Under the Sea

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I sent this photo out to a few people today via postcard and I was gonna not post it here so they would be surprised. But I find this picture utterly adorable and I really wanted to show everyone my little cutie patootie. We got 4 sets of snorkels and googles since the girls had been expressing the desire to see the fish under the water. Of course we get to the ocean and do you think they put their heads underneath? No way. Do you know where the snorkels are at right now? In the bathtub toy box.

BTW, I’ve been sending out postcards by cardstore.com. They’re really amazing and easy to use. My one complaint, is when you find out Mother’s Day is in 3 days (not 10 days) and you’re really scrambling to do something since you’ve been running around like crazy, they do not let you have the option of changing the Mother’s Day cards to “We Love You Grandma.” And then you get multiple calls asking why it says, “We Love You Mom” with a picture of their grandkids/nieces/children of other people in your life. So the postcards were really “Hey thinks for being part of our life, sorry I forgot and I sent them out in a rush. If it makes you feel any better, I worked the night before and of on Mother’s Day.”

One Good Man

When Mormons starting making movies a decade or so ago they were really good. Then they started mass producing them when they realized the loyalty of the market base – making the majority of them really, really sucky. I haven’t seen a good LDS cinematic film in a few years. Steven and I watched One Good Man last night and I’ll tell you what, I loved it. It was just a good movie about a man trying to do the best he could. It’s market base is specifically the LDS population as a large portion of the dialect is written in Mormonise (the movie didn’t even try to explain stake presidents or the MTC or any of a number of different common place things in the LDS world). I’d also like to say the lighting and cinematography deserves a nodding at least, it was very well shot. Steven’s complaint was he didn’t like all the piano pieces in place of action or dialogue. I thought it was fine, but then I get into mushy drama movies where everyone starts crying and the music gets louder.

Busy Busy Busy

So much has gone on, I think I need to do bulletin style:

– We got a new car! Well a new to us car. We’ve been a 1 car family since I was pregnant with Felicity and I was over it. We’d been looking for about 3 months for something that would fit into our budget and life. My very first car was an itty bitty Ford Festiva and I have been in love with itty bitty cars since. So it was AWESOME when Steven found an itty bitty Chevy Metro for just the right price. We’ve had it now for a couple of weeks and I am in love again. I parked in this parking space that had a huge truck on either side with both of them having wheels on the line and I fit right in with plenty of room. Plus the gas mileage is amazing, it gets like 38miles to the gallon. I told Steven it was worth the gas money alone to switch out the Neon for another Metro.

– With school and work and 2 crazy children our house is never quite as clean as I would like it. And I suffer from sleep deprivation on a daily basis making losing a little bit more sleep to sweep up the number of messes pretty much impossible (not to say I don’t clean, just our house always looks “lived in”). I had also got a little tired of that, so we now have people coming to clean our house. I am not ashamed to admit that, it makes me that much more sane at the end of the day.

– This actually happened about a month ago, but I didn’t want to say anything since I didn’t want to jinx it… deep breath… SEPORAH IS POTTY TRAINED!!!! Holy Cow you have no idea how excited I am about this one. She had been completely pee potty trained for about 8 months, but she had NEVER gone poop in the potty and we had gotten in the routine of washing out underwear everyday (multiple times, as she poops 2-3 times a day). All the while praying and trying out every method I could think of, heard of or read with no results. Then there was a contract aide at work who had 10 children, surely she had an idea I hadn’t though of. Indeed I was right. One day, one day was all it took and she was potty trained. Now on to Felicity…

– I’m reasonably sure my children are in a diverse enough area they have no idea about skin color. Case in point: Felicity had a little Einstein’s ball and was pointing at Leo saying, “Quincy! Quincy!” Seporah looks over and says, “Not Quincy. He Leo. Leo has glasses.” LOL, That was his distinguishing physical factor? I would have said something along the lines of, “No, Leo’s white and Quincy’s black.” But what do I know?

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– I really am enjoying the Spring time Hawaii. April, May, and June are the most beautiful, just right weather months here.

Saturdays are fun with Mom

Märia had yesterday off which is pretty rare for a Saturday. It happened to coincide with the Baby Expo which happens every year down in Honolulu. It is something like a big carnival for expecting mothers. But they have things for children and mothers of children all the way up to 3 or 4. Seporah and Felicity both had lots of fun playing in the play area with me while Mom went and checked out all the baby/toddler stuff. They even had a bouncy house that the kids got to play in.

After the expo we went to the Hawaii Ice Palace to do some ice skating. We have lived here for 4 years and never been, so we thought it was about time. I keep forgetting that Märia never ice skated growing up. In my mind she is from Washington State, where they play hockey and get snow and live 2 hours from Canada where they play hockey and get snow. She had never skated before she met me and now has only been twice. I probably ice skated 20 times growing up, and roller skated more than I could hope to remember.

Anyway, it was lots of fun. Seporah wouldn’t let us help after maybe the first 5 minutes. She was convinced she could do it. And no matter how many times she fell down she kept getting up and was upset when we finally had to leave because it got late enough that they closed down the little kid area. Märia was utterly exhausted anyway as she had only had maybe 5.5 hours sleep after working the night before and had run all over the expo previously.

We all had lots of fun! Here are some vids for your enjoyment.

Seporah’s Face

As you can see I was completely at the wrong angle to take any good pictures of Seporah, but thought I’d put them up anyways just to show you her super cute expression. Kind of ironic part was I was like in the perfect spot to take pictures of another little guy in her class that I’m friends with his mommy. So I got like the most perfect picture of him doing the hula (but not my own daughter). Course I had to send it off to her.

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This one was before the performance when I came to tell her good luck. She was shocked that I was at her school (she is every time, you’d think she’d get use to it, but no). This is her asking, “You are here?”

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Some of Seporah’s classmates. They were all so adorable in their aloha wear and handmade leis. Her best friend is the one to her right. Seporah and Felicity adore her.

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Seporah’s teachers Mrs. VanTresse and Mrs. Nicole. Can you tell how super proud Seporah was?

Luau in a Box Because Cancer Sucks

Only about a million years ago, Kayla Yearsley was my Maid of Honor at our wedding in Washington. She is now Kayla Stoker with 3 little rugrats of her own living in Washington. She and her husband Jeff are doing a silent auction to raise money for cancer research. If you are of the very fortunate small percentage to not know this, let me tell you what, cancer friggin’ sucks monkey balls. And in a lot of ways the treatments are even worse than the disease itself. Yucky, yucky. So they are trying to collect baskets from all 50 states for this auction on June 18th for the Franklin County, Washington Relay for Life. I assumed I was the only person they knew in Hawaii, so that means I had better make them a Luau in a Box. Yeah for touristy stuff, hopefully it’ll help in a small way to help find better treatments for cancer.

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Please go here for additional details on the auction.

It should be illegal for finals week to coincide with Mother’s Day

I am pretty good about sending flowers and cards and all that jazz.  Really, I am.  But I never had to think about it during finals week, and lets just say my brain is fried right now, so Mom will have to forgive me and accept this poor post as a remembrance of her special day.  That’s what Mom’s are best at right?  Forgiving children’s indiscretions?

Mom will forever be linked with motel swimming pools, big rig trucks, IHOP/Pancake House/Denny’s style restaurants (still my favorite!) and hiking/tents/outdoors.  She took us (me and Jason) to Caprock Canyon once, a favorite destination that Dad took us to all the time.  Jason and I decided that we were old enough to climb Eagle’s Point (is that what it was called?) by ourselves.  So we scaled it.  It wasn’t easy, and more than once we nearly fell to our deaths.  Jason actually fell about 8-10 feet once, from one ledge to another, and had he rolled a bit it might have been nasty.  But we were boys being boys, a mother’s chagrin.  It didn’t dawn on us until we were back down that Mom could hear everything we said, because we were up high and there weren’t any trees or anything to dampen our voices as they carried down the mountain (mole hill she would have said).  She was totally scared at the bottom, but let us be free enough to try, and that was important for us and resulted in some great memories.

The person I call ‘Mom’ most now a days is our illustrious Märia who keeps me and Jason writing.  She is the best mom I could hope for for my two little girls.  They are the luckiest kids in the world, and it isn’t on my account (except in fooling Märia into marrying me and having them!).  She arranges awesome activities for them, and gets them out of the house to meet other little kids and such when I would raise them as hermits.  She remembers all the school functions and field trips and what they are supposed to wear and on which days.  She doesn’t kill them on days when any sane jury would totally acquit her on temporary insanity grounds.

A special shout out to Sarah.  It takes a special lady to volunteer as a mom.  We know it isn’t easy, but from what Jason tells me you guys are doing a great job!