day.

And one of my favorite sayings from Natalie this Christmas was when she came home from school on Thursday and saw that the tree had gone from nothing underneath it to an abundance of presents. She told me "Mommy, thank you for making all of my dreams come true!". How cute it that?