Hula and painting

It's getting closer to our family trip to Hawaii, so we got together for family dinner and discussed a few things. Of course my parents made it all "Hawaiian" and we showed up with our Hawaiian gear and laid back attitudes!
Rachel and Jason definitely had the feel of being on the beach with their sunglasses.

Elaina, Jacob and Zeus - chillin before the meeting

Even Ben made an appearance for us all to see him while we went through our presentation. Brooke and Josh were on the phone the whole time, probably wondering what was going on most of the time. ;)

My sister also brought her other dogs to play in the backyard. Buddy's a GREAT catch with the ball. You wouldn't believe it, looking at this picture, but he caught that ball.

Diesel just likes to lick the glass door and get his nose print all over :D

Then it was time to get down to business. We're all so excited about this trip and true to Hoffmann fashion, we've got it all figured out... well except the parts where we'll just be relaxing!!

I'm most excited about the pineapple. I LOVE PINEAPPLE! Which is why for our wedding we asked for a pineapple-corer. It is the most wonderful thing.

Isn't it such a wonderful fruit?

This was our dessert. We didn't really know what we were doing but Tucanos does it, how hard could it be?

Not hard at all! Again, may I say DELISH!!!

The next weekend it was our weekend to drive to Lake Powell and work on our houseboat.
We left about 3am and drove all morning to miss the heat of mid-day.
Jacob and Ilene started with scraping the paint off the trim.

I couldn't believe this caramel colored liquid could turn into such a milky white.

Dad and Marlin began painting the trim from the front and we realized it was a two person job.

Then we realized it was easier to do it from above. Well kind of, for us short people we had quite the reach.

Elaina and I then had the job of painting two boxes that sit on the front of the houseboat for the anchors and ropes. That wood soaked it up quick, we had to put 3 coats of oil based paint just to kind of cover it.

Then we joined Ilene painting the underside of the houseboat. Why do the short people keep getting these jobs? ;)

Because the boys were nailing in the trim! Jacob, dad, uncle Gary and his friend Dennis worked so hard and it took so long, while uncle Marlin "supervised"

It was much longer than we anticipated, but looked fantastic when they were done. My dad has DEFINITELY taught me the value of hard work.

Then us girls had the guys put the boxes back on the boat... us short people got lucky with this one.

We finished about 3 in the afternoon and successfully I did NOT get any paint in my hair this year :) It was a long day, rewarded with Stan's at the end.

I had to imagine myself on the lake this year because we won't be able to go. It was a sad day that for only the 2nd time in 20 years I won't be going down this summer. But we've decided to go to Washington with Elaina and Jacob in August. That'll be for a much later blog :)