Gardner Village

We went to Gardner Village with Nana for our tradition in October and did all sorts of fun things...swinging on a swing, making all sorts of crafts, getting balloons, getting faces painted, getting balloon toys made, seeing clowns, eating sugar cookies, candy and fudge. We also got a good look at the witches and had tons of fun. We love it there!

10 things I love about Hawaii (and a couple things I don't)

I am sure this will be a work in progress, but these are the first ones that come to my mind.

1. Having Spencer around all the time, (sorry, but nothing can beat that!)
2. The beauty all around. The mountains are breathtaking and all around us, the beaches and ocean are beautiful, the entire surrounding areas are green, almost all the bushes and trees have brightly colored flowers. Gorgeous!
3. Having friends and people we know already at church. The ward during sacrament was so reverent, the people so friendly, the lessons inspiring. "I know I'm gonna like it here!"
4. My house. It is so cute and convenient. I have a huge open floor-plan, tall ceilings, huge walk-in master closet, huge master bathroom, more kitchen cupboards than I know what to do with and it already feels like home, even with almost no furniture. (Pictures to come soon!)
5. The warm weather. It is so nice that my feet never feel cold and I don't need to take a hot bath to get the cold out of my bones.
6. Spencer loving his job. There's a lot to be said for having a job that pays well and you can enjoy doing.
7. Me just being able to be a mom right now. It's almost hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I am here and I have nothing else I need to be doing; no clients calling, no cleaning up from work, no trying to schedule meals and life around my work. I can actually start trying to have a hobby again!
8. Getting to go to the beach whenever we want!
9. The adventure of starting over somewhere new, where we can make our own new family traditions and become closer to one another.
10. The music. It is so great to hear new, different and beautiful music.

As a side-note, there are a few things we aren't too fond of.
1. Centipedes; Sienna was bitten on her hand our 3rd night here by a 6" centipede. They are very painful bites and the centipedes are almost impossible to kill.
2. Stores closing early. Everyone goes to bed really early and get up early. Most stores around here close by 7pm. I am hoping that this will help me learn to become more of a morning person and not such a night owl. So far it's working but I don't know how much of that is the time difference lingering.

I am so excited about our experiences so far and I am sure that we are going to love it here.

We're here!!!!

We arrived safely on the 28th if not soundly. It was a really hard time for me; I honestly thought I was going crazy for a little bit, but things are fine now. It was so great to see Spencer again and Madelyn now wants nothing to do with me. If I look at her, talk to her, or ask for a hug, she'll start crying "daddy, daddy" and run to Spencer. I think she was a little traumatized about him being gone so long. I will post pictures of our house soon, but things are really messy while we are organizing and trying to set up house. Hopefully the rest of our stuff comes soon. That's our update for now!

Small miracles and blessings

It's amazing how some small things can seem so big. We have a renter; they have paid their deposit and signed a lease contract (thanks to my darling Lyndsie. I seriously owe you big time!). What a relief! We could have paid the mortgage and rent there if we had to, but considering all the things we are going to need to buy when we get there, it is so nice to not have to. The contract is only 6 months, and month to month after, but at least if we have a gap between renters later, Spencer will be up to his full pay. He still has to pass his protocols, which will then bump him up a lot. We will have been able to get the things we need by then and he will be making enough so we won't be boiling beans for dinner. I still would rather have done that than stay here, without Spencer.

Things are slowly starting to sink in about leaving all the people who have become our world here. I am so immensely grateful for my life. I have been so blessed, much more than I ever deserve, with friends and people I love who have enriched and uplifted and blessed my life. I can never thank them (you) enough. Thank you so much for putting up with all my quirks and mistakes and flaws and letting me learn and grow and become better because I have been lucky enough to have known you all. I love very deeply, it's part of me for both good and bad, and I am heartbroken over the lack of contact I will have compared to now. I know that I will stay in contact with the many amazing friends I have, maybe almost better now because I won't be working myself to death, (although doing that was what kept me in contact. Hmmm, tricky there). I'll figure it out. But I'm saying thank you, even though it will never be enough. Thanks, for all of it!

13 days and counting!

I had a breakdown last week where I was considering buying Spencer a plane ticket for $1000 for just a few days here. After I came to my senses, I realized that is crazy and if we were going to be spending that much money we might as well be paying for our mortgage here and rent in Hawaii. The cheapest day to fly there in October just happens to be the 1st day of Spencer's next full week off. We bought tickets, flying to Lihue from LAX on the 28th. We decided that we will ship some furniture, but very very basics, like my bed, the girl's bed and dresser, my road bike, and golf clubs. The rest of boxes we'll ship through my brother-in-law who works for Fed Ex and can give us a discount. My dad is awesome and will help drive our U-haul down to California with me driving the Pilot. Since he has had some blood clot issues we'll just drive to Primm, which is a little outside of Vegas and stay there the night of the 24th and then drive to California the next day.

I'm frustrated right now because we thought we had a renter, we were just waiting to check out references and get a deposit, but they have been ignoring my calls so I'm sure that's not going to happen right now. We were actually getting a little excited because even though to rent we'll have to eat about $200 a month, at least we'll have the house still if we come back or maybe in a couple of years if we decide to stay we can sell it in a better real estate market. I was just looking forward to NOT having to pay both payments if we didn't have to. Well, hopefully someone will want to rent it fairly quickly. We can use any prayers you can give right now.

We found a place to rent in a nice neighborhood at a great price. It has tons of kids running around and 3 policemen in the neighborhood. That will help me sleep better at night in a new state when Spencer will be on calls. The owners actually asked if we would care if they left some furniture, like a kitchen table, nightstands, dressers. Since we are selling almost everything we own, that is amazing to not have to go out and replace it all right away. At least things have fallen in to place on that end. I just wanted to give an update and let everyone know how things are going. We have an end in sight to the time that we will have been separated as a family. It will have been 9 weeks by the time we get over there.

Madelyn

Mad had her 2nd birthday a little while ago, but we were waiting to celebrate until Spencer got home. Well, we decided that when Spencer got in, we would go to Disneyland instead of hanging around here, so her birthday was kind of celebrated in the Happiest Place on Earth. It's one of our happiest places for sure, although nothing come close to the peace of the temple.

I want to write down some of the adorable, funny and sweet things she does so I can remember some of them.

• she always and I mean ALWAYS puts her shoes on the RIGHT feet. We thought it was fluke at first so we started watching consistently and yep, she always know which foot to put the shoe on. What 2 year old does that? It's really funny.
• she loves to sing, and I am just now starting to make out what she is trying to say. Tonight I heard '"temple" so that was awesome. She will just walk around singing to herself.
• she loves to pull out Sienna's Barbies and play with them
• she calls any prettily dressed girl a princess, but she especially loves Cinderella.
• she is obsessed with books. She will just bring you any book she can find and expect to sit and read forever.
• She fell in love with Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland and loves anything with him or the other characters in it. The way she says all their names is adorable.
• she loves Sienna and Aidan so much. She tries to sleep with one of them every night, climbing up in their beds and pulling the covers up and sucking her thumb. Hoping I will let her stay, which I have occasionally done. She's getting so big.
• her weight was 30th percentile and her height was 20th percentile.
• she is obsessed with putting products in her hair, which I can't blame her for since she sees me doing it to other people's hair. She smeared A&D ointment all over her hair, which I think took about a week to finally wash out so it didn't look super greasy. She recently found a candle (which I swear was hard!) somehow softened it and smeared it all over her hair and face. Again, super greasy, the clarifying  shampoo hardly got anything out of it. So she is again running around with a greasy looking head. I promise I do wash my child's hair!
• she is obsessed with brushing her teeth. She loves it! She'll smile all cheesy at me and show me her teeth. She even lets me floss them. I know her Uncle Jeff, who is a Pediatric Dentist, would be so proud.

I might add to this as I think of other things.

Weird

How weird is this? Aidan refuses to eat pretty much anything for dinner besides fish sticks, chicken nuggets or pizza. It is seriously the worst time of day just dealing with the non-stop whining. Tonight I made chicken, with spinach and garlic over whole wheat spaghetti with a little parmesan cheese. I don't revolve my meals around him anymore since I am positive he won't like it. Cooked spinach? But what does he say? "Mama, this is delicious!" as he was slurping up noodles and eating the spinach. Crazy boy!

How weird am I? It's been very cold and was literally pouring rain this morning. But I LOVE this time of year. There is a smell in the air. I don't know how to describe it. I almost feel like there is a physical change in me that makes it fall and I adore it. I can soak in the crisp air, relish in the golden, rust and amber leaves. It makes me feel alive like no other time in the year. I took the kids out for a drive up the canyon and we did a little hiking to find a good spot to take a picture with all the colors while they are still up in the mountains. I loved it the whole time, and my kids were actually really good, despite hiking up a huge muddy bank, sliding all over and the fact that it was getting colder by the second. But now we're here, we had some hot cocoa and I am STILL freezing, even in knee high socks, flannel shirt with t shirt over and a huge thick BYU sweatshirt over that! I will miss my fall colors and the beautiful changes going on in the world more than I can ever explain in words, but I sure won't miss having to take baths to be able to warm myself up after being out in the cold. Pretty weird!

Mad's potty training

Little baby Mad had been going on the potty a lot for a while. It's not happening so much lately, probably because I am so busy and distracted. But she was doing awesome for a little while. We had to take some pictures of our big girl.

Aidan's 1st day of school

My darling baby boy started kindergarten. I can't believe how big he is getting. He is such a sweet, helpful boy. He truly is a joy to have around. I didn't think it would be as hard for me as it was; I was totally bawling. It is very quiet without him in the mornings, but he loves school and learning new things. He also has made some very good friends and loves hanging out with a bunch of other boys his age.

Ice cream cones

Spencer read something about how it's better to eat ice cream in a cone because you taste it more, so he decided we need cones from now on. Mad got her first one and was too adorable with it on her face. She is obsessed with them now. I love her.