Catching Up...

I haven't been the best blogger lately, so here is a look at what has been going on at our house:

 There are 22 other countries in town to participate in a joint naval exercise called RIMPAC. During the week before the exercise, there were tons of athletic events for all of the ships to compete against each other. Kelson ran in a 5K. He finished in 18 minutes-his fastest run ever!

 One weekend we went to the state fair with our friends the Lewises. The state fair here is pretty small, but we got to see a grizzly bear show and the petting zoo, and the boys rode one of the big, spinny rides. It was a fun night.

 On June 2nd, we celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary. It has been a wonderful 3 years!

 Sarah has been trying lots of new foods. Beets are yummy and messy!

 Sarah is training up to be a great sewing assistant.

 Sarah and I relaxed in the park one Saturday while Kelson ran the Aiea loop trail. It was seriously muddy that day. 

 I feel like Sarah is always disappearing under something. The other day, I looked around and discovered her hiding under the bed.

 Sarah is a patching houdini. Tape does not help.

 I taught Kelson how to make hand-beaten fudge. It was delicious! I made chocolate cherry pecan, and Kelson made chocolate caramel coconut.  Yum!

 My beautiful pirate.

Sarah: 8 Months

 Happy 8 months to our sweet Sarah! Here's what is going on this month:

• Her latest weight was just under 21 pounds. Look at those thighs!
• She is so happy!
• She has mastered the army crawl and manages to find her way to whatever she wants. 
• Her voice is very healthy. She especially enjoys screeching in the middle of church or any other time that she is supposed to be quiet. 
• Patching and sleep are still battles.
• She has finally decided that solid food is pretty tasty, although she still prefers anything that she gets to put in her mouth herself.
• She loves the water.
• She must have some of Daddy's blood in her, because she can get a nice suntan.
• We love you, Sarah!

The Ultimate Holiday Date Night

We love holidays around here. For date night the other night, I took an idea from the Dating Divas blog and planned the ultimate holiday date night. The idea was to celebrate as many holidays as we could in one night. It was so much fun! I pulled out all kinds of holiday decorations for the night.

We started off by eating Thanksgiving dinner (by the way, turkey breast cooked in the crock pot is delicious!) while watching the Winnie the Pooh Christmas special on Netflix. After that, I put Sarah to bed while Kelson hunted his Easter basket. In the basket were eggs numbered 1-10. He got to open the eggs in order throughout the evening to tell him what our next activity was. The first one said, "Happy St. Patrick's Day! The last one to get a green shirt on gets pinched!". It was a mad race to our closet. Kelson cheated and tackled me so he could win. I pinched him anyway.

Next was Halloween. We put on our costumes (princess and the green lantern), took silly pictures, and read an Edgar Alan Poe story.

 After Halloween was Valentine's Day. We headed into the craft room to design cards for each other, elementary school style. We both wrote some pretty awesome poetry.

 Of course, we had to celebrate Christmas. We turned down the AC so we could enjoy snuggling and drinking hot chocolate in front of our paper fireplace while reading a Christmas story.

Happy Birthday, Kelson! We won't be together for Kelson's birthday, so this was a perfect opportunity to make his traditional strawberry birthday pie.

Finally, we celebrated the New Year with some bubbly. 

We may have to have a 2nd episode of this date to catch some more holidays. So much fun!

Kelson's First Father's Day

It has been so much fun to watch Kelson become a daddy. I was excited to have a day to celebrate him.  His day started out with raspberry steel cut oatmeal topped with dark chocolate, almonds, and cream with a side of hot chocolate, all served in bed of course.  Yummy!

After breakfast, I went back to the kitchen to get the dessert-cupcakes! Kelson was confused as to how I made cupcakes so fast.

Sock cupcakes! Kelson loves wearing fun socks on Sunday.  I also gave him a single-serving ice cream maker, and we have been having lots of fun with it.

Kelson is such a good dad. Sarah absolutely loves playing with him. The other day, Kelson was hot after his run, so he hopped in the wading pool with Sarah. They have fun together. Thanks for everything you do, Kelson!

We are grateful for all of the other wonderful fathers we have in our lives as well. We have been very blessed.  We love you!

Happy Campers

We had the chance to take Sarah on her first camping trip a couple of weeks ago. Our ward had a campout at Bellows Air Force Base, which is right on the beach. We were excited to experience camping in Hawaii for the first time. The only bad part was the 2 days it took to prepare for 1 night of camping. Kelson was in charge of buying the food for breakfast, which meant that I had to go shopping for enough materials to make 150 breakfast burritos and then figure out how to fit it in our refrigerator. It was even more adventurous when we had to fit 2 big coolers, a stroller, our camping gear, the baby, and ourselves all in our Jeep Compass. Its a good thing Kelson is good at tetris. It was a relief when we finally got out of town with paper plates stacked on my lap and a pie precariously perched on the dashboard. It turned out to be a good thing that the plates were on my lap, because they caught the pie when we turned a corner and it slid off its perch. I made an apple cranberry pie, which was delicious, and it even won first place in the pie contest.

We brought our little barbecue with us and made pita pizzas for dinner. They were so good and really easy. We eat very well even when we are not at home.

We had a feeling camping would be right up Sarah's alley.  You mean we never have to go inside? Awesome! We put her to bed in her rock n play, and she slept really well, especially considering that there were screaming children running around the tent until 11:00.

The birds and the children started up again by 5:30, so it was an early morning for all of us, but Sarah was pretty pleased with life.  We enjoyed some delicious breakfast burritos with the ward, packed up the camping gear, and had a fun day at the beach.

 Three days later, Kelson had to go camping again to help out at our ward's girls camp. At the last minute, Sarah and I decided to come along, so we threw the gear back in the car (minus the 150 breakast burritos this time), and headed to Kaneohe Bay after Kelson got off work.

 After we got Sarah to bed, Kelson and I enjoyed making smores over the barbecue.

 This is the view we woke up to in the morning. Not bad, huh?

 I wish I could walk out my front door to this every morning.

Kelson had to be back in town for work the next morning, but we toasted some bagels on the bbq before we left. 

We were even more successful at camping with a baby on the second go around. I think there will be many more camping adventures in our future. There are some very different things about camping in Hawaii compared to what I am used to. For one thing, you are trying to figure out how to stay cool all night rather than trying to stay warm. The other thing is the bugs. Our second campsite was near a swamp and was infested with mosquitos, cockroaches, and centipedes. Gross gross gross. A cockroach fell out of my bedding when I brought it in the house.  Argghhhh! I hate roaches. I suppose there has to be some downside to living in paradise, though. We won't let them stop us from going on more adventures!

Sarah: 7 Months

Another month has gone by. It seems like Sarah gets more grown up every day! 

 Here is what is going on with Sarah at 7 months:

• She rolls all over the place. It is a fairly effective means of transportation. She hasn't made any efforts at crawling yet.
• She is a hair pulling menace.
• Everything belongs in her mouth as long as it is not a spoon. Anything Mom puts on a spoon is automatically disgusting. It takes great trickery to get her to open her mouth at meal time.
• Swimming is great fun.
• She has discovered how to remove (and eat) her eye patch, so she can't be left alone while patched. That means Mommy and Sarah get lots of play time in the morning while she gets her patching done.
• She loves walks and falling asleep in the jogging stroller.
• We still haven't figured out how to help her sleep better.
• She is a happy, smiley girl, especially if she has gotten enough sleep.
• She has found her voice, and she is very vocal. Her favorite sound is an ear splitting screech. The best times to make this sound are during church meetings and when Mom is trying to make dinner.

A few more samples from our 7 month photo shoot:

Happy 7 months, Sarah!

Dremel: The Continuing Adventures

The Black & Decker RTX tool (a.k.a. Dremel) continues to amuse me. My glass-engraving hobby has been kindled. Soon Emily will have zero glass dishes in the house without some form of graffiti etched in.

It goes in phases. First, it was the Sarah-oriented cutesy phase.

Then we moved on to dragons.

And compasses.

Most recently, Mother's Day cards. The possibilities are limitless.