Hawaii Trip

We just got back from a great trip to Hawaii to visit Jeanna's family. First of all, I have to say how great they were. They made the trip so wonderful, down to the very last details with Lyle picking us up at the airport with Leis (sp?) flower leis for us, and candy leis for the kids. I can't say enough how gracious they were to having us stay at their home, to planning our trip (Lyle is an incredible travel agent) to babysitting... everything! Anyway, like I said, we can't thank them enough. Hopefully, we'll still be welcome if we can make it back to see them before they move.

So, like I said in a previous post, we were off to the hospital after we got there and Jeanna watched Sam while we were there and had dinner for us when we got back. The next day we hit the road running and it seems like we didn't stop until we were dropped off at the airport. I will just give a quick run down of the trip... highlighting the good parts of course, I'll smooth over the sick kids, GROUCHY kids (all part of my family... not Jeanna's) besides no one wants to hear the bad parts right? They are 4 hours behind us so we were up at 4 am on the dot trying to keep my kids quiet so we didn't wake up the entire house. So, bright and early we went to Pearl Harbor. This was incredible to see, but we'll have to go back again when we don't have our kids... or at least Katelyn feeling better. Then we went to the beach and they watched our kids while went to the temple that night. The next day we went up to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. The highlight was of course the Pineapple ice cream.. YUMMY! Then we went to Shark's Cove, which is a tide pool area, where Jeanna and I watched the kids try to catch the fish in the tide pools, and get hermit crabs while Lyle and Michael snorkeled.

Saturday we went to Haunama Bay, which is a protected cove which is great for snorkeling. Since it is in a bowl type cove the waves were very minimal and the kids had a great time while playing in the sand and water and the boys snorkeled. On Sunday, we tried to get family pictures taken. I posted probably the only one of a hundred that is decent. The kids were grouchy (Sam fell down and scraped up his knee and couldn't get over it, and Katelyn didn't want anyone touching her stroller) or distracted by playing in the sand. We got a condo the last couple of days because we didn't want to impose for too long on their family and we realized a little too late that we did it backwards. After spending fun filled days with cousins... we were a little boring. We were up on the north shore, and we took the opportunity to go to a famous shrimp shack. Literally a truck on the side of the road. You got a plate of a bunch of shrimp and some rice. It was really yummy and Michael was kind enough to peel it (with his HANDS). Sam wouldn't have anything to do with the shrimp, but he ate the rice. Then we went in search of another place we were told we had to try, which was shaved ice. As you can see in the picture... that line behind us is indeed just for shaved ice. I guess what's so fantastic about it is that you can put a bunch of stuff on it and ice cream in the bottom. I wanted to go to the cheap place across the street (half as much, no line) but Michael insisted we try it. He said it was worth it. We did have a beach outside our condo which was fun. Michael caught a crab for the kids in a tupperware. Katelyn wanted to hold it and Sam wanted nothing to do with it. After staring at it for a while we let it go. Jeanna watched the kids while we went on a lunch date and then we went swimming that night at a swimming pool down in Waikiki that Sam LOVED and to dinner afterwards. The last day we did some shopping at the swap meet (HUGE, went all the way around the stadium) and the boys went fishing and came home within minutes to leave for the airport. The flight home was awful (we found out yesterday that both of Sam's ears are incredibly infected and the doctor was surprised they didn't burst on the flight... which explains a little why the flight was so bad). Phew... what a long trip. So FUN, we already want to go back!

ER in Hawaii!

Jeanna's family is stationed in Hawaii, and we went to visit their family. Before anybody gets too jealous about our trip... we spent the first night in the ER with Katelyn. On the plane over Katelyn started to struggle with her breathing and have a fever. She continued to get worse, enough that we felt like she should be seen by a doctor. After x-rays, bloodwork, steroids and breathing treatments... and 5 hours later we were able leave. The ER is never a place you want to be, especially on vacation. Katelyn did really well though. The doctor made her a doll out of a towel (Katelyn calls it WallE... probably because of the stickers they gave her) which is the white thing on the left of her doll and we had her doll, which the doctor listened to before he'd listen to her. They would put the leads on the doll first, and then on Katelyn. Then Katelyn would use the empty syringes as their bottles. They were great. We watched Olympic Speedwalking... yes, it is an olympic event, which is boring and lasts forever! Anyway, she was sick for the first couple of days, along with the accompanying grouchiness. But the trip was really fun and I'll post more about it later.

Video Sleeping at Dinner

It seems like everyone has videos or pictures of their kids falling asleep at dinner time... but not us. Our kids aren't the greatest sleepers. Michael had visions of his babies falling asleep while he held them... but that rarely happened, and only when they were little babies. On occassion, she will fall asleep in the car, but will wake up as soon as she hears that we're getting off the freeway. So, although this is common for a lot of people, this video is pretty amazing for Katelyn. She missed her nap and we were eating dinner. She was so tired and grumpy she didn't want to eat. She just wanted a bottle. So I told her I would make her a bottle, which calmed her down and she fell asleep while waiting for the bottle. Sam is really cute in the video too... he is always asking what his heart says. He will have us listen to his chest and say "what is my heart saying", I have no idea where he got that from, but in case you can't hear very well on the video, he says that Katelyn's heart said she wanted a nap.

Alpine Days

 

Alpine Days is usually when we get together for a reunion of sorts in my family. So here are the pics of Alpine Days. My kids had a blast, they had fun day playing with cousins and it was a fun time to see everyone (minus those who weren't there... we missed you). We went to the parade in the morning. The highlight (of course) was the candy, but Jack was in the parade, and it was fun for my kids to see him in the parade. Then, we had dinner that evening at my dad's place. I don't have any pics of the dinner... I will blame that on my kids. Sam got stung by a wasp on his cheek (you can see the paste of baking soda in one of the pics) which was traumatizing to him, he said he was never going to go outside again. Then we went to the fireworks that night. We brought glow sticks, which were a hit. Katelyn adores her cousins, especially Jack and Lauren, and I barely saw her during the fireworks... the whole night actually.

Naughty Katelyn

I just thought I'd post a pic of my naughty girl. She is so cute though. I wondered if I would have done this with Sam... I don't know if I would have. But, against my better judgement, I did. For example: One day Sam yelled into the house, "Mom, I wrote our names on the house because it's our house!" and I went outside and sure enough "Dad, Mom, Sam, and Kate" were all written on the back of the house with sidewalk chalk. I gave him a good talking to with the likes of "if that happens again, we will throw ALL of the sidewalk chalk away!" and washed it off the house (which we ended up throwing it away anyway, since Katelyn kept on eating it!). When I told Michael about it, he asked if I had taken a picture (I expected quite a different reaction), I said no, and wished I would have. So this time, I took a picture of Katelyn getting into the baby powder. She was covered. You can't see in the pic, but it is all over in her hair. Her shirt is sleeveless, but it looks like she has sleeves because of the powder. The dark spot on her arm is where she started licking it off.

Video of Katelyn - Alpine Days Rodeo

So maybe no one will think this is funny except for me, but these videos are so funny. Katelyn makes me laugh. Even when she's naughty... her personality is so funny to me. We have gone to the Alpine Days Rodeo since Sam was a baby. Katelyn doesn't remember last year, but this year she was very excited to be going. The whole way up she would name the animals she thought we would be seeing, "chicken" and "horsee" were mostly what she would say, but she'd throw in some other animals every now and then. She was excited all the way up until we got a snow cone. Then it was all about the snow cone. These videos are of her trying to get the last of the snow cone. In the last video, I think her plan was to hand off the dum dum sucker, so she could use her hand to scrape out the insides with her fingers.

Giant Slip-N-Slide, etc.

Some friends of ours invited us to Thanksgiving Point's Giant Slip-N-Slide for FHE this week. This sounds like a lot more fun than it is. Well, for me anyway. It was fun to visit with friends, and the kids had fun. I went down once... at a snail's pace with Katelyn. Ugh. It was more like scootch and slide. Some kids (braver than ours) would get a running jump on it and they did go down faster. The line was incredibly long and Katelyn struggled waiting in the long line. Michael is such a good sport he went down with the kids after that. I took Katelyn to sit on the grass and watch until it was

our turn and I would go and deliver Katelyn to Michael and take pictures as they went down.
I don't have pictures of our other goings on this week. It was such a busy, tiring week, but not much to show for it. I started reupholstering some wingback chairs, which is a LOT of work and I've just begun (Michael will say I told you so... but hopefully it will all be worth it!). I had a good friend of mine from college come to eat dinner and hang out and it was good to see her and her family in person (not just in her blog).


My kids funny things of the week:

Sam's questions are already beginning to stump my ability to answer him. He wanted to go to Home Depot for some reason on Sunday. I told him we couldn't on Sunday and tried to explain why not. He thought about it for a minute and said "Why wont Jesus let us go anywhere on Sunday!"

Katelyn's big word lately is "honkin" both of my kids for some reason have picked this word up (I don't think I say this word, but maybe it subconsciously slips in there). Anyway, now everything has to be honkin (for those not familiar with the term, it means big). Me: (trying to give her a fork at dinner) Katelyn: (refusing and turning her head) "No, a honkin one" Me: Katelyn do you want some cereal? Katleyn: Honkin one, Me: Katelyn, are you stinky? Katelyn: Yeah, honkin one.