The last hurrah-loha

 4/4/21 The kids are happy to be watching a movie right now. We spent the morning at the beach and were going to go to the pool and then back to the beach for a bonfire, but they chose a movie. We're all a little beached out. 

But yesterday - we did cool things. We drove to Hilo, on the other side of the island. We went to the farmers market:

 These were really good - the tupig and suman

Then we played on the strangler fig vines on the monkey pod tree.

Then we drove to Akaka Falls to hike around a couple waterfalls. 

 And we stopped nearby for a fresh coconut and also we tried sugar cane

Then we went to the Kaumana Caves, which we'd been to before but we just liked it so much, and this time we went deepers, and Aviva overcame her fear and went also. 

Then we went to Boiling Pots which is above Rainbow Falls and Aviva and Josh hiked down and then walked upstream and got in the water to go toward the waterfall. Josh let it pound on his head. Yona and Noah were going to follow but we chickened out because of the rain, and Noah was having an off-day.

So that was all yesterday. We drove back to Kona and listened to lots of podcasts about the Grimm fairytales, and also a Radiolab about mushy caterpillars becoming butterflies. 

Today we went to the beach downtown and swam and rented a paddleboard, which is something you stand on and paddle. It looks like a surfboard (to me) but it's not. Noah did a lot of rowing:

Last note: Aviva is reading a ton and when I read to her, she asks the meaning of a lot of words. And she remembers them, mostly. The other day when I said we'd go to the pool, she said, "I'm looking forward to it. What does that mean again?" And we have a koosh ball that we play with in the pool and she calls it a koosh koosh ball.