August & September....Whew!

August and September have been quite a whirlwind. At the end of July we closed on our house, therefore the greatest part of August was spent covered in paint and a wardrobe consisting of "work clothes." We repainted and carpeted the entire house. We replaced our family room light fixtures with can lights and wired for a new television. While all that was going on, we had several guys come bid to do stucco work. Thankfully, it is all done and we moved in the last weekend in August. The first morning in our new house, we were woken up by two kids with the biggest smiles on their faces. They were loving their new rooms (no more stuffing into one bedroom for them).

A huge

THANKS!!

goes out to all who helped us.

We still have some things to do to the house before I post any pictures. In the middle of August, we packed up with my family and headed to East Canyon. My sis-in-law got a cabin for everyone to stay in, which by the way, was incredible. (I'll post more later). We spent our time playing games, and most of all, on the lake. It has been quite a while since I have waterskied like this. Loved it!

Well, onto September....the week we moved in, lil' K started Kindergarten! I still can't believe it. She rides the bus to and from school, which was quite an adjustment. Here is how the first week went.

*First day to school: Fabulous.

*From school: Call from teacher saying she wouldn't get on the bus, please pick her up from school today, which I did.

*Second day to school: (after labor day weekend) Fabulous.

*From school: Get off at wrong bus stop because she and the bus driver didn't know her stop, she got off with a friend from school who gets on at the same stop, but was getting off at a different stop. Friend and her mom walk her, filled with tears, to our bus stop. Thank goodness for good people!

*Third day to school: Anxious about riding bus (b/c of yesterday's incident). Took too long to get her out of the house, miss the bus, I drive her to school.

*From school: Right bus stop, still crying.

Now, she has made more friends on the bus and really likes it. No more tears or anxiety!

She has, in fact, loved school.

For labor day weekend, we made our (nearly) annual pilgrimage to Yellowstone National Park.

This year, my sister and her brood tagged along, which was fun. We hiked a little here and there. We saw Old Faithful a few times, went to Canyon and several geyser basins. This year we went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. The have rescued grizzly bears and wolves. They have an activity in which children ages 5-12 can go into the bears enclosure (without bears) and hide food for the bears. lil' K didn't want to do it, but her older cousins did. One of our big highlights... Sunday night as we were heading to the cars from Old Faithful to head back to town, I checked on lil' K's loose tooth. It was so loose!! We went back to the car and she let me pull it out! I think it is a cool story to lose a tooth in the parking lot at Old Faithful. The tooth fairy did not visit her until we got back home.

We went to the zoo last week as a family, which was not busy when we got there, but was when we left. Our favorite was to see all of the new babies: elephant (my personal favorite), a snow leopard, three tiger cubs (sleeping, didn't get a great view), and a crocodile. We had not been for a few months and had a great time. We love the zoo!

Yesterday, lil' K had a fun run at school as a fundraiser. She was such a trooper! She ran or walked with determination the whole time (20 min!) lil' L would not do anything but sit in the stroller, so I ran a few laps, sat with him, walked another lap with lil' K. Back and forth. They had a dj playing music and keeping everyone up on the time. He mentioned that 14 laps around the track was 1 mile. I kept track of lil' K's laps, I think I counted about 15-16ish. Over a mile. Pretty good for a 5 year old. Everyone who participated got a t-shirt and after the run, they had apples donated by McDonald's and water, not to mention a raffle. lil' K got two prizes, a $5 gift card to Wendy's and a free kid's meal at Applebee's. Looks like dinner is on her! Seriously, we are so proud of how hard she worked on this fun run.

Life is great, it has been busy, but we are finally finding routine.

The Truth Be Told

The other night, as F and I were crammed into a closet, covered in white paint that was supposed to be hitting the wall, I spoke. The words, I confessed at that time, were a truth I had known for a very long time, but not spoken until this time. Those words...I don't like the Dave Matthews Band and never did care too much for them. The reply from F...I don't either. After clarifying his concurrence to my declaration, was astounding. We have a Dave Matthews Band cd, it has accompanied our family on numerous occasions, and is even a part of our itunes. How you say? I don't know. The cd was never mine, I put it on itunes, brought it along, and listened to a few songs all because I was under the impression F liked the band, afterall, he would say "Bring Dave Matthews Band." After asking him why he would say this, his reply was, "I thought you liked them." We both listened to the music thinking we were making the other happy, when inside, we both were not. Needless to say, I have deleted the band from itunes and looking for a new home for the cd, seeing as we are no longer in need of its music....anyone want it? I am just amazed how long this little truth hovered around our heads before it made its it appearance and saved us.

7 years!!

1 new home

2 kids and a fabulous husband/father

3 cars

17+ unforgettable vacations

1000's of pictures

10,000's of tears

1,000,000's of smiles

&

Eternity to go!

Happy Anniversary!!

July Fun

So, far...July has been filled with lots of fun. lil'K just finished up with her second session of swimming lessons. She learned how to dive in from the side and can swim the back stroke the whole length of the pool. Our only downside was her anxiety about boy teachers. This was a problem because the two sessions we've had both classes were taught by boys. Our first session she was moved from the level 3 to level 2, just to have a girl teacher. Second session, they added or combined classes to have a girl teacher with her. As long as there was a girl, she did AweSomE!!

We also had a great Fourth celebration. We began with a neighborhood breakfast including a children's bike parade in which both children decorated bike/trike and rode in part of the parade. Followed by delicious BBQ with F's family. For the evening...we made homemade ice cream and had nearly our entire family over. Our party took place at a stretch of grass across the street from our place to watch the fireworks. My bro-in-law is an EMT and was on duty, he made an appearance; with all the interest in his rig, he should have been charging $$ to see inside. The children had fun playing on the playground, throwing poppers, and doing some sparklers. The fireworks were fantastic!

Since then, we had a picnic with the cousins with lunches and swimming provided by grandma. The children hardly left the pool the entire afternoon.

My older sis and bro including families enjoyed a great evening a the zoo for a special "members only" night. The animals were active and fun to see the foosa they have on display this summer.

>

Another wonderful excursion was to "This is the Place." Through an informative tip, I was told they were having a free admission day...this was an understatement. This event was the major "Days of '47" event, complete with free admission/parking, popsicles, games, bounce houses (outside the park), aztec dancing, balloons, tons of crafts, and pony rides. It was a long and hot day, but oh, so worth it. I told F next year he will have to take the day off and come with us.

As for the rest of July...one of my best friend's wedding tomorrow (festivities start tonight), F has surgery on Mon., Days of '47, cabin, anniversary, and much much more.

Craftiness

Occasionally I suffer from a bout of "craftiness." This only happens every few months, most of it starts when I need the sewing machine out for another reason. We lack space to keep the sewing machine out in the open, so it when it does make it's appearance, it is a sewing frenzy. Case in point: I have the machine out for another project, and being quite excited for the upcoming holiday and the fact we have our families coming over, I made a mad dash for wal-mart, picked up some tees, rummaged through scraps of fabric to make these beauties.

The star one is for lil' K and the USA for lil' L

I did it in a applique fashion, instead of a close zigzag stitch around the outside, I did a small straight stitch, this way it will fray a bit after being washed.

Looking forward to the premier of these shirts at tomorrow's parade and festivities.

Happy 4th of July!

*I hope to post more of my "craftiness"from the past in the near future*

Vacation Part Deux: Oahu

**Note to reader, this is a looonnng post, therefore, I have highlighted various points of interest to allow for a summarized reading. Please also note, they are not at this time hyperlinks to other sites... in the future, they may be.**

So after a luxurious, relaxing week in Maui, we jumped over for a quick jaunt of the island of Oahu. Once we landed, got our rental car - goodbye convertible chrysler, hello bright red ford focus - and got out the GPS and headed toward our hotel. Our choice was to follow the instructions given by the rental car agency or GPS (we call her "Lola" and she has a soothing british accent). Lola gave directions counter to directions previously given. Do we trust Lola or the local?? We chose the local and chose wrong. It took for-ev-er to get down Waikiki to our hotel. Once we got to the hotel, we unloaded our luggage and checked into our hotel, we headed out to the International Marketplace. We stopped to have a picture in front of the statue of Duke. I was amazed at all the hype about the marketplace, yet it seemed to be the same stuff 100 times over. We did have a guy try to sell F a lovely Kimono for me...where would I wear it? What would people think if they stopped over to find me lounging around the house in a purple kimono? I do like kimonos, in general, but not for me. We ate dinner in a little treehouse cafe in the heart of the marketplace. Then we walked down "the strip" of waikiki. I felt like I was in Vegas, only I was being solicitated coupons in Japanese. We found a Puka Dog stand which F just had to have. While he waited for his order, I sat back and watched a couple who were completely smashed (mind you it was about 7:30 pm). Great fun! We also found a poster announcing all the fun to take place Saturday night for SpamJam! The poster was translated into several Asian languages. We found the translations funny....look closely.

Saturday began with the Pali Lookout. It was sooooo windy, but we knew it would be. Next stop was the Hawaii Laie Temple. The temple is currently under construction, but the visitor center was open. We spent most of our time walking around the grounds. We loved being at the temple and also filling time until the Polynesian Cultural Center opened.
At noon, we headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center (aka: PCC) Here's what we did in the PCC:
* Watched as many presentations we could.
* Ate lunch
* Watched the Canoe Pageant
* Saw the Imax about corals reefs
* Ate an authentic dinner at the Ali'i Lu'au
(including rolls made with taro)
* Saw the night show, "Horizons"
I wish we could have spent more time at the PCC . Because of Spam Jam, the road to the hotel was closed, so it took us about an hour to travel a mile!! We made it to our hotel and the end of another day.

Sunday, we trekked north today. On our way through the center of the island, we found and stopped at the Wahiawa Botanical Gardens. We walked on the paths and trails through unimaginable trees and plants. Mosquitoes also ate us while we wandered. It was gorgeous to see all the different plants and trees. Our next stop was the Dole Plantation. They have a huge gift shop with all things pineapple, a garden filled with pineapple variations throughout the world, and tour of the plantation. F and I enjoyed pineapple ice cream, which is more like a sorbet, very delicious and very pineapple in taste and color.
Our next stop was Haleiwa and North Shore. For lunch we stopped at a small pizza joint called Pizza Bob’s. The pizza was good, just pizza, and a little over priced. The best part of this stop was the bathroom. A group of people were heading out and one girl went into the bathroom. She didn’t see, but heard me come in. She began talking to me. Her: “That was good. I’d forgotten how good the pizza is here.” Me: Nothing Her: “Sierra?” Me: Nope. Her: “Oh, sorry.” (sound of toilet flushing, hands quickly washed, and laughing as she closed the door) Was I supposed to say something?
F paid the bill and we walked down the street to our destination: Matsumoto’s Shave Ice. Apparently it’s the place to get shave ice. We waited in the long line, had our picture taken under the store sign, and ordered our shave ice. Yummy! The shave ice we got had ice cream in the bottom with the shave ice on top. It was a refreshing and delicious treat. With the help of Lola, we found Pipeline and watched the enormous waves with a few surfers and sat on Sunset beach. We wanted to stay and actually watch the sunset on the beach, but it was taking forever for the sun to set. Therefore, we witnessed the sun making a descent into sunset on sunset beach. We stopped for dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise and back to the hotel to pack and grab some shut eye.

Monday morning started bright and early at 4? I think. Today we started with Hanauma Bay. We got there before 7 am. Hanauma Bay charges for parking and requires snorkelers to watch a video about coral reef preservation, but they don’t start those until 7 am. The man at the entrance said, “Lifeguards won’t be out until 7, don’t touch the coral.” Not verbatim, but the idea. Sweet, we saved $15 by coming early! The water was cooold. We did see a number of fish; I was more impressed with the fish we saw in Maui, but was great to have this experience. We were finished snorkeling before 8, and walked out, while many people were heading in. After a quick stop to shower, we loaded up our bags into the car.
First, we trekked the trail and hundreds of steps to the top of Diamond Head Crater. Beautiful, but exhausting. The trail does not have shade, so we were really hot by the end. Next stop, Pearl Harbor, which doesn’t allow any bags, so I traveled with my camera, F carried the video camera and both of our wallets. We got inside just in time to catch the next ride to the Arizona Memorial. It was sobering to see the battleship under us and to see the names of those who lost their lives that day. What a tragedy. Close by is the Bowfin Submarine. When we got there, they were close to closing time and there was an admittance fee to walk around the submarine, so we walked around the grounds and played around until we had our fill. F and I hopped back in the car and drove towards the airport. We loaded onto the airplane and made our redeye flight to Seattle, Washington. After grabbing breakfast, we headed on our last plane home. That last flight couldn’t have been any longer. I was so anxious to get off the plane, get our luggage and home to see our children. My brother picked us up from the airport and back to our children. They apparently had so much fun, they didn't even miss us. We had a fantastic trip! I am so glad to be home with my family, but I miss Hawaii already. Someday down the road….until then, here are more pictures of Oahu.

Canoe Pagent and F at the PCC

Laie Hawaii Temple

Pearl Harbor

Bowfin Submarine and Hanauma Bay

Sunset Beach and view of Waikiki from atop Diamond Head

Yummy Eats and Cool Treats

Some varieties of Pineapples found at the Dole Plantation

The happy couple with surf legend, Duke.

Vacation Part 1: Maui

First off... a big THANK YOU! or MAHALO! to family for taking our two children for almost 2 weeks!! We had a great, and fab-u-lous time in both Maui and Oahu. Here are only a few pictures of our trip, that I think will say it all.

It took us forever (or so it seems) to get to Maui. We left on a Thurs. afternoon to Seattle, had a 2 hour lay over, and then a grueling 6 hour flight into Honolulu that was longer than scheduled because of headwinds. We made it and took the shuttle to our little hotel, with a little room, inside the little room was a little t.v. and a little bathroom, with a little shower. Even the walls were little (we could hear everything outside our room). But it was only for the night. Friday morning, we jetted back to the airport and jumped to Maui. When we went to pickup our car, they were out. The manager said, "SUV or Convertible," we said, "Convertible." We hopped in our large Chrysler Sebring, made a stop at Costco and headed to our hotel, which was luxurious! This first picture is the view from our room, the second is a waterfall/koi pond at our place. I wish I could still see it now.

That evening we hung around the hotel, visiting the beach and watching people learn to surf. Saturday morning, we drove down the coast toward the southern edge of Maui. We found a little bay where people were snorkeling, so we jumped in. We saw some big fish, but we also forgot our underwater camera. We stopped in Lahaina that night to walk around and eat dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise. Sunday was spent driving the road to Hana. We drove with the top down and enjoyed being surrounded by all of the greenery. We stopped at a little roadside stand and had smoothies made with real sugar cane juice (we watched them press the juice from the cane). We ate our lunch at the Wai'anapanapa State Park famous for the black sand beach. This picture below at the state park. There were some kids jumping from some of the rocks. Crazy! After we reached Hana and onto the seven sacred pools, we continued the non-recommended portion of the road. The road is narrow, winding around corners and up & down many little hills. I had to lay down because it became too much for me.

Monday, we rose at 3 am, packed up and hit the road. We drove up to the top of Hale'akala (dormant volcanic crater) to see the sunrise. This was my first sunrise to actually see. The road is filled with switchbacks, which by the way, is more daring when it is dark and you have never driven the road before. We reached the top with time to spare. By the way, the drive to the top covers one of the greatest elevation gains in the shortest distance in the world. Beginning at sea level and reaching just over 10,000 ft. The sunrise was beautiful, but it was coooold and really windy. Not many people stuck around after the sun had made it's appearance. Neither did we. We huddled in the car, blasted the heat, and ate breakfast. While driving back to the hotel, we detoured to the Iao Valley for a stop at the Iao Needle. I couldn't believe how green it was, and also the fact that as you drive through the city, all of a sudden, you are in the lucious Iao Valley. After all of that we got back at 10 am, and took a nap.

That afternoon, we snorkeled at Black Rock, just up the beach and saw 2-3 sea turtles!

Tuesday morning brought in more snorkeling. We signed up to take an excursion out to Molokini crater to snorkel, but weather kept us away. We did still snorkel at a few other places which were awesome, filled with sea turtles and fish. Some people we know took the exact same boat the day before to the crater and said they didn't see much. So, I guess we got the better deal.

Just off the back of the boat, people were feeding the fish. This was the best picture of the fish. On the excursion, we also saw quite a few sea turtles, and even 8-10 whales (while we were riding to our destinations).Overall, it was a great time. Our boat made two stops for snorkeling. A portion of the people didn't snorkel the second time around, they were wanting the crew to open up the bar and get them drinking. We on the other hand, snorkeled the time away and enjoyed endless Coke. Later that day, we drove north and explored. We found a little path and followed it around. The trail was muddy and each step produced layer upon layer of thick mud. Our feet were getting heavier each step. Do you like the self portrait? We've been perfecting it. Wednesday morning, we attended a timeshare presentation. Because we have done one previously, we were able to get a "summarized" version. We talked with a rep, visited the Maui Ocean Club's newest two bedroom villas, and declined purchase. Both F and I would love to have a timeshare (hopefully in the future) but not right now. After that, we headed back down to the great snorkel spot we found, this time we took our camera (I need to pick up our prints). This place is literally off the road. You can see the road pass right next to it. Second time around, we saw an eel (just after we finished our roll of film) and some crab. The rest of the time on Maui, we bummed around, going wherever the wind took us. The weather was perfect. Friday, we checked out of our hotel and jumped back to Oahu. We had a wonderful time in Maui and looked forward to a few days on Oahu. A couple years back we visited Kauai, and loved it. I would say, this was just as great. I'll get our days in Oahu up soon!!