free

three day weekends are awesome.

for this 4th we worshipped at the church of our choosing

then donned our country's colors

and celebrated freedom

               

"for what avail the plow or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?"
ralph waldo emerson

real quick like...

hop on over to the foto blog for a crazy deal!!

*click*

day 2

note to self: when on a "weekend away", aka time without children, don't plan on waking up early. it's just torture.

today was moped day. we started at 7a. i've gotta say i love me a moped! i never knew. i was a little wary at first... the balancing thing, and accelerating thing... 35 mph never felt so fast.

sadly, no moped pics. but basically we looked like this, only on separate mopeds.

first stop: diamond head

yah, i only took pics from the top. let's be honest... i was dying. those were lots of stair with a 70% ankle.

and evidently i wasn't the only one suffering...

two people were choppered down... it was a hot day. and i think it's 282 stairs or something like that.

after diamond head me mopeded our way to hanauma bay.

via

it was fun enough. we were pretty much the same color as valentines m&ms by this point

the red ones

and there wasn't as much marine life to see as we had expected.

then we mopeded back to the marriot to get all dolled up

dancers danced while we waited to board... we were the very FIRST people on the boat, so we got our own personal serenade while we sipped our virigin mai tai's

a moped back to marriot and the day was done.
oh, except for that time we stopped for hot cocoa and pastries and some place by ward theaters.
WHOA to the pastries and cocoa! so delicious!


next time you're in waikiki, i highly recommend renting mopeds.

and starting your diamond head hike really early...

sailing

little known fact: i'm scared of water.

mostly the deep, naturally occurring kind. eg. the pacific ocean.

or bear lake.

lake powell.

the mississippi river...

ok, so basically anything but a swimming pool.

but here's the thing, we turned 5. our marriage, i mean. and i deemed myself as the 5th anniversary party planner.

so we spent a weekend in waikiki!

day 1: high-speed catamaran sail around diamond head.

it was so intensely, crazy fun!! we sat right up front, feet dangling off the edge, hanging on to the ropes white-knuckled for dear life. (okay, so maybe that was just me.) and the guy next to me, vacationing from washington state, had so much fake tanner on that i could smell the brown washing off of him with each mountainous splash of ocean waves.

that's how awesome it was.

first haircut

yes, it's true. addi is turning 4 in a few months and we've never tended her locks. well, actually, i trimmed her bangs once a couple years ago because she was eating her hair...

i think she rocked it.

we left her foreheadless for several months before we grew them back out...

and she still chewed her hair.

fail.

so why the cut? well, addi's hair touches her bum.

not a problem, really, but that's a lot of snarles and tangles.

i figured if we snipped it up a bit, maybe thinned, added layers

SOMETHING

she wouldn't have so many snarls.

so the big reveal of the first haircut, eh.

(yes. it's an iphone pic.)

i know. it looks the same.

and it's curly in the "before" because it had been in a braid all day...

so it's basically exactly the same.

we weren't going for a huge change. just a trim.

i was scared all of her baby curls would be gone, but ohblessedday some hung on.

oh, and for your viewing pleasure:

it's long... but addi's hilarious.

it just might be the most thrilling 10 minutes of your day.

(ps. gwen entertained herself by putting at least 5 different hair products in her hair. true story.)

1,576,800

That's how many minutes Casey and I have been married as of approx. 6:30 this morning (boy, i wish i had a dollar for every one of those) - I think everyone would know I was lying if I said every single one of those 1.5 million minutes have been complete marital bliss, but I'd say we're pulling a good 1.4.




Our celebrating began friday with the MrAZ concert. Today Case came home early and we went to Jameson's in Hale'iwa for a lunner (late lunch/early dinner) and then to Ted's for dessert. Sounds simple enough, eh? Small detail ... we took the girls, so we have many a story to tell.

First, the blow-out ... not the tire, the diaper. We had just taken our seats at Jameson's. We were on the lanai by the fountain, a nice semi-romantic setting. Gwen sat rather contentedly in the infant carrier/car seat as I stroked her nose like you would a guinea pig. Her brow furled expressing slight discontent, then she smiled. "Ah, a smile; how cute" I thought. Then the sound. Do you have children? Then you know the sound. Do you have a husband? Then you also know the sound. So ... it oozed out - to fully understand this you must have had or babysat a newborn.

ooze.




Car seat - head and neck pillow positioner thingy - new cute dress just purchased Saturday for said occasion - legs and feet - burpy cloth ... ALL oozed. Of course Jameson's is not exactly the four-foot-and-under-friendly type of establishment, so the restroom had no changing area excepting the marble countertop (fake or real? you tell me). I counted the stink-eyes I received - 3 1/2 - the 1/2 was an employee, so she had to smile. Really it was confusing - from the nose up she detested what she saw; nose down, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.


A roll of paper towels and a container of diaper wipes later I was back on track to eat my mahimahi and veggies. (I opted to not wash the oozed items in the bathroom sink. I didn't think it would go over too well.) We got Addi a burger from the kids menu. It was large enough to feed Atilla the Hun - cheeseburger, seasoned fries, a dill pickle spear, and of course a container of ketchup. Really now, should we give a 21 mo. old baby a container of ketchup....

no.

or a dill pickle spear with that ketchup?

Surprisingly the mess was minimal, but she did get her share of sodium and tomatoes today. I guess I should be expecting an "ooze" from her tomorrow. She also took a huge chunk out of an onion, spat it out and handed it to Case, then stole the lemon from my lemonade, had a nice suck, and threw it on the ground.




And then of course she had to play in the fountain. "IN?" you say. Well, she didn't actually go for a swim, but that's just because Casey is stronger than her. Then to the car. I needed to include Gwen in the family feeding session, so we let Addi run around in the car while I nursed Gwen ... she found the horn. She couldn't figure out exactly where to press, so she just kept leaning against the steering wheel with her belly.



Off to Ted's where nothing eventful happened. Then to TVA to let Addi play. By this time our camera battery had passed away, so words will have to suffice. Imagine piggy-tailed Addi, a glint of mischief in her hazel eyes as she swings gleefully on her belly in the swing, dragging her pink fingernails in the sand below. Between bursts of laughter she looks up at me with the "I love you Mommy" look then finally makes a graceful dismount. As I was admiring how perfectly the late-afternoon sun cast sharp shadows across her satin face, she stuck out her pink tongue, which was no longer pink, but speckled a brownish-white. "wa wa ... Wa Wa ... WA WA!" Roughly interpreted to mean, "Get me a drink now Mother or I will become asphyxiated on the sand granules I have just consumed."



Yeah for getting married!!!

Happy Valentine's!

So, after 4 months I'm finally posting stuff ... we went on a helicopter tour of the island for Valentines and it was a blast! We don't always go all-out like this, but we figured with the babe coming soon, we should do a big shibang this year.

Our house ... how cool is that! You see just below and to the right of middle there are two long white roofs perpendicular to each other...you can also (barely) see a yellow school bus. Well, our roof is the long white rood that is not parallel to the ocean. Kam Hwy. is the long road on going through the middle of the photo, and that's Hau'ula Beach Park across Kam from us. Got it? Yah, neither did I ...

... so here's another pic that closer, fuzzier, and from a different angle, but closer. We're the roof going left to right, not up and down.