Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Pickin a pumpkin

We decided to head to the Waimanalo Country Farms pumpkin patch Saturday to get out pumpkins. Going to the pumpkin patch has been one of our favorite traditions and even though we moved I wanted to keep that one. So I did a little searching and found one. The problem is that it is an hour away but we didn't have anything else going so we decided to give it a go
 The fields were lets say a little different than we are used to but the kids were still able to find their perfect pumpkins
 If we had known what we know now we probably would have steered them towards smaller ones.....
 Bailee found hers pretty quick, not to hard when they are just pretty much in a row laying in a large field
Kenadee and her find
Not to many people have this kind of a view when out picking pumpkins. It was beautiful and my camera doesn't do it justice. The leaves on some of the trees were actually changing colors-we didn't think that we would get to see that this year
 Jake found his pumpkin but he couldn't quite lift it so Curtis and Kenadee went down to help him
 Just a few pictures of Curtis kind of struggling to help his brother-it is his face that gets me, but he didn't want any help!!
 Love his face in this picture
 It took us much longer to get to the pumpkin patch than it did to actually pick our pumpkins....next year maybe we will just get them at the grocery store. So here is the gang with the beautiful backdrop of the Ko'olau mountain range
 I had them turn around because if you look close past the trees.....yep that is the ocean. 
 We had to park quite a ways away from the car so it was a little difficult to carry the pumpkins back. The boys didn't make it very far so Jon had to carry theirs, the girls made it work for them. Kenadee almost made it to the car and then I carried it the rest of the way
 What a bunch of tough little chickas
 More pictures to come of the carving.......ENJOY!!!

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

tsunami anyone????

Well this is how we ended up Saturday night October 27, 2012!! Now I'll tell a little bit about how this all came about......

It all started out like a normal day, it's the Saturday before Halloween and we haven't been to the pumpkin patch yet to pick the perfect pumpkin (more about that in other post-to many pictures) later that night Turtle Bay Resort was holding a halloween party so we decided to head over there and see what it was all about, well truth be told it was pretty lame so we decided to walk down to the beach to see the huge waves that have been around for the last couple of days
 Bailee already had walked down to the water, you can't keep that girl away! 
 The waves would come crashing up onto the shore and the kids would go running from the waves, Jake kept saying the waves were to fast and ended up all wet-but anyone that knows Jake knows that probably wasn't true

On our way home from the beach, we stopped at the store to get milk and some last minute thing to make Sunday dinner. We get home around 7pm and that is when things took a turn-around 7:15pm on the TV came one of those national alerts that they always say if this was a real emergency, well this one really was, but at the time the sirens weren't going off so we thought maybe it was just an advisory and they would keep us posted. Not so....15 minutes later that is when the first siren went off. That is when we realized that we were NOT prepared at all-our neighbors came and said that we needed to evacuate and that is when the kids started to well freak out-we had tears, some jumping up and down (jake thought it was exciting) and Jon and I trying not to freak out as well. We hurried and emptied out the back of the van to make a bed, because well we didn't know how long we would be away from home, threw some food and water in a cooler, grabbed pillows and blankets and headed to high ground. Turns out we learned a few things: 1-I never understood how important 72 hour kits really were until now, 2-If I keep my cool it helps keep the kids calm 3-being prepared really does give you that peace of mind in an emergency (which I didn't have THIS time) and 4-turns out they aren't as scary as we all thought, it was more of a party at the church.

We arrived at the church around 7:45-8pm and we just hung out at the church trying to get some sleep and around 1am we were givin the all clear to head home. We didn't know the exact protocol for church the next morning but because it was our primary program we got the kids up and went to church at 8am and the kids did great-tired but great!!

Friday, October 26, 2012

Catching back up.....

Well we finally made it to our first day of school, it only took about 3 weeks and then we finally got enrolled in the school we didn't want but that has ended up being the best place for the kids to be. If that makes any sense at all!! Our year round attire.....


  This little man really struggled the first week of school-he bawled and I don't just mean a few little tears he was clinging to me and his teacher (who I just love, and happens to be the Stake Primary President) would come and get him out of my arms and take him in. I would talk to her after school and he would cry for about the first 5-10 minutes and then be fine, but he did that everyday for a full week and then all of a sudden he was fine going and now the older 3 take turns taking him and picking him up from class

Just one of the many beautiful views of where we live
 Across the street is of course the beach but a little farther up the beach is a little park so one Sunday afternoon we walked over to play FLYS UP, the kids love to play and if wears them out after so I love it


 I went to our relief society service auction and won these HUGE bananas, the picture does NOT do these bananas justice because they are 3-4 times the size of "normal" bananas
 So I put some "normal" bananas on top to see if it would show just how big they are-pictures still don't show the size
 I cannot say that I have ever seen this is Utah but I was driving home from SAMS and the traffic was really slow so I went to pass and this is what I came upon 4 tanks driving on the freeway, but that is not the thing that was the strangest thing........
 I don't know if you can see what it says on the back of the tank but take a close look......it says STUDENT DRIVER!!
 Well we don't do a whole lot but when we do we usually end up at the beach, here is Curtis trying to surf on his boogie board. He was starting to get the hang of it
 Curtis is surfing and Bailee is playing in the dirt....if she doesn't have paper she improvises with well dirt
 I call this one the goldfish cracker
 and the happy smiling whale
WE have come across a lot of "wildlife" around our house, well this guy about gave me a hard attack one night. I went out to get the laundry off the line and this "ran" in front of me-so I turned on the lights and this frog starting hopping away from me.
 Curtis is the only one we could convince to give it a kiss to see if it would turn into a prince"cess" in Curtis's case. In case you were wondering nothing happened ;-(
Kenadee is the first one that got to celebrate her birthday in Hawaii-

Went into Haleiwa to get our most FAVORITE place to get some shave ice-you haven't had good shave ice until you are in Hawaii, I don't know what they do but it just is amazing, like a little slice of heaven in your mouth
They are so smart also-you have the little ice cream cup, but because their shave ice is so big they have these cups that you put your snow cone in and then it doesn't drip all over ya-genius
Everyone got their own except for Jake-he had to share with me
Kenadee got to choose dinner and she chose Dominos Pizza for dinner so we did dinner and then she fianally got to open up her presents. She got lots of great stuff from grandparents and well of course from Jon and I to
She is into these little fijit friends, I don't quite understand them but she likes them so at least she is happy
6lbs of gummy bears is a little much but she really loves these and she is such a sweet heart that she shares them with the rest of us
We didn't do the "traditional" cake because well she doesn't like cake and we didn't have enough freezer room to do an ice cream cake like she wanted so she agreed that I could make her some brownies so that is what we did.

The Polynesian Culture Center (PCC) does what is called the Haunted Lagoon for Halloween so after dinner we headed on over to go check it out. I was a little nervous about it because all I knew about it was that you go on the canoe ride, like you do to visit each of the "islands" so I really thought it was going to be kind of lame-but boy was I WRONG!! It was really good, while you are standing in line they have a movie playing of the Laie Lady that haunts the place looking for her son and while you are going thru the line, they made this 3D haunted house before the canoe right and then the canoe ride was great. It was a haunted house, on a canoe with people in the water scaring you, things jumping out at ya and the story of the Laie lady played out with people and such.


The GANG at the HAUNTED LAGOON-I had Jon buy this picture just to prove that I really am around......



Well that ends the birthday CeleBraTionS...now onto the ward trunk or treat at the church. Pictures of the girls in their costumes coming later!! At the church they did chili rice bowl (which is actually really good) games for the kids and then trick or treating. Now a Utah trunk or treat (one that we actually went to) is LAME-sorry but here people go all out with lights and decorations and music. For example one car looked like a shark had eaten a guy on a surf board, another car looked like a graveyard and others had lights and smoke coming out the back. It was really cool, and I don't mean temperature wise!!