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.

Our Kauaian Vacation

One of the things we have been really excited to do since we moved here is visit the other Hawaiian islands. Sarah is old enough now to be a little easier to travel with, so we decided it was time for a vacation. We were so excited to spend a few days on Kauai! We left the morning after my birthday, so it was kind of a birthday gift for me. Our plane left at 6:00 in the morning, which meant that we had had to start our first day of vacation really early. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through the whole airport routine for a 20 minute flight. However, the plane put Sarah to sleep, and she slept for several hours, so it worked out for the best. 

We landed in Lihue and immediately started our exploring. The nice thing about Kauai is that there is really only one main road on the whole island, so directions there mostly consisted of "get on the highway and drive there." I like that kind of navigation. 

The LDS chapel in Kapa'a was so neat! It looked very Hawaiian.

Our first stop on our adventure was the Kilauea Point lighthouse. Sadly, we didn't do our research very well and arrived two hours before it opened, so this is the closest we got. It was still a nice view.

From there, we drove further up the coast to Haena to explore the caves there. They were so cool! The first two had pools of really deep, clear water in them and lots of frogs.

Sarah enjoyed the view from the carrier on Daddy's back. She was delighted with the idea of spending 3 days almost entirely outside.

The last cave was dry, so we could explore further into it. (Before you freak out, Mom, we could see the huge opening of the cave the whole time.)

The beginning of the NaPali Coast trail was near where we explored the caves. Falling Rocks? Flash Floods? Hazardous Cliffs? Sounds great! Let's do it.

The view from the trail was beautiful. I am a wimp, so we only hiked about 1.5 miles, but we saw some gorgeous coastline.

Kelson was super excited to snack on fresh sugarcane after we finished our hike. It was like chewing on sweet wood.

We ended our first day snorkeling at Ke'e Beach. The snorkeling was great, the temperature was just right, and the baby was sleeping. A perfect afternoon at the beach.

Apparently monk seals like to relax on the beach too. It was sleeping with the most contented look on its face.  At one point, a wave came up and splashed water into its little burrow and it got all upset and thrashed around all over the place. It was fun to watch.

Kauai is covered in wild chickens. They were everywhere, and they were not shy. They would come right up to you looking for a handout. There were lots of little chicks too, and they were cute.

Our first stop on day 2 was Wailua Falls. We saw a road sign giving directions to a waterfall a few miles away, so we decided to check it out. Definitely worth it.

Kelson is a rebel.

That afternoon, we drove up to Waimea Canyon State Park. It is also known as the Hawaiian Grand Canyon. The landscape was absolutely breathtaking.

This is one of the wettest spots on earth. We were also up high in the clouds, so we had to wait for the clouds to clear and grab our opportunities to see the good views.

We went for a hike into the canyon, but it was a little wet and muddy for my taste.

From this view point, you were supposed to be able to see Nihau, the smaller island just off the coast of Kauai. All we could see was mist and trees. Kelson held up Sarah so she could get a better view. She didn't let us know if she could see the ocean.

There is an observatory on top of the mountain. I bet the view of the stars there is incredible.

We loved the amazing natural variety on Kauai. Not what I imagined a Hawaiian island to look like at all.

Day 2 ended with snorkeling at Salt Pond Beach. This time Sarah was awake, so she got to go swimming too. She did lots of splashing.

Getting dried off is her favorite part.

 Day 3 started with early morning snorkeling and beach time. Its the best way to start a day. From there, we went out for brunch. I ordered the special, a pumpkin macadamia nut pancake. Holy moly. That was the biggest pancake I have ever seen. It was delicious, though.

After breakfast, we did some shopping and sightseeing in downtown Kapa'a and then went on a riverboat ride to the Fern Grotto. Cruising up the river listening to live Hawaiian music was lovely. We continued our relaxing afternoon with some shopping in Koloa Town and then a little more beach time at Po'ipu. Since our flight didn't leave until 11:00 at night, we had a long evening to spend before going to the airport, so we went back to Kapa'a for their 1st Saturday event. The town was full of artisans, vendors, and musicians. It was a fun way to end our trip. 

We had such a good time in Kauai! The island was so much calmer and less crowded than O'ahu. That is what Hawaii should be like.