This Is It

No more excuses! No more procrastination!

No more DIAPERS!!!
(hopefully)

I've put this off for too long. Mandy will be 3 in May.

I thought about starting her potty training last fall, but we had just put our house on the market and I had high hopes of it selling quickly, so we waited. After a few months, I started thinking about it again, but the holidays were just around the corner, so we waited some more. After the holidays, we dropped the price of our house and I kept thinking we would sell it soon and didn't want to hassle with the potty training till after we moved, so we waited some more.

But, now that Paul has lost his job, and we're staying put for awhile, this is it!!! I'm sticking to it. It's only been a week, and things are still not clicking, but we're working on it.

Wish us luck!

HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY!!!

Our beautiful daughter, Eden, had her birthday yesterday! I would have posted this yesterday, but I didn't have the pictures finished yet.

Eden is such a joy to have in our lives! If you were to ask us to describe Eden in one word, it would be... PIXIE. And that's what she is! She's a spunky, fun loving, very confident little girl! Her preschool teachers always tell me how impressed they are that she's so confident in everything she does and that she doesn't care what anyone else thinks! I wish that had something to do with us being good parents, but I think it has more to do with her being... her!

At the hospital.

(home)

These pictures were taken about 2 years ago. If you want to see it a bit larger, click on it.

I've decided since I have the equipment and the "know-how", every year before each daughters birthday I'm going to do a little photo shoot with them.

These are a few from Eden's!
(Sorry for the mix of color, B&W and sepia. I can't decide which I like better.)

Eden, we love you!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Pictures of our girls

Here are just a few pictures of the kids. These first few are them in their outfits we bought in Hawaii.

I know, silly picture, especially with the coconut shell tops.
Ashley is winking. I love how Mandy is getting her hips into it.




Yes, Eden's long hair is fake. She calls it her "Barbie" hair. Eden wore her Barbie hair to the doctors office one day and a lady there just about had a tizzy fit over Eden having so much hair and her 4 year old having barely enough to put in a ponytail. She was so relieved to find out it was fake.







Since we have afternoon church now, I have a bit more time for getting the girls ready, and taking pictures of them all done up. Not that these are great pictures, but it was fun anyway.

Let's get this over with

This is it, our final day in Hawaii. We didn't do too much since we were flying out that same day. So, here's our site seeing, our hanging out, and leaving, although I didn't get any pictures of us leaving.

We did some site seeing and headed to Costco for lunch.


I thought this was a funny bunch of birds, all within a foot of each other.


Karl was so happy while at Costco. We went to 3 different ones on the island. I had to get a picture of him in front of at least one. Can you tell he's totally stoked!!!



Then we hung out around the hotel till we had to leave for the airport. Sorry, these pictures are kinda boring.




This was a very strange looking flower.



Another picture of the hotel, but this time with the lagoon in front of it.

And that's about it. We all took a "Red Eye" flight home. We landed in Washington at about 6:00 in the morning. Have you ever tried sleeping on the plane? Ugh.

I do have to say though, that I have a bigger appreciation for what my husband does for us as a family. Both going to Hawaii and coming back from Hawaii I was able to stay a night each time at his apartment. I use the term apartment very loosely, it's more like a box with windows and a door. He's living in a dinky little studio apartment that's smaller than our living room. It's an old, very old building and things leak, things creak and you can hear everything that goes on. When I saw his arrangements, I wanted to cry.

It was extremely hard to leave Paul, but I knew my girls were waiting for me. I really hope our house sells soon.

I had fun blogging all about Hawaii, thanks for joining in with me!

Almost done... almost

Well, this post is of our last full day in Hawaii! We did a lot of driving around, hanging out at beaches, stuff like that. I don't remember if this was the day I actually went into the ocean or not. I did once during the whole trip.

Doesn't that look fake!?!

A really big cave! But we didn't actually go spelunking.

We went to a lookout point but couldn't stay long. The wind was so strong! It was blowing my hair straight up and if you faced into the wind, you couldn't breath.

Friday night the hotel did a show and fireworks. We didn't see too much of the show, you had to pay to get good seats to it, but we did have great seats for the fireworks! It was a fun "last night" in Hawaii.







Tomorrow I'll be posting the last of our trip. Then, back to my normal boring blogging.

Relaxing, sort of

Okay, I know, these first few pictures are really cheesy, but Karl insisted we buy matching Hawaiian shirts and do pictures around the hotel. We got several looks, and a few snickers and one out right comment. Although the comment came from a man who was wearing black knee high sock with sandals.

(More funny faces)

Thankfully, Karl let us change when the photo shoot was over.
We went to the "International Market" which is kinda like the flea market, only closer to the hotel, shadier (as in cool in temp, not sketchy), and costs a little more.



Mom's about ready to die of starvation. We found this nice looking place to eat lunch but it took them waaaaay to long to get the food out.


Here's another funny little bird stalking the fish in the pond.




More beach and sunset pictures.

That mountain is Diamond head. We weren't able to hike up it, but it was fun looking at it everyday!

I love these pictures!