Summer Solstice 

The longest day of summer! We celebrated yesterday with lots of beach time—paddleboarding in the morning and swimming with friends in the afternoon. 

Tuesday we checked out the Makapu’u baby tide pools with a friend from church. Often this is apparently a good spot to find urchins, sea stars, sea cucumbers, clams, crabs and fish, but we were forced to cede the best beach spots to a Hawaiian monk seal and content ourselves with drinking half the ocean (Eloise). The seal was impressively big! We did not need the sign to know we should keep ourselves and our tots well away. Although Eloise loves The Jungle Book and the ocean and would be a good candidate for going all monk seal native. She’s so cute. If I were a monk seal, I’d adopt her in a heartbeat.