Summer Beach Days | Outside of Books | 7/12/21

We are in mid-July and that means my son starts 3rd grade in a little less than 3 weeks. WHAT?! Where did the summer go? I can’t believe he starts school again and this time full time, in class. I already did his school shopping, which was easier than previous years since I had so many things left over from 2020 – the home school year because of the pandemic.

Anyway, summer has gone by fast but I’m happy that I got to bring the kids to the beach and to the pool a lot in the past month and a half. So enjoy some of my beach day pics!

Ko Olina Lagoons

This is one of my favorite places to take the kids on the west side of Oahu (Hawaii island that we live on) – the water is so calm, the only thing is you have to get there early because parking is scarce. I’m an early morning person, so are my kids, so we always manage to get parking there but we leave the house at 7:30am to get that parking. There are 4 lagoons but 3 of them are connected to major hotels (Disney Aulani, Four Seasons, Marriott). The 4th lagoon is where most people who want public access go because it has the most parking, but like I said, get there early!

Do you spot the black crab on the rock? | Ko Olina Lagoons

Beach days…

Kapilina Beach Homes – Iroquois Point Beach

This was the first time we ventured to this beach. It’s on private property, a housing community called Kapilina Beach Homes, so you have to enter through a gate, show license/registration etc…and get a parking pass. You can’t use their beach chairs or cabanas and parking is in a designated spot or you will get towed. But that’s okay, I understand it’s for the residents and we were guests so that’s a definitely a perk for them! And there was barely anyone on the beach – I think there was only one other family in the spot we were at! That was nice!

The water was a little choppy, it had much more waves than the lagoons I like to take the kids since it’s not blocked off by rocks but open to the ocean – that’s okay because my son loves it. And there were crabs running all over the place, so I taught my kids how to catch the baby crabs and then let them go. It made me feel like a kid again, catching the crabs and it was so sweet watching my kids do it and they were so gentle with them.

It would’ve been nice to use the cabanas because it was crazy hot that day we went and no shade! I didn’t think to bring an umbrella. Next time we go, I’ll bring the umbrella. Also the beach faces Honolulu, so you can watch planes landing at the airport which was an interesting site to see.

Diamond Head in the distance – that’s where Waikiki and most of the tourists are

Some of the cabanas that we couldn’t use lol…:( can you imagine living in this neighborhood though? You can just walk to the beach!

The baby crab was super fast and I couldn’t get a video of it!

We live really close by to this area and I’m surprised we only ventured out to this beach this summer. I’ve been in this area for about 10 years now! I’m originally a townie 😅 a Honolulu city girl, but now we live in a development area that was supposed to have a lagoon area we could walk to also…but the plans keep changing which is a bummer. 😒 And now they are building an artificial wave maker/surf place in our area…hmmm…not sure how THAT is going to pan out. Is it for locals? Tourists? Not sure…We live in Hawaii, where natural waves are all around us…will people want to pay to surf waves? Maybe…I mean water parks are popular even here in Hawaii – okay we have like ONE water park. Maybe people can practice surfing on fake waves first? I don’t surf so I don’t know. The only thing I really like to do at the beach is sit in the shallow end and chill…lol…that’s how I enjoy the beach!🏝☀️⛱ Of course I build sandcastles with the kids and look for shells, etc…but yes I’m more of a chill beach goer than a sporty one.

Anyway, we haven’t ventured to North Shore or South Shore beaches this summer but that’s okay because the West side beaches are amazing too!

Do you like to go to the beach in the summer? Or lake? Let me know in the comments – I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading! 😘 ~ Yolanda

First Lines Fridays

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

Happy Aloha Friday everyone! What a week! We have visiting family from New York and California, so it’s been busy around here. We have been hanging out at the beach a lot and since my son turns 7 years old in five days and our family leave this weekend, we have been doing birthday celebrations. Lucky him, he’s having the best birthday ever I think. 🤗

So like I’ve been doing the past few weeks – here are some photos of my week before I do my First Lines Friday.

Hope you enjoyed that! So let’s get to the lines:

“People lived because she killed. And if that meant braving the Arz where even the sun was afraid to glimpse, then so be it.”

⇩

I hope this one is good! I know there was a lot of hype around it so we shall see. I do love the map inside it. 😍

How has your week been going? What are you reading? Have you read We Hunt the Flame? I would love to hear from yo! Let me know what you think in the comments below. 😘

Monthly Wrap Up: July 2019

And here we are at the end of another month! Wow! Time flies when you are reading and reviewing books. 😂 I didn’t realize it was the end of July until my hubby asked me what today was!

My goal for July was to read less books than I did in June. So let’s see if I accomplished my goal:

Looks are deceiving! Haha, I read more books than what is shown here because I pre-scheduled posts for August already. So in reality I read more books than I did in June. 🤦🏻‍♀️ But that’s okay because I’ve been reading some amazing books lately! 😍 I do think I need some more adult romance or just some good adult fiction to read so if you have any suggestions, please drop them in the comments.

Usually I list the titles and my ratings and a link back to the post but I’m pressed for time today and wanted to get this post out before I forget. Check my archives to see my reviews!

My in-laws are visiting in 2 weeks so I’ve been reading and writing posts that are scheduled to publish in August while they are here. Also, my son starts school on Tuesday so today I’ll be labeling all his school supplies since tomorrow is meet & greet and I can drop his things off to his classroom. August will be crazy busy!

With that said, and before I run off to do errands today – I just wanted to share some of my favorite photos I took this month. They are unfiltered and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking it that day.

A vibrant pink and purple sunset in Hawaii

My kids and I spied a double rainbow the other day!

My son enjoying the view from the ground.

Just a little sneak peek into my life outside of read and reviewing books. 🥰

Okay I hope all of you have a wonderful day or night and please, drop your monthly wrap up links in my comments section so I can read yours! And as we say in Hawaii, ALOHA…(hello, goodbye, love…)

It’s Monday Again: Weekend Recap – Book Festival, Game of Thrones

Aloha everyone! How was your weekend? I hope everyone had a good weekend. My family and I had planned to go to the annual Filipino Festival on Saturday. The weather app said it would rain, but we hoped it would stopped for a bit and didn’t get our wish. We got TOTALLY drenched. Of all days to rain in Hawaii. It was on Saturday. 😂

My kids were good sports about it, even though they were soaked through. My son and I ran from tent to tent, bought some pancit noodles and some other foods to help support the vendors somehow. Then we ran back to my hubby and daughter who were waiting under another tent. We had to dash to the car, which got us even more wet. We stopped by my mom’s house which thankfully was nearby to dry off. The kids got to play with their cousins so they had fun regardless.

On Sunday the sun came out – hooray! My son had his last day of Sunday school so he went with his dad and I took my little girl out to the Hawaii Book & Music Festival. It was my first time going and we had a really nice time.

They had hula dancers, music, local publishing houses, bounce houses, gelato 😋 and books! As we were looking at books under the Barnes and Nobles tent a worker told me Olympic figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi would be there to sign her books – I didn’t even know she had books! It’s a coincidence my daughter had decided to wear her sparkly shoes then – because she calls them her “ice skate shoes”. Kristi Yamaguchi was very sweet and gracious. I also love her book which I’ll write a review on sometime this month.

We had such a fun day and most importantly I got a bunch of books for my kids. I’ll do reviews on them so check back in the Children’s Books page for that.

Lastly, who’s been watching Game of Thrones? I’ve been a fan from Season 1. I remember my hubby and I watching Season 1 and at the end of that season he was SO mad. He knew it wasn’t a show for him if they killed off Ned Stark right away. As for me…I wanted to know who else would die. Haha…so wow, I can’t believe there are only 2 more episodes left. 😳 I’ve never read the books, I’ve been meaning too – but people say the show is now different from them, so I didn’t want to compare since I love the show. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Should I still read them? 🤔

Anyway I have my pick for who will win the throne. It’s so fun discussing it with friends and family who are fans and debate who should win. Which House are you? I’d say I’m House Stark. 😬

Hope you all had a good weekend and read some good books this week! Happy reading! 😘