Emily

Dear Family,
Happy "almost" Spring!! The weather here has been so nice lately, too bad I've had to sleep through most of it due to my crazy work hours. Sooo, I'm sitting here at work and noticing that we have three baby girls in the nursery right now with the names: Priscilla, Penelope, and Lucy. I'm totally serious......how cool is that? The name Lucy is making a bit of a come-back lately, the other two not so much, so this definitely is a rare moment.

Anyway, my biggest thing to talk about for this Lingo is our fabulous trip to Maui that John and I took last month. We left on Valentine's Day, and stayed for a week. It was much too short, but we were glad to be there. The kids stayed home, and my niece who lives in the house next door watched after them. It took me a day and a half just to write out what our routine was on paper for her to follow for each of the days we were gone. I cancelled the piano and gymnastic lessons, but there was still a lot to keep track of when it comes to drop off and pick up times for school, etc. Anyway, they all survived. I know they would have had a lot of fun there, so I'm hoping to be able to take them with us whenever the next time will be.

We actually met some of John's family there. His mom, sister, two nieces and their spouses had arrived there a week before we did. John's mom Mary turned 88 years old on the last day we were there, and we celebrated by going on a whale watch cruise and dinner at Maalea Harbor.

We love going to Maui this time of the year to see all of the humpback whales and their babies. John sold his bulkier underwater camera equipment before we left and bought a Go-Pro 2 with an underwater casing. For those not familiar with it, it's basically one of those tiny movie cameras that people put on thier helmets when they are snowboarding for example, to get a fish eye view of everything around them while they are participating in a sport. Anyway, on one of the days we were there, we went on a Blue Water Raft snorkel/whale watch tour. It was a high horse powered raft that can hold up to 24 people, but there were only six of us on it that day. We were able to snorkel the entire Molokini crater without anyone else out there. We felt very fortunate, because we have been out there before when it was basically just fins & butts and no freedom to explore, so it was a great day. The clarity of the water was really great. John got some great footage, and we even saw a small octopus. Then, on our way back, during the whale watch part of the tour, we had a mama and her baby whale swim right by the boat. John was able to hang off the side and stick his camera down into the water as they were going by. We didn't know exactly what the camera was going to reveal, but after watching it later on John's computer back at the condo, we were ecstatic to see the mom and baby swimming by. It was totally awesome!! Can't wait for you all to see it some time. John has been busy putting all of our underwater adventures on a DVD.

John and I also took all of our diving equipment with us, and on one of our dives at Makena Landing, John discovered a cave. Of course being the adventurous soul that he is, didn't hesitate for a minute before going in and discovering two white tipped reef sharks resting on the bottom. He scared them out of there so I could see them for a minute, and then they went right back in to where they were tyring to sleep. We were only about twenty feet down in the water, otherwise, I think I would have been a little more wigged out. They were pretty cool to see. They were about six feet long, and one of them actually had a big old hook hanging out of the side of his mouth. It was cool.

On another day of adventure, we decided to kayak out to the whales. I actually didn't fall out of it this time. :) On our way back to the shore, the water had become very choppy, with lots of white caps and splashing around us. My sister-in-law was ahead of us, and said when she looked back, we had a whale breaching toward us. It was so close, she thought we were gonners as she was frantically putting her life vest on. Did we see it? Not even! What the heck! No fair! I guess the sound of all the waves splashing around us made it difficult to distinguish the sound of the splashes the whale was making. Oh well, maybe next time.

So, those were the highlights of the week, along with beautiful sunsets, and good smelling air. Aloha!!

I'm looking forward to our weekend trip up to Boise in a couple of weeks.
Love you all,
Emily and family