

My brother Brandon and sister in law Veronica just had a little boy on June 11 at 1:37 pm. He was 8 lbs. 5 oz. and 20 inches long. Congratulations, he is so handsome!
Kia Ora...and welcome to — the Polynesian Cultural Center's islands of Aotearoa, or the "Land of the Long White Cloud" as the New Zealand Maori call their homeland of the past 1,000 years. Aotearoa forms the southwestern apex of the Polynesian Triangle and is the only part of Polynesia to experience four seasons. Consequently, you'll notice the Maori — whose name means the "true people" — created significantly different housing and lifestyles than their Polynesian cousins in the tropical islands. Oh, and yes, the appropriate response to a Maori greeting, which means "good health," is also Kia Ora.
The activities they offer here are twirling poi balls which Kali had a fun time doing and learning a Maori stick game called tititorea, it is designed to help develop hand-eye coordination. You toss the sticks back and forth between two people. Kali did a good job! They also do tattoos here. There was a long line, so I told Kali next time we would let her get tatted up and show her daddy:)
We watched the IMAX movie Coral Reef Adventure and then had some ice cream where we ran into Sara Duffin. She works at the Ko'Olina Resort time share kiosk, so we talked to her for a while then we decided to take the canoe ride which Kali was sooooo excited about, she wanted to see the fishes and touch all the tunnels that we went through.