creative writing

All our kids love to draw.

Or, doodle.

Or, whatever it is you call it when kids scribble aimlessly on sheet after sheet after sheet of paper...

(believe me, I have the paper bills -not to mention lack of fridge space - to prove it!)

But, can I just say...

My 3 year-old is a GENIUS!

I mean, look at that penmanship!

And her rendition of Mitch is quite uncanny, if I do say so myself!

da beach

Last weekend was a 4-day weekend for Kela.

How you ask? With our "Furlough Friday" landing in conjunction with Martin Luther King Jr. day...we had to wrack our brains for ideas on how to entertain the kids over such a long break~!

Ok. That's not all that true.

I mean, with this gorgeous weather...what else IS there to do?

We headed out to Ala Moana beach for the day on Saturday.

And stayed ALL DAY!

Way too long, if measured by the nice sunburn I acquired on my shoulders and back, thank you very much!

We met up with all the little cousins...

Baby Justus (hope you don't mind this pic, Elika...) didn't like the water that much. I think it was a bit too cold for his taste.
I mean, it IS winter and all!


See? Much happier in the shade of Aunty Airi.
Boy, he's white, though!
Someone needs some vitamin D exposure!

Ahh...to enjoy weather like this in the dead of winter is truly why we LOVE living in Hawaii!!


For more pics of the day...check out here.

why we had kids...

Ok...so "slave labor" isnt' the ONLY reason we procreated.

But still--one can't deny the benefits!

how many fingers am i holding up?

For the past 3 months or so...I've been suffering with (and yes, I truly am suffering!) blurred vision.

If any of you happened to have been in a car I was driving...I apologize, rather belatedly...

So, anyway, I've had probably around 5 or 6 appointments with the optometrist trying to figure out how to get rid of this really annoying condition (and believe me, it's REALLY annoying!)

Finally, after repeated visits and continued use of eye drops, and daily eye-washing...I have a diagnosis.

Thygeson's SPK.

Basically...I have an inflamed cornea with lesions on the surface that have blurred my vision and have made my eyes sensitive in the sunlight.

The kicker? There's no cure.

And treatment is to stay off contacts lenses, use rewetting drops, and wait till it goes into remission. Because it never fully goes away.

LAME-O!

The good news is... I can still probably get LASIK surgery once it goes into remission. I'll just have to wait a while. Like, maybe even a year or longer. And even then, it all depends on the doc. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get the OK since I'm going to one unhappy camper if I have to live with glasses for the rest of my life!

Do you know how inconvenient glasses are when living in Hawaii?

It's sunny like, 360 days out of the year!

Maybe I should invest in some prescription sunglasses...

*sigh*

christmas, new years, and beyond

This year, with more than half my family out of town for the Holidays, we had a quiet (VERY quiet) Christmas Season.

And as much as I LOVE my family and getting together with all 18 of them (that are here in Hawaii, that is), this year's smaller fare proved just as festive and Christmas-y!

(Which, here in sunny Hawaii...isn't all that Jingle Bells-esque...but you get the idea)

So, as always, there's TONS of photos (since I've put off blogging for so long yet again. Sorry for that). And if I had taken the time to digiscrap the photos, there wouldn't be SO much to scroll through. Sorry for that as well.

ANYHOO-here goes!

Our sad, sad, sad little tree that the girls decorated themselves (can you tell?) and that Jolee proceeded to de-trim on a daily basis.

So, this is what remained on Christmas day.
Christmas morn...

Christmas evening.
We drove up to Hau'ula to have dinner with my sister Elika and her family.
With such a small crowd, we decided to splurge!
Sushi, lettuce wraps, fried won tons, and egg flower soup.
Sort of a quasi-Japanese/Chinese menu.
We didn't care. It was delish!


Then, New Year's was at our friend, the Panis's (I can't remember if I'm supposed to add that final "s" after the apostrophe...?)
Anyway, after some YUMMY (and I mean REALLY GOOD) barbecue kalbi and chicken, we had some fun with sparklers.
Here's Kela...



And here's Anna...

And Jolee & me...
Can you see how tired JoJo looks?

On a side note, we headed home at around 10 ish and by 11 o'clock, EVERYONE was asleep except for me.

So, I rang in 2010 all by myself.

In a quiet house.

With the LOUD Chinese firecrackers popping outside for like 45 minutes.

And no one woke up!

It was a good New Years!

Then, three days after ringing in 2010, we flew out to Arizona to re-live Christmas with the Seavey's.

Here's Jolee with the digiplayer that the Hawaiian flight attendants graciously let us use for free. Yay!

And with Jolee on the brink of a little cold, we were nervous about the flight over...and rightfully so!

She cried and cried for the first 45 minutes or so of the flight. Silly me, apparently, all she wanted was Mitch since as soon as I handed her off to him, she quieted down! Grrr...
(I should have known, since ALL of my girls become "anti-mommy/pro-daddy" girls as soon as I wean them. Seriously.)

So, here's the REAL Christmas set-up in Arizona at Grandma and Grandpa's house. (and I say "real" figuratively, since it IS a fake tree and all...)

And you can't really see it, but there's TONS of presents all around the tree.

As in, "puts our tiny tree at home to shame," amount of presents.

Jolee with her new penguin/blanket that I think all the girls got.

Grandma and Grandpa with ALL the Seavey grand kids.

All together for the first time in 6 1/2 years!

(well, okay that's sort of not true...since 6 1/2 years ago, NONE of these kids were born yet, but I'm talking about Mitch and his siblings all being together, and...you get the idea.)

And just like with Kela...Jolee seemed to take a liking to Uncle Brian from the get-go! She wouldn't let anyone else touch her, but I suppose seeing the similarity with her daddy was the ticket to success!

She let Uncle Brian hold her quite a lot!

Hooray!

(now only if we could get that kind of result at nursery...)

Anna enjoying her ice cream dessert at the Chinese buffet restaurant that we HAVE to go to every time we visit Arizona.

Seriously. It's a Seavey tradition.

Kela with her cousin Kai at the park.

Another Seavey tradition when we visit.

Daily visits to the park. No matter how cold!

And believe me, when the sun went down, it was COLD!

(okay, at least it was for us...)

Kela with her cousin Brighton.

This was one of, like, 30 photos of the two of them.

Seriously, Brighton LOVES posing for pictures.

And then checking himself out on the LCD screen.

Repeated over and over and over again...

And since Kela's the "ham" in our family...I think they got along fabulously!

Brighton and Jolee.

She wasn't as thrilled to share the cruiser car with him as Kela was.

This scene only lasted through 3 pictures...

And of course, no trip to Arizona is complete without a trip to Trader Joe's.

This day, they handed out balloons and cookies to all the kids!

Yay!

Add to that the cute little kid's shopping carts, and who needs Disneyland, eh?

And it's just as crowded as Disneyland, too!

Seriously! Have you ever noticed how crowded Trader Joe's is?

What's up with that, anyway?
Oh, that's right. The store is AWESOME, that's why!

And finally...the last of the Seavey traditions...

a trip out to Saguaro Lake.
Which is beautiful, but sort of freaks me out at the same time since the docks have NO railings.

I swear, one of these days, someone is going to fall into the lake while we're there...mark my words!

Feeding the ducks.

See plenty of potential for kids going overboard?

I do.

Jolee eating the bread that's supposed to go to the ducks.

The kids and Grandma and Grandpa.

Doesn't this picture make you nervous, too?

I mean, what's stopping them from falling in, I ask you?!

Us.

Notice the "sumo-grip" Mitch has on the girls?

It was a fun, but short 4 days...filled with family, friends, and yummy food!

(I'm thinking of starting a petition to bring In-N-Out burger and Trader Joe's to Hawaii. Who's with me?)