Winter and Holiday Catch-Up

I guess I have not blogged for a while. We had a nice Thanksgiving. We spent Thursday with my in-laws and Sunday at my mom's house with extended family for my brother's birthday. Sometime in early December the kids and I met my dad at Point Defiance Zoo for ZooLights. The kids really liked it but were not on their best behavior. Oh, well.
Just before Christmas we spent a day with our friends in Bellingham. These two love birds spent the day together with the giant stuffed caterpillar. The 4 oldest boys played outside all day. It was a nice relaxing day for Kim and I.

On Christmas Eve, we trekked on over to my in-laws for a nice celebration there.

And on Christmas Day we went to my mom's house for a quick round of presents and then drove to my grandparents' house and spent the rest of the day with the whole family. This was our first Christmas without Bob (my step dad). It was hard. We missed him. Below is a picture of the kids playing instruments during our family singing time. I have a sweet video of Bob jingling bells right along with the kids last year. Bob loved Christmas and enjoyed surprising everyone, especially my mom, with a nice gift. This year Stephen bought my mom a small diamond heart necklace. When she opened the box he said, "because Dad would have gotten you something nice." It was so sweet. And Tim got her a nutcracker. He had taken his girlfriend to the ballet and purchased a nutcracker for her there. My little brothers are pretty cool.

This is a picture of our tree this year. Photo courtesy of Joey.

My husband was on-call at 2 hospitals over the New Year's weekend so I packed up the kids and we went on a mini-trip to visit relatives. We spent New Year's Eve in Tacoma with my great-aunt and uncle and some cousins. That was nice. Then we went to the Ranch (family property near Mt. Rainier) and we rode ATVs with my dad and then spent the night with another aunt and uncle at their house in Eatonville. They still had 4-5in of wet snow and so we built the first real snowman ever for my kids. C loved the snowman. She hugged it. After we left, she asked when it was going to walk and talk and come to life. She has only seen the Frosty movie once.

Now we are back into a routine with school and everything. We are busy touring schools trying to figure out where to send J next year.
How's that for an update of the last 6 weeks?

New Mode of Transportation

Last week I got studded tires put on the Mazda (just in time!). M has been driving it to work this week so we have been without a vehicle that is suitable for the snowy/icy roads. We needed to run some errands today so we opted for this super-cool mode of transportation. The kids loved it. We walked/rode to Bartells and the library and stopped at Panda Express for lunch. It was pretty fun.

In order to get C to smile for the above photo, I had to ask them to do grumpy faces first and then I got the smiley picture. Here's the grumpy one for your viewing pleasure.

Weird Weather

Back on November 4th we spent four hours at Golden Gardens doing this,

this,

this,

and this, because it was 74 degrees outside.

A measly 18 days later we spent the day playing in the snow. It is currently 23 degrees.

We walked to school this morning. If you know J at all you would be proud to see that this year he is willing to wear boots, mittens, snow pants and a hood. C was very grumpy as she had woken up late and was still half asleep and a bit unsure about this snow stuff because this is the first snow she remembers.

J wanted C to throw snow at him and she was happy to oblige.

J was super excited about all the snow and had to eat some, of course. Later, his dad asked him what it tasted like. His answer? Water.

He finally convinced C to try some, too. She thought it was too cold.

We also warmed up a bit at the gym today.

It was a fun day.

This Boy...

...this super cute boy...has a renewed interest in photography.

He has been using my camera to take pictures of various things like this plate of asparagus,

the new fish tank,

the neighbor boy,

his favorite Wii game,

underneath the couch (took me a long time to figure out what I was looking at here),

and himself.

We love him to pieces.

This Girl...

...this silly girl...gave up naps this past week. It is actually going quite well even though she seems a bit young.

Recently, she got her very first hair cut,

complete with sparkles.

We love this crazy girl.

Hawaii

At the beginning of this month, Matt and I were lucky enough to get to spend a week in Hawaii to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary. The kids stayed home with grandparents. It was so wonderful. We knew they were in good hands and having fun and we enjoyed our alone time very much. I rediscovered how bad we are at relaxing on vacation. We always have to do and see as much as possible. Here's a recap of the week. We landed in Honolulu around noon on a Thursday. First, we took a nap in our hotel and then went to the beach, walked around Waikiki, had dinner, came back to the hotel, read a bit and went to sleep. The next morning we were at the moped rental shop by 8:30am and we rode to Pearl Harbor. We did all the museums there which took us about 6 hours.

Here is Matt at the Arizona Memorial with the Missouri in the background.

Here I am standing in front of the Missouri.

This is at the Air Museum. Matt's grandpa was the gunner in this type of plane. We also toured the Bowfin (a submarine) and a Maritime Museum.

On the way back to Waikiki, there was a little rain storm. We were riding mopeds and dressed in shorts and T-shirts. It was a bit uncomfortable but not cold. I kept thinking that at least I would end up with a good blog picture but half way back it cleared up and we were basically dry by the time we reached the hotel. In an effort to not waste our moped rental time, we changed clothes and then took off for Diamond Head Volcano (inactive). It was only a few miles from our hotel and the hike to the top is less than a mile, although part of it is very steep.

This was our view from the top of Diamond Head with Waikiki in the background.

The next day we didn't do too much in the morning because we had signed up to go SCUBA diving in the afternoon. We did two dives to about 40 feet and saw lots of tropical fish and a few eels, including a very large one that Matt found under the ledge of a reef. On the morning of our last day in Oahu we rented boogie boards and rode the waves. It was very fun. Then we layed on the beach for a bit.

These are the views that we had from our hotel window. Here is Diamond Head

and this is the eastern end of the Waikiki beach. Our next stop was Kona on the Big Island. We stayed at a lovely resort. This was the resort's private beach and the view from the outdoor restaurant where we ate breakfast every morning. We snorkeled in that bay twice and saw tons of tropical fish, a few eels and sea turtles that came within a few inches of us. It was beautiful.

This was our private hut (called a Hale on the island). There were no locks on the doors, no shades on the upper halves of the windows, ceiling fans but no A/C, no TV's or radios or clocks and we were not permitted to use cell phones or computers in the public areas of the resort. It was actually really nice.

Here is the view looking out from our porch.

Some local wildlife.

A friend on the outside wall of our hale.

One of the less exotic, but still very yummy, fruit plates we started off with each morning.

One day we went SCUBA diving with manta rays. I put those pictures on Facebook.

Our last full day we spent at the active volcano Kilauea.

Lava fields.

Lava coast.

Glowing lava in cauldron at night.

It was a great trip. Happy Anniversary to us!

Cute Stuff

The kids have been saying and doing a lot of funny things lately. Here's what's been cracking me up.

Claire called me Brenda all day today.

Joey this morning: "Dad, sometimes my undies get stuck in my bottom and I just pull them out."

When Matt goes to work we tell the kids that he is going to help sick people feel better or fix their owies. He has been having bad headaches the last few days and this morning Joey asked if Daddy was going to go to work to fix himself.

Grandma Nelson recently painted Claire's toenails with a glittery nail polish. Claire admires her "sparkle toes" often. Yesterday, the kids were coloring and the next thing I knew Claire announced that Joey wanted sparkle toes too and was that ok? I went into the room where they were to find them mid-way through coloring on their toenails with glittery crayons. I said yes.

Currently, in Claire's speech development, she is skipping all L, W and R sounds if they are in a consonant cluster at the beginning of a word. Therefore, she puts "kips" in her hair, her name is "Care", doesn't want to "skish" or "skeeze" the bugs, plays the "dums", etc. It cracks me up.

Here is Claire's version of "Jesus, Name Above All Names".

Jesus, name above oh knee
Bootiful Savior
Gwoh-wee-us Woh-oh-oh-ode
Emman-you Care (her name, no idea)
God is wiff us
Bwessed Weedeemer
Wiv in da Wode (live in the world)

For those of you who don't know the proper lyrics they are as follows:
Jesus, name above all names
Beautiful Savior
Glorious Lo-o-o-ord
Emmanuel
God is with us
Blessed Redeemer
Living Word