Merry Monarch Week in Hilo!

All week long was the Merry Monarch Festival here in Hilo. This is the world largest Hula festival and it takes place here. There are Hula dancers from all over the world that come to dance and compete. There is also all kinds of arts and crafts shows, Hawaiian quilting shows and all kinds of cool stuff.

Yesterday was the end of the festivities and for the end they save the BIG parade! There are floats from different institutions, there are school marching bands, but one of the coolest things are the horses representing each one of the islands! These are beautiful horses and they are decked with the most elaborate and colorful leis that you've ever seen, the riders (especially the wahines -ladies-) wear very beautiful leis and costumes. After the horses as one may imagine came the pooper scoopers, the cool thing was that they were also part of the parade in that they disguised their pooper scooper barrel in different costumes! there was a pineapple, a volcano, a peacock! it was very fun!see the video!



Here is a video with different scenes from the day!


At the parade we saw, who else!? Our good friends Leslie and Emma Rose! So we hung out with them.

Leslie, who had told us before that Emma Rose had never had a lolly-pop suddenly found herself overwhelmed, for there were candies and lolly-pops falling of the sky! And we have the picture to prove it too!

We are also glad to report that Elvis is NOT DEAD!!! he is doing well and living in Hilo

And after the parade we went to King Kalakaua (Merry Monarch) park to see some of the arts and crafts but mainly to EAT!!!!!! Hana had a monster Turkey Smoked leg ....

After the eating part, the girls kind of invited themselves over to Leslie's house, because Charlotte was hosting a baby shower at home, and we were supposed to stay out of it. The baby shower started at 2PM and by the time we finished the parade and the eating it was just 2:30! So Leslie (bless her soul) invited us over to her house. The catch was that Emma Rose did not want to go on her stroller back to her car, and who could blame her, all the activity was best seen from a decent height! So I offered to give her a shoulder ride! All the way to her car and she didn't stop bouncing and giggling all the way!

At Leslie and Macario's the girls tried to fly a kite, and they succeeded! Unfortunately, by the Time Emma Rose and Hana got the kite to stay up in the air, they found something more interesting to look at and they forgot about the kite which ended tangled up on the top of a 3,000 ft high tree!

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

Hey Hana... is the kite supposed to be up on that tree?