Big Changes (updated)

From the Big Island to the Big Trees of Sequoia National Park, the McEntee Family is on their next Big Adventure.

Some of you long-time-readers might recall that every summer we fly back to California so Tom can work his tail off at a piece of mountain paradise up in the Sequoias called Hartland Christian Camp.  Hartland is conveniently located within a few hours of most of our family, so spending our summers there affords lots time with the grandparents as well as fellowship with all our Christian friends there at the camp.  The boys spend their days with their buddies bouncing around from one camp activity to the next, riding bikes, catching critters and generally acquiring more dirt to their persons in a day than they could in a year in Hawaii.  Some days the only time I see them is at meals in the dining hall.  Camp life is heaven on earth for moms and boys.  I don’t have to cook or find anything for them to do and they have all the free-time, fresh-mountain-air, friends, and fun you could ask for.  This year, the best part about camp will be that we don’t have to leave at the end of the summer.  The Lord has blessed us Big Time once again with a year-round-position there for Tom, so we have officially made Hartland our new home.

Before I overwhelm you with pictures of our new life, I have a little bit of catching up to do from our last days in Hawaii. We finished up our school year with a projects presentation.  Each boy chose a continent, country, climate and creature to report on.  Sam chose Africa, Egypt, the Nile river, and crocodiles.  Nathan studied North America, Canada, woodlands, and beavers.  Joel did Asia, Japan and then realized there weren’t a lot of creatures there so he studied bamboo forests and giant pandas of China.  Titus wanted to really economize so he picked Australia for his continent and country, the outback and wallabies.  This was a great way to wrap up our world geography and animal studies.

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Besides that we spent a lot of time in the water.

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And then it was time to say goodbye to a place and people that we had all grown to love. Goodbye neighbors. Goodbye church.  Goodbye students from Daddy’s work.  Goodbye lava.  Goodbye beach.  Goodbye mangos within reach.  Goodbye ocean.  Goodbye sand.  Goodbye sushi made from Spam.  Goodbye sunsets.   Goodbye shave ices.  Goodbye ridiculously high prices.  Goodbye condo.  Goodbye vog.  Goodbye readers of this blog.

A big mahalo to all of you who have faithfully followed our  island adventures via this blog.  Thank you so much for the many kind and encouraging comments along the way.  Internet access will be limited in our home so I can’t make any promises regarding future posts but if I do start blogging again you’ll hear about it right here.  Aloha!