Maui 2011

Okay, so we've been back for almost a month now and I'm finally going to write about our trip to Maui last month. It's not like I've been super busy this month like I was this time last year.

Our Primary program took up some time and went off without a hitch, but even that didn't end up being as stressful as it could have been.

The kids costumes were easy to put together this year and I'm super excited to show you all, though, now that I think about it, I don't even know what they'll look like. I've just got everything, but I haven't put them all together on the kids. Guess we'll find out tomorrow!

The biggest reason that I haven't really written anything yet is because I feel like there's not a whole lot to write about. I mean, we lived there for a year and a half and we did all the touristy stuff when our friends and family would come to visit. So, besides the excitement of a wedding that we'd been waiting for years to happen, and a last minute baby shower, we mostly just hung out with the family and went to the beach. But, here are the pictures and the stories:

Joseph's first sister, Kailee, is expecting her first baby, a girl(!) in December. We realized, that since most of the family was going to be on island, what better time to throw her a baby shower than now (or then, since we're past tense now).

So, the evening of the day we flew in, we stopped by the house, said "hi" to the fam and then I left to go work on Kailee's diaper cake. I love making these. Megan, Joseph's second sister, bought me the decorations for the cake. Aren't those little pink sequin shoes the cutest things you've ever seen?

I love baby showers. I love diaper cakes. I love buying baby girl things. Thanks for having a girl Kai!

 

The reason for our trip was to see Megan get married. We all, especially Meg, have been waiting for this day for a very long time. We are so happy that Meg found the right guy for her. Josh is awesome.

I wasn't able to get a whole lot of pictures of the wedding because I got put in charge of the justin.tv broadcast, so that friends and family, who couldn't join us on island, could still be there digitally. I linked the broadcast, but I don't expect you to watch the whole half-hour, unless you know Meg and Josh and missed the wedding, of course.

Megan, with Char and Dave. Isn't Megan gorgeous?

Later that week, we all hopped on a plane and took a 22 minute flight to Oahu. Megan and Jake, Joseph's third brother, were going through the temple for the first time. Jake is leaving for a mission to go to the Philippines right before Christmas. It was exciting to have both of them go through at the same time. The whole session was pretty much just our family and a few BYU-HI students. We were a big group.

Joseph and I were only on Oahu for about 18 hours before we flew back to Maui. We left the kids with my sister, Kristen, and while the break from the kids was nice, I didn't want to burden her too much.

Kristen had fun with the kids though. She took them to Lahaina for the day and had all sorts of adventures. She also now knows what it's like to have three kids, even if it was just for less than 24 hours. She's really good with kids in general, but especially good with mine. I can't wait till she and Keith start having their own. She'll make a great mommy.

My favorite part of the trip, besides going without the kids and being able to go to the temple with my husband: when they announce on the flight that portable electronic devices are not to be used during the first and last ten minutes of the flight. Remember, the flight is only 22 minutes. Lol!

The only picture I was able to get of our short island-hopping adventure.

The rest of our trip was mostly hanging out at home and going to the beach.

Asher's not a huge fan and freaked out when he heard the water, but calmed down and just stayed near me and played in the sand. Then he would find a group of birds and chase them all over the place. It was so cute.

Moses surprised me and jumped right into the water. Mind you, he is not a water baby. When we're at the pool, he will not let go of me, so I'd have to carry him and Asher all the time whilst in the water. But, Moses loved splashing and playing with Akiko and getting tumbled in the breakers. Then, there was a breaker that tumbled him a little too much and he swallowed some water. He was done after that and played in the sand the rest of the time.

As for Akiko, before I could even set anything down, she kicked off her sandals and was in the water. Of course, I kept an eye on her, but I really didn't see much of her until it was time to go, except for a little here...

... and a little there. 

How I love this!

Sand monster!!

See how Moses' hair is all matted down from playing in the water? Sometimes he would come out and say "Hi" and it would be all over the place. So cute!

Akiko and her Auntie Hannah (Joseph's 4th sister). What a twosome!

Too much fun? No way!

So, we had a lot of fun. It was exhausting though. Even with Joseph there to help me, 4.5 hours on the plane with these remarkably well-behaved kids is hard. We were so glad to be home.

I used to love traveling. My mom works for Delta, so we get the flight benefits. I used to go all over the place. Akiko and I would fly back and forth to Salt Lake all the time when we lived on Maui and it just wasn't a big deal back then.

Now it's just so tiresome. Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe it's just because my brood is expanding and I have to cater to different children at different stages in life. I don't know. But I do look forward to staying in California for the holidays. Anyone in the family is welcome to come join us, by the way, though I do know how unlikely that is.

I think we'll stay home for a while. We traveled a lot this year: two weddings and a funeral, plus an extra trip for wedding #1 prep. So, I'm asking everyone in my family to not die and not get married until next summer. I'm pooped. Besides, it's hard to just up and go somewhere once the kids are in school.

Fashion Faux Pas

I'm not making fun of him. I just think it's cute.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I'll start the post.

So, I really love it when the kids get old enough that they can start dressing themselves. It frees me up to focus on other things so that we can get out the door a little faster, although, let's be honest, it is faster if I just dress my kids myself. But the kids need to do things on their own and they get that wonderful whoosh of confidence when they get it done on their own. I mean, that's my job as a mother, right? To get them to be independent members of society?

Anyway, so Moses has finally taken the reigns and has started to get himself dressed. I mean, taking off the clothes is the easy part. They figure that out at, like, 18 months or something, but getting clothes on is a little trickier.

If you'll remember about this time last year, Moses attempted to get his shorts on by himself with some comical results, as you can see here in this post. Well, he's gotten a lot better and can now get totally dressed all on his own (with the exception of his dress shirts with the tiny little buttons). Yay!

Well, nowadays, when we're heading out the door I simply have to tell Moses to get his shoes on, which, of course, we have to locate first because I cannot, for the life of me, get him to leave his shoes by the door.

Last night, we were heading out, and since it was a little chilly, I grabbed our jackets. Moses, apparently, figured his feet would get cold, so he opted for socks and shoes, rather than his flip-flops. I thought he was going to grab his shoes, but he still put his flip-flops on over his socked feet.

So, what do you do? I mean, he's so proud of himself, but he looks so silly. Christmas socks and flip-flops? Yikes!

I tend to side with him and let him go out like this, no matter how silly it looks. Akiko comes out of the door in some really wacky get-ups sometimes, too. So, my mommy philosophy, when it comes to my children's clothing independence is, very much, a laissez-faire approach. There are rules, of course, concerning modesty and the like, but I don't and will never buy my kids immodest clothes anyway.

I will, however, teach Moses someday, when he's old enough to understand better, that socks and sandals are one of the biggest no-no's you can commit when it comes to fashion.

...And We're Back!

And super tired. I spent the day catching up on all the blog posts I missed while I was gone rather than writing about our trip.

I impressed myself by not getting on my computer once the whole time we were there, even though I had brought it along. No Facebooking, no blogging.

I did check my email on my phone, though, so I can't say I was totally unplugged. I mean, I can't completely dodge my church duties while I'm on vacation, especially with our Primary program coming right up. But, it was nice not having my computer as a distraction. There are way better things to do on Maui.

Here Today...

...gone to Maui.

Aloha oe.

 

Multilingual

Yesterday, Akiko rushed in from playing outside, "Mom! Dad! The birds are talking to me and I'm talking back to them!"

"Oh really? That's cool! What are they saying to you?"

"...Um... They're saying...'What did you say?'"

"Anything else?"

"...And, um... 'You're cute!'"

"Oh, well, why don't you go back out there and talk to them some more and let me know what they're saying."

"Okay!" Akiko runs back outside.

Five minutes later, Akiko rushes back in and exclaims, "Oh my gosh! I just found out I wasn't talking to birds. Can you believe I was talking to a squirrel?!" She seemed utterly surprised at this revelation.

I knew Akiko was a perfect little girl, but I guess she got a dose of Chemical X*, too.

*If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a Powerpuff Girls reference. Bubbles speaks squirrel.

Summer Fun 2011

Alright, alright! I'm finally going to do a summer recap and I will try to be as concise as possible so as not to bore you all to tears, or death, whichever comes first.

**Update: Now that I've finished writing it. It's impossible for me to not make this long. I'm sorry. It really should have been several individual posts as they happened, but, as you will soon find out, we were much too busy. End update.**

So, right after school got out, I got to host our summer camp playgroup. This way I got to get it over with first and relax all the rest of summer. I chose a space theme this year and decided to run the kids through a mock astronaut training camp. Here's what we did:

The kids colored astronaut badges. For some of the training activities, they got stars that they could put on their badge.

They made clay aliens the first day and painted them the second day.

They got to eat real freeze dried astronaut food, which they loved!

I made them exercise, because real astronauts have to be extremely fit.

They ran an obstacle course.

We blasted off into space with a soda bottle rocket, which was way super cool!! I purchased it here. We launched it over and over again until we lost the bottle in the neighbors yard when I was hosting Moses' group. Oh, and I also almost hit their landscapers on landing. Oops! They laughed it off. Whew!

I made rice crispy treat balls. The kids rolled out some fondant and covered them in order to make...

... rice crispy treat planets. Super yummy!

Joseph's brother and his family were visiting us the week I hosted Moses' group, so I was excited that my nephews were able to join us while Akiko was at someone else's house. Doing this is a lot of fun and the kids are already looking forward to it next year.

We also took a trip to a cute little place called Happy Hollow in San Jose with my friend Adriana and her super cute little Sofia. It's a small children's amusement park. Real close. Pretty cheap. You can take your own food in. My kids love it here and we've been several times since we moved here. I really should just get a season pass.

The "Frog Hopper." Makes your tummy tickle and is manufactured in Logan, UT (as if you really cared).

Atlas getting ready to carry the world on his shoulders.

It rained later that afternoon. Felt soooo good!

Wheeeee!

For the 4th of July, Asher was sick. Booo! I had promised the kids that they'd get to see fireworks this year since the 4th was on Sunday last year and they didn't get to see any, and personal fireworks are illegal here (but I had some leftover sparklers from the year before that we lit, so don't tell on me).

So, Joseph stayed home with the sickie and I pulled Akiko and Moses to Shoreline Park in Mountain View in this:

6.5 miles pulling more than my body weight. I only made it part way home and had to call Joseph to rescue me at 1130pm. I could not walk and was sooo sore the next day.

Akiko got her toes muddy when she stepped in some mud and lost her shoes. Then, we lost one of her muddy shoes. I backtracked forever, but did eventually find it in some tall grass off the trail. That's the short version anyway.

We enjoyed a picnic by the lake while we waited for the fireworks.

Being sandwiched between the bay and this little lake made for a surprisingly cold and humid place to watch the show. It was lovely nonetheless.

In the days before Akiko lost her two front teeth.

Moses loved that apple so much, he fell asleep with it on the way home.

A couple days later, my beautiful sister, Kristen, came out to visit for Asher's pending birthday. We loaded the kids in the van and drove to Santa Cruz to check out the beach.

Moses dug right in.

Akiko immediately ran into the water before I had even set anything down.

Only Asher's second time to the beach, but the first time he could play there.

He just dove right in.

Looks like he forgot to shave that morning.

We can't go to the beach without digging giant holes for the kids to play in.

Don't let the sunny beautiful day in the pictures fool you. It was freeeeezing! See those goosebumps on my arm? In Sunnyvale, it was a nice, hot 85° day. Perfect weather to go to the beach, right? Well, here's the thing about the CA coast: it's cold. It was 65° in Santa Cruz on the same day only an hour away. However, the CA coast is truly beautiful.

So, I kind of feel bad that I only took the kids to their favorite place on earth only once during the summer. But now that we're going to Maui in a couple weeks, I feel much less bad. Besides, I took them to the pool plenty of times. Living on Maui has completely spoiled me for beaches.

A couple days later was Asher's 1st birthday. We went out to lunch and then drove down to Campbell to ride:

I really wanted to do this for Moses' birthday, but they're closed in the winter. Fun and cheap thrills. The kids loved this little train.

Baby Hannah also came along for the ride. Kristen was there, too.

Asher only tolerated his hat for a few moments.

We stayed and played at the park for a bit. Then we came home to the cake. Okay, so I totally cheated and bought a ginormous Costco cake, because I really love the pastry cream filling. I justified it with the fact that I would be feeding the missionaries the next night and that Joseph's brother, Carl, and his family would be with us for the week. We ate almost all of it. I think that took care of my Costco cake fix.

First, Asher picked off the sprinkles.

Then he scraped off the frosting.

Then that little piece of cake didn't have a chance.

After we got the little guy cleaned up, it was time for presents. Isn't this card from Akiko super sweet?

We got him a toy grill because he wouldn't keep away from Joseph's. He loves it and stays away from the big one now that he's got his own. And thank you everyone who sent presents his way. We missed partying with you.

I would have thrown a larger party with our friends, but I neither had the time nor the energy. The small celebration we did have with just my little family and Kristen was just what I wanted anyway.

Almost done.

We also went to the Jelly Belly factory for a free tour where they gave us free samples and I purchased a bag of Belly Flops and got addicted to the beans. Thank you again, Costco, for taking care of that fix.

 

 

Next time someone in my family comes to visit, we are doing this tour. The kids thought it was so fun. There was soooo much sugar and cool robots and you get to keep that sweet paper hat. Or, if any of my friends in the area want to go anytime, gimme a call.

We also spent a day at the San Francisco Zoo, where Moses was still young enough to get in for free. I only had to pay admission for Akiko and myself. I took a lot of pictures, but I'll spare you all.

The hippo was really fun to watch. It was really active and gave us a big, splashy show. 

There was a special tarantula exhibit there. I didn't go near it. Akiko went and said it was creepy. Moses had no comment.

But, my kids do make really cute giant spiders.

So, wanna hear the saddest thing ever? I had never ever been to any other zoo in my life besides Hogle. SF blows Hogle away. It's definitely worth the trip into the city. That's because you don't have to drive downtown.

I'm going to check out the Oakland Zoo next year.

So, besides all that fun stuff, we had family come to visit and stay with us, and a day at the ER, tons of pool time, there was a trip to the Children's Discovery Museum that I failed to bring my camera to, and these:

My children volunteering to wash our sliding glass door.

Moses tripping at the park and bleeding like crazy while we waited for Joseph to meet us after work. He ended up with a fat lip for several days. This was about ten days after our trip to the ER for his concussion, but I didn't say anything about it because I didn't want you all to worry too much about him.

And Asher tripped and ripped out half of his eyelashes. They have since grown back in.

How was your summer?