the murrays: The pools...

On the Island of Maui we stayed at the Ho'olei Condos next to the Grand Wailea resort. So we had a pool at the Condo (down the street) or the AMAZING pools at the resort (a half-mile downhill walk away, and you could take a shuttle back up! Perfect for Whitney!).

First, the pictures of the condo pool- gorgeous and many times we were the only ones there!

This is Owen walking in the kids area (tiny pebbles, about 4 inches deep) at the condo pool.

Playing with Aunt Elizabeth

and Uncle Kurtis

Miracle! A picture of Owen smiling at the camera!

Katelyn is becoming a more confident swimmer- slow and steady seems to be her motto :)

Here she is doing a cannon ball for Grandma

Whitney "cliff jumping"- she is getting better at swimming too- she's almost as good as Katelyn actually!

Owen is getting good at pretend swimming, he will kick and make paddling motions with his arms when we say "swim!"

Me and Ryan with our babies

Me and Cortnee with the kids in the pebble pool- I love this picture but I don't remember what we were laughing about!

Owen LOVED to do this. All day long.

The 4 handsome young men, about to play an intense game where they take turns with one person throwing the ball and the other 3 all try to catch it.

Notice who is the shortest of the 4,

yet who is getting the most air?

who is reaching the farthest

and who is catching the ball? Haha! Mary took these pictures, and she did a great job of catching Eric looking good! :)

Look at my athletic husband :)

I just love the concentration on their faces!

3 brothers trying to beat each other out!

A few more pics by Mary. This one I love because KJ is laughing with Katelyn about something in the background. He played with her in the pool for like an hour one time- doing random tricks and having "races", it was super cute.

And these pictures of Ryan and KJ tossing Cleo back and forth, HILARIOUS. You have to look closely to see the terrified look on KJ's face here

and the ecstatic one here! And it's so funny how Cleo is like suspended in mid-air!

Eric and Whitney coming out of the waterfall

Kate enjoying her lifejacket- she only wore it the first day and then she just swam. :) She's still not a fan of deep water though.

Behind the waterfall

And Grandma and Cleo!

Okay now on to the Grand Wailea Resort Pool. Our favorite thing about this pool was the waterslides! There were 2 big waterslides that you could wait a few minutes in line for; Katelyn was tall enough for those and she loved them. But there were also 5 shorter slides connecting 4 small-medium pools with the big pool/lazy river/cave/rope swing area/water elevator at the bottom. It was AWESOME.

Mary took some pictures of us going down the slides with Elizabeth and KJ, so here's

me and Owen

Eric doing a cool pose?

Whitney obviously thrilled! We had her wear a life jacket so we wouldn't have to worry about catching her and she could just swim across the small pools by herself.

Kate splash!

I got this one of Eric and the girls at the bottom of one of the slides while I was standing on a rope bridge above them with Owen.

Getting ready to go down the last slide- this one we could go all together. Nice yawn KJ!

Here we go!

Wheee!

And I took this one of Eric and the girls.

So we would come down all the slides, run all the way back up to the top so our feet didn't burn on the hot sidewalk, and go down again! Sometimes we'd take a break to go in the lazy river, or to play in the kiddie area:

Which had a sandy bottom and a little beach area that Owen liked.

Whitney being silly in the kid area

And these pictures of Whitney crack me up, because I took them 2 SECONDS apart.

"oh, look how sad she is! Poor Whitney..."

"oh wait, just kidding!"

Owen with the beautiful palm trees in the background

One afternoon Mary and Brad were going to stay with Owen during his nap, and Whitney decided she wanted to stay behind too and watch a movie instead of swim. So we went and had fun just with Katelyn! It was super fun to be with just our big girl. :)

Another day during Owen's nap we took both the girls, swam and had a treat.

And these last couple of pictures I just think are cute.

The kids all ready to go swimming, sitting on the front steps of Grandma and Grandpa/Kurits/RyanCortneeCleo's condo waiting patiently for whoever was coming with us.

This shows the street we walked down multiple times each day to get to the pools/beach. I wish I had taken more pictures farther down where all the beautiful flowering trees were! There would always be tons of beautiful perfect bright flowers just laying on the ground that had fallen from the trees, and we would pick them up and put them in our hair. :)