Love Is In the Air

~ Snippets of Lately~

We got to celebrate Sam's brother and his wife at their beautiful Hawaiian wedding!  It was so cool to be a part of it.  One of my highlights was getting to help set up and decorate the reception.  It was a dream to get to work with all the beautiful local plants and flowers to help arrange the centerpieces and floral chandeliers.  It was such a nice wedding.  And so many yummy and ono local foods that I had never had before at the wedding!  The majority of nieces and nephews were the servers for the dinner.  

One of my fav traditions of a Hawaiian wedding is the hula the bride performs for her husband.  Love it!  So excited for my bro-in-law and new sis-in-law!

Funny side note, Sam and one of our nephews unknowingly wore the Sam shirt (diff shade) as well as me and one of my sis-in-laws (also diff color, but same one lol)..all compliments of Amazon. ;-)

As part of the wedding festivities, we also were able to participate in a Hu'iwai ceremony.  We met at a beach at 5 AM when the sun was to rise.  My soon-to-be sis-in-law and others who speak Hawaiian participated in some Hawaiian chanting (similar to praying) w/ everyone in the circle and then we all entered the water.  The ceremony represents a rebirth.  You stay in the water and think about what you want to let go.  You are supposed to stay in the water as long as you need to until it has been let go.  Then everyone reconvenes on the beach.  It was a really neat experience and I'm so glad I was able to participate!

We had a setback by not getting to move into our place when we had hoped, but are so thankful to have a place to stay with our in-laws for the interim.  Looking like one more month till it's ready.  

Phoebe got to go ride horses all by herself for the first time when she went roping w/ daddy, her uncle and cousin.  She is quite the little cowgirl!

My nephew opened his mission call and learned he will be serving his 2 year mission in the Philippines!

The COVID bug has caught the Akinakas!  Sam fell to it, but is done w/ his quarantine.  Luckily my kids and I escaped it, but many other families here got it, bleh.  Ruined some fun family reunion plans we had made!

Last small adventure - didn't have my camera at the time, we happened upon a washed-up, dead Puffer Fish at the beach.  It was all puffed up!  Quite interesting!