Green Eggs and Ham

For the past couple of weeks, Adam's class has been practicing doing 'Green Eggs and Ham' by Dr. Suess. On Friday, they had their big debut. It really was cute. Adam's line was 'I do not like them Sam I Am'. Since that comes up several times in the story, he gets to say it several times. He did a great job, all the kids did. There was an outside dramatic arts program that came in and worked with the kids. One of their big goals was to get the kids to step out of their comfort zone and get past their fear. So none of the kids looked scared or talked soft when they got up, so the people must have done a good job with them.

Like a good mom, I took a video:

Yes, MIA again

I really, really don't know where time goes some months. Here it is, more than a month from my last post. Well I got a new computer, so that ate up some of my time getting things transferred and everything set up just the way I like it. I have no idea what I did for the 3 weeks before that. Let see...

I did a parent-child preschool class with Cole during winter quarter. He had a really good time being in a classroom with other kids. Part of the program was a field trip and we went to a watercress farm. It was really interesting. Watercress is a salad-type green that grows in (surprise, surprise) water. It has an interesting flavor, it kind of reminds me of radishes. It is tasty stuff, fairly popular around here. Anyways, on the tour we got to see how they grow and harvest the watercress and got a bunch at the end to take home.

Adam really wanted to go to the Children's Discovery center, so one Furlough Friday we headed down there. We spent four full hours there and I'm sure they would have stayed longer but the place was closing. Below are Adam and Cole doing winter - Hawaii style (sledding and ice fishing).

They had tons of dress-up, role play areas for the kids. Here is Adam passing judgement on Cole (I'm sure the verdict was guilty...)
And here are my two little news anchors
They had a ship that you could raise and lower the flags on, load and unload cargo with a working hoist, ring the bell, it was great fun for them.
Adam enjoyed the Japan theme area

We've been keeping plenty busy,I'll certainly try to update more soon!

What happened!?

So I am SERIOUSLY delinquent on updating the blog. Life happens. And I don't always have time to blog about it!

Let's see, what has gone on since I last posted... Thanksgiving... we had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with our friends in the neighborhood. It was a great meal and we didn't have to eat turkey for a week straight since we split up the leftovers.

December was the busy month. Barb and Steve came to visit. We had a good time being tourists with them. I think we showed them a good time around the island, and I'm sure we thawed them out a little from their Colorado winter. I have a ton of great pictures, here are some of them:

Pics from Barb & Steve's visit

Then about a week after their visit we left for a vacation on the Big Island of Hawaii. I had a really good time on that trip. We stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa which had fabulous pools and an ocean fed lagoon where you could snorkel with turtles and fish. We took some road trips from the Hilton and spent a couple of days just enjoying the resort. The hotel was so huge that they had a tram and a boat to take from one end of the place to another. So the boys loved it (do you want to take the train or the boat back to the room??).

After a few days on the Kailua-Kona side of the island, we drove around the south end of the island over to the Hilo side. We saw the volcano national park, which was really impressive. I could have spent a few days hiking there if we didn't have a couple of small kids with us :) But we had a good time exploring what we could that was not too far from the road. We drove down to see the ocean entry point for the active lava flow. We hiked about 0.75 mi across a lava bed to the edge where we could see the lava entering the ocean (quite a distance away). As the sun set, you could see the orange glow of the lava. After the volcano we spent one night in Hilo and then flew out the next morning. We came back a couple of days before Christmas. Here are the photos from our Big Island vacation..

Big Island photos

For Christmas we were supposed to get together with friends again, but their son came down with strep throat and so we were on our own for Christmas dinner. I went out to try to find a chicken to roast for dinner but ended up with turkey. I picked a small one so we wouldn't have to eat turkey and turkey and turkey. We had a nice day at home.

We had a typical New Year's at our house. I went to bed early :) Then I got up to watch the neighborhood fireworks at midnight. It wasn't as bad as last year, it was breezy so the smoke didn't build up so much. I happened to find this video on YouTube of a New Year's video in Kunia (the neighborhood we live in) from this year. Skip to about 2:45 into the video to see what folks here do for New Year's....

Click here and skip ahead to 2:45min

You can see the 10ft strings of firecrackers they set off and the huge aerials that people light off. Remember these are all RESIDENTS lighting these off. And the aerials can be seen in every direction... People have money to burn, literally!!

Well Happy New Year everyone and I'll try to update the blog a little more frequently...

Ohana Fun Fair

We went to the school's fundraiser fair tonight, the Ohana (family) fun fair. They had a big inflated slide and bounce houses along with some rides. There were a bunch of games that the kids could play too and win little prizes. The kids both had a good time. Cole surprised me though, there was one ride there that had a really long line. Adam didn't want to wait in the line but Cole decided that he wanted to ride that ride. He stood in line with me and waited patiently for probably a half an hour. He never complained once or even asked when it would be our turn. When we first got in the back of the line I even tried to talk him out of it, but he wanted to ride THAT RIDE. So I waited in that line with him the whole time. I had planned on riding with him, but the lady running the ride said most adults are pretty squashed in there, so I grabbed Adam and he got to ride with Cole. He had the biggest grin on his face the WHOLE time.

Halloween

Here we are, getting ready for the big candy event of the year...
We met up with two other families and headed out around the neighborhood in search of sugar.
They were all so cute and they really had a good time going door to door and walking the neighborhood seeing all the other kids dressed up.
Now what do we do with all this candy? They each filled a gallon ziploc bag when we got home. I've found a few prize pieces in their bags (Andes orange chocolates, among others, Mmmm). It's all downhill from here calorie-wise. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. That's why we all make new year's resolutions!!

Dinosaurs and monsters

Since Adam was off school (again!) we went to the Bishop museum to see the Dinosaurs exhibit. It was a lot like the exhibit that we saw back in St. Louis before we moved. There were lots of animatronic dinosaurs along with some smaller fossilized pieces. Adam thought it was great, but Cole was not quite so sure. Some of them he would check out and others he gave this suspicious look at or ran away. There were quite a lot of moving, roaring dinosaurs in one section, so he was a little freaked out.

Then today we went to the MOMS Club Halloween party, so I dressed up the little monsters for the party (ok, so they were a skeleton and a robot, and they didn't act too monstrous today). But Adam managed to find something to be mad about even on his way to the party, and thus the grumpy picture. Oh well.
Now on to the real candy-fest tomorrow - - Halloween! We're heading out to trick-or-treat the neighborhood with friends. It should be a good time.

It's almost Halloween!

I got some things on clearance after halloween last year, so we spooked the place up a little bit for Halloween this year. MOMS Club took a trip to the pumpkin farm to get our pumpkins for the year too. And some cute pumpkin pictures!!
Mom's little pumpkin :)
Little strongman...
This pumpkin that he picked out just happened to be rotten inside when we went to carve it. Eeewww. Good thing we got two pumpkins.

Trip to MN

My blogging is so far behind now it is pitiful. Taking over the MOMS club presidency has taken a lot of time and energy. I think I've got a handle on things but it still just takes a chunk of time each week.

So I'm finally blogging about the trip we took in early October. Well, at least october isn't over yet before I post. The weather was nice when we first got there but then they were predicting a freeze, so grandpa, grandma and the boys went up to pick all the tomatoes off the plants. Since it was such a cool summer there were still tons of green tomatoes there.
I took the boys on a little hike up the hill behind the house and they had a really good time just walking through the woods and exploring. Something they don't get much of a chance to do anywhere else.

We went out on the Friday we were there to see Split Rock Lighthouse. The boys had never seen it and it had been years since I had been there. And the weather was absolutely beautiful that day. Here's a view of Lake Superior, it certainly is gorgeous scenery (and this comes from someone living in Hawaii!).


The next day was Katie and Josh's wedding. It was a very nice ceremony and they had the old union hall all decked out for the reception. It looked great! It was FREEZING this day and really windy though!
Dan and I at the reception
Mom & Dad at Katie's reception
All the siblings together...
It was nice to have everyone together to catch up and see what's new. Here is Cole below with cousin Laura.We had a nice relaxing visit, but since it was so cold at the end of our visit, it was nice to come back home to warm up!

Now we'll see if I can make some progress catching up on some more blogging!

Honolulu Century Ride 2009

A little late, but here's the ride report for the Honolulu Century Ride we did at the end of September. It was an early start, I think we left the house at 4:30 or some very early hour like that to drive downtown. We met up with the Hawaii On Tandems group and we headed out at 5:50am, a little before the mass start. It was still dark heading out:
We had a little rain early on in the ride, but we didn't get too wet. It cleared up quickly to a rather nice day. It was kind of crazy windy early on in the day, we were riding into it for portions of the ride out. Somehow I don't remember having a tailwind on the way back though...
The scenery was spectacular as always. Looking out over Manana island in the morning sun:
Everyone got to the first rest stop at Sandy beach in good spirits. We had a few snacks and generated a lot of interest on the triple. A couple from India stopped us to take our picture there, his wife stood by us and grabbed onto my arm like we were old buddies.

We hit every rest stop along the way to make sure everyone was happy. They had oranges, pretzels, sports drink and bananas at pretty much all the stops. The kids filled up on LOTS of oranges. More comments and pictures at the second rest stop. At least we got someone to take our picture with my camera:

Here we are at the rest stop that is the 75 mile turnaround. Everyone still in good spirits and there really has been no whining up to this point.
We found a nice little playground park tucked in amidst some condos. The kids really had a good time on the equipment they had here since it was different from the rest of the playgrounds around.

We did 75 miles and the kids did absolutely great. Nobody complained and I didn't even break out the bribery snacks (suckers and fruit snacks) until literally the last few miles of the ride. Adam chatted away the entire ride and sang the entire repertoire of songs he has learned in Kindergarten (over and over). We met the goal I was shooting for and so I was very happy with the ride. I was a little disappointed in the pictures that the ride photographer took, but he got great shots of us last year.
Now maybe soon I'll catch up on some more blogging!

Where has the time gone?

It's been quite a while since I've posted again. I just don't know where all my time goes sometimes. We've been pretty much into the school routine during the week and biking on the weekends trying to be ready for the Honolulu Century ride next weekend.

Here's a few random pictures I've taken during the month. The one on the right is the new building Dan has been putting up, he took us out to the farm to see the changes last weekend.This weekend we did a morning ride and then after lunch and shower we headed out to the airshow at Hickam Air Force Base. The traffic heading into base was pretty heavy and they parked us in a HUGE lot (it was actually an airfield just outside the hangar area). We took a shuttle over to the show and I think Cole thought that was the best part (we walked back to the truck at the end instead of taking the shuttle and when I asked him how he liked the show he said 'I wanted to ride the bus again').

Cole on the bus

We made it there and looked around at a couple of planes before the Thunderbirds show started. A lot of the planes were open to go inside and look at.

The Thunderbirds took off a short time later and I really enjoyed the show. Adam lost interest after a while and Cole was a little tired. But at least at the start they seemed to enjoy it even though some of the passes the planes made were very loud.
The cargo planes they had open to visitors were enormous, they made the airliner planes there look really small.


I liked this hangar on the way out- so this is what you do when the plane won't fit...
Cole was 'helping' me tonight when he was supposed to be in bed so I took his picture in his new jammies. He's got new pajamas and guess what he's going to be for Halloween. Double duty jams.

It's been a long day so I will be off to bed now.