I love this picture. Brett was so excited to get that little jacket the other day.

The Continuing of "The Day of a Life Time"

Our house has been going through a couple of changes. I think that change is not always good. The first change is Rebecca has turned 18, and yes she thinks it is time to leave the little nest that we have provided her for the last 18 years. It will be very different to not have her here. I think even Rachael will be a little sad to see her go. I think she even had a few tears the other night.

The second change in our home is Rachael got her permit. Yes everyone beware. I am sorry if she causes any accidents to you out there. She keeps on telling me how good of a driver she is though.

Death March

Tracey decided this year to do a 25 mile hike. I am not sure where he came up with the idea and I know that Rachael was so excited to heard. She called it the death march or family bondage or child abuse... and the list goes on. Anyway he decided to hike from Crystal Mountain to Basin Lake then to Echo Lake and then out through Green Water Lakes. Mark and Alex came with us. We missed the rest of the Evan's. There was a deathly steep hill to get to the top of the ridge above Crystal. We thought we might be in trouble when Brett just fell over and we were not even very far into the hike. But he did awesome. They all did. It was very pretty the mosquitoes where pretty bad at Echo Lake. We busted a theory, Listerine is not a mosquito repellent. You can ask Mark all about it. This is us all nice and clean ready for the death march.

Brandon caught the first fish at Basin Lake.

Rachael was getting into the whole nature thing. She was ready to eat her first raw fish.

Basin Lake behind us. We are just getting started for day 2.

Echo Lake with all of the fish. As you can see we are all a little dirtier now, but there are still a few smiles on our faces. I think we all had a good time even Rachael. We even found out the we could walk for 25 miles and gain weight. Can you believe that. Joyce told us Alex was worried about being hungry. I think we took care of that problem. Tracey is trying to figure out where to go next year. My vote is hiking 25 miles around Disney Land.

Adidas or Nike?

Ok so lately it has come up...which is better Adidas or nike? I happen to have both brands but was wondering what everyone else thought...

Thanks! ♥Becca

Shark Fest

As most of you know the Butler's siblings swam Shark Fest. We had a great time and everyone did awesome. Here are some of the pictures from the big adventure.

Prom

Prom was a blast! From being a senior class officer and learning to appreciate dances, programs, and such I learned what it takes to go to prom. For me the whole prom experience started off at the beginning of junior year. We started fund raising and picking out the prom site. Then it seems like millions of hours, $11,000 of fund raising, $30 a prom ticket, and selling around 380 tickets later...here we were at prom. It was a wonderful experience and I loved going with the whole group! especially my dearest cousin Coty! (I am glad that you decided to come!) I also had a blast with my date Morgan. It was a wonderful end of my senior year and high school career. It is also the start of something new...college (to be seen in future posts). Here are the pictures! Enjoy! ♥Becca

The Temple Theatre

Before prom...thanks for doing my hair Rachael and My mom...

The girls and I

The whole group (12 of us)
Starting on the left: Melissa Koontz, Coty Thomas, Anna Nelson, CJ Fitzpatrick, Becca McNeil, Patrick Favro, Maria Dion, Ben McNeil, Dion French, TJ Rockwood, Me, and Morgan Willis.

The Girls
From left: Melissa, Anna, Becca (M), Maria, Dion, and me (Becca B)

The Guys...
From left: TJ, Coty, Morgan, Ben, CJ, and Pat

Melissa and I

Andy and I at the dance

Morgan (my date) and I at the dance!

Erin Ann and I at the dance.

And Evie and I at the dance.

This is the plane of never ending...bathroomers?

Ok so this is Becca for all of those who don't know. On my families recent vacation to Hawaii, which was amazing, we had the privileged to ride on Alaska Airlines to our destination. So we leave home not knowing what is coming before us. So we go get our tickets, are boarding on the plane then realize, wait we are in the very back...like as far as you can get away from the pilot (I think they may have been trying to tell us something). As a part of being all the way in the back on row number 30 as I can recall you are right next to (dun dun dun...) THE BATHROOM. Not only did we decide that it was and is toxic, but everyone and their companion for the plane ride all had to come too. I am so surprised that the plane can actually hold it all. We would get a whiff of it every time the door would open.

Secondly I happened to be on the isle seat. Just make sure next time you go on an airplane and go to the bathroom you don't stick you butt in the isle seat persons face. Not to sound rude or anything but its GROSS!! and some people on the plane would totally burst the bubble with their butt.

Third of all have you ever noticed how the flight attendants keep bringing you beverages? This is one of the reasons their was such a stampede of people trying to get to the bathroom in the first place.

Then last of all how dumb can people be? I had to show (almost every passenger including my dad who is a pilot) how to open the door, when their is a big sign that says press here. You would catch people trying to open the door with the cigarette ash tray by pulling on it instead of just pushing on the big sign that said push. (In the beginning after I noted this issue, we were talking to the flight attendant and joking about it, so he demo'd it for us and lo and behold someone was in there. The lady came out flustered and he apologized. The moment was pretty much priceless though.) Refer to last picture for visual.

Anyways that is my experience on the plane to and from Hawaii, maybe next time if you are fortunate enough to sit down by the bathrooms, get peoples butts in your face, and have toxic smells all around you all through out the plane, maybe you will think of this blog and be inspired to share your story with the rest of us.

Yours truly,

Becca

Right after we figured out we were by...the bathroom (we didn't know what was coming for us)

This is right after we had to show my dad aka pilot how to open the bathroom.

One of our many lovely comics drawn during our flight

It didn't smell so great, the toxic waist polluting the air
(note if you could see it in the air the picture would be all foggy green)

I think this picture speaks for itself...(I also explained this in one of my earlier paragraphs)

Hawaii

I think most of you know that we have been planning to go to Hawaii before Becca left for school. Well, the day finally came. We were all so excited to go. My girls found out where the best spot on the airplane is to sit. I will let them blog that.

I found a house on the internet to stay in instead of a hotel room. We started driving to Ewa Beach where the house was. Ewa was looking nice and everything was going pretty good. We turned on to Ewa Beach Road and the houses weren't looking so good. Boy, it doesn't take to long for everyone to turn against you when they thought they had to stay here for a week. We kept on driving down the road and things started looking better. To our pleasant surprise the house was really nice and cute. She had a fruit basket, pog, milk and muffins all there waiting for us. Boogie boards, masks, snorkels, beach chairs, towels and everything else you could want came with the house. Then everyone was telling me how great of a place it was. It was a great beach house that was 100 steps from the beach. Great beach that didn't hardly have anyone on it. We played there every day after we came back to the house.

Monday

We were so excited to be here. We decided that we were going to go Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.

After listening to their movie, Tracey loved it, we finally got our things down to the beach. We got all the masks ready and fins. We brought boogie boards so Brett could just lay on it and enjoy the fish. I went out with Brett and Rachael. All I heard from Brett was "I am going to die!" Me being the most patient mother said, "No your not, put your head down and look at the fish." That went back and forth for awhile and we went back to the beach. We had a great time on the beach and the rest had a great time in the water.

After we were done we found a place that sold shaved ice. Brett got his first and didn't even get it to the table and part of it fell on the floor. So when Rachael did the some thing, Brett thought it was pretty funny.

Tuesday

We went to the Dole Plantation.

While we were there we bought a pineapple split. Becca and Rachael bought two of them at first. Everyone was looking at them because they were so big. Rachael decided that it is now her favorite ice cream.

At the plantation they have a maze that was the world's biggest maze in 2001. We divided up into three groups to see who could do the maze the fastest. Tracey and Brett, Gayle and Brandon, Rachael and Becca. Becca and Rachael looked like this pretty much the whole time. I think they found 3 stations. Tracey and Brett found 2 stations and of course Brandon and I found all six of the stations. We ruled.

We continued on the the Polynesian Cultural Center. We had fun going through all of the countries. In Tahiti Tracey got volunteer to show us his coconut husking skills. Actually he did quite well. Then he volunteered me to make coconut bread. It tasted pretty good.

We ate at the Luau. We decided that poi and raw fish didn't taste very good.

We had a great day at the PCC