happy 11 years to us!

Happy Anniversary to us!

11 years, 4 kids, 7 houses later, we are SO very blessed with our lot in life.  

There are many days I can't believe we have been together so long!  And there are other times when I can't even remember what it was like not to be together. 

Here's to many, many more years!

*but hopefully no more kids and no more houses!

 Dinner at Kenzo's in town.

The food was pretty good!  

Loud and not super fancy, but it's always so nice to get a way with just the two of us.

And because I am who I am, we hit up Kissaten for round 2 of dessert!

Love that this man knows how much I love to eat. :)

sakuma family christmas 2013

It has been such a wonderful Christmas season this year!  

The entire Sakuma family came together in Hawaii to celebrate this special season together and we sure made the most of our time together with our Seattle cousins.

It took a lot of effort on so many people's parts to make this happen and we are so very grateful that it all came together and we were able to have a most memorable Christmas with our whole family.

 We took Makoto and his family to the Kapiolani Community College Farmer's Market!

We love coming here and eating yummy food like homemade popsicles, sausages and fresh lemonade.  I think they enjoyed the treats as well!  

 Kahala beach park before church one Sunday.  No swimming...but a beautiful morning for a stroll along the beach!  

 Ah, one of the highlights of the season was a trip to the Christmas Lagoon at the PCC!

It was super crowded and we were a HUGE group...but we loved being together and hearing the stories and songs of Christmas on the canals inside the PCC!  

The kids simply LOVED being with ALL their cousins!!

 Our canoe group!  Amazingly, we all fit in ONE canoe!

 Christmas night...the kids made Christmas hats out of paper and stuck them to their foreheads.

...so weird...but cute at the same time!

 We LOVE Makoto's cooking! (and Makoto, too, of course!)

He made an INCREDIBLE sushi & karaage & tempura dinner for us! I feel bad that he did so much cooking while here...but we really did appreciate it!

My brother Makoto is seriously a fantastic chef!

 We are equally grateful that Airi has such a huge house to accommodate our large family group! 

No small feat with so many of us gathered together everyday!

 Christmas morning with our family.  No Christmas Tree in our tiny new home...but the kids were understanding.  

No need fancy trees and decorations when you have family.  

And presents. 

 Tide pooling at our favorite low-tide spot! 

 And our favorite Shave Ice joint: Waiolas!

Everyone agreed that this place is yummier than Matsumoto's!  

 I'm pretty sure ALL the kids LOVED having Uncle Makoto here!  

He was a hit with the little kids.

 Some more cousinly bonding time in front of the TV...and the iPads. 

The last night before Uncle Makoto and his family flew back home, the girls got to have a slumber party with their girl cousins.  We sure are going to miss having them around!!

There were a few tears shed, but I'm sure we will be seeing them soon when we fly up to Seattle for our annual visit!

 Our big family reunion!!

Wow, that's a lot of people!  

My Mom and Dad with their posterity.

Happiest of Christmases to you all!!

This Christmas will be pretty difficult to top...but hopefully we can find a way to get together like this every so often to remember how blessed we are to have such a big and happy family!

we bought a house!!!

The BEST news!!  

After only a couple of months of searching (and searching) we have found our (hopefully) forever home.  Okay, maybe not a forever home YET...but eventually!  

We are not in love with the house itself...but the LOCATION!  

The location of this house cannot be beat.  

We truly have my absolutely fabulous realtor brother, Atau, to thank for being able to buy this house.

The seller was flaky from the beginning, with an incompetent real estate agent, Atau had to do so much more work...but after several negotiations and some seriously crazy showings (the tenants didn't know were were coming!) we have closed on our second - and hopefully LAST - home!

We are in Honolulu, close to Diamond Head, and all the lovely beaches, jogging paths, and yummy food that we love so much.  

 Ta-da! 

Okay, truth be told, this house is U-G-L-Y.  And OLD!  

But we truly feel like we can spruce it up to make it comfortable for our little family...and hopefully one day, knock it all down and build our true dream home.

 But before all that, making it livable.

Here is Jolee helping to paint our home.

There is TOO MUCH blue in this house! Seriously, who paints their baseboards BLUE?! 

 While the kids are at school, Mitch and I (and Kaden) loaded several carloads of stuff and hauled it to our new home.

It's a miracle nothing toppled over onto him on the drive!

 Seriously-the car was stuffed from top to bottom, back to front.

Kaden was such a trooper and so very patient as we loaded and unloaded carload after carload.

 Just a couple of the before and after shots of 2 rooms.

It's amazing what a little paint and carpet can do to an old house!

And here we are.  Taking a stroll down our street for the very first time.

The kids are sad to leave their friends and cousins in Aiea...but are looking forward to their new lives in town!  Closer to the beach and closer to their other cousins!

Yay for happy new beginnings!

gobble gobble, thanksgiving 2013

I'm ashamed to admit that I've been sorely lacking in my picture taking lately.

This Thanksgiving has FLOWN by without my even realizing it!

Thanksgiving this year was pretty typical of our usual fare...albeit toned down a bit.

 Jolee made a turkey out a milk carton at school...and even made a leather headband with a feather to commemorate the Indians.  Not sure how politically correct those last two items are...but she loved that headband and wore it more than just once.

 Since I neglected to capture a picture of our turkey or food spread, I will simply show a couple (literally, a couple) of pictures of the kids eating their Thanksgiving food.

As I mentioned earlier, Thanksgiving this year was pretty sparse.

We didn't do anything fancy, didn't rent a beach house or invite a ton of friends...but simply got together with our family for a nice meal.

I am so very thankful for my family-immediate and extended.  

We don't get together as often as our kids would like, but every time we do, I am reminded of how blessed we are to live by so much family!  And that we all get along and our kids get to grow up with their cousins being their best friends.  These are things that I never got to experience as a child and hope my kids appreciate once they get older!

The love of family, of the Gospel, and good health and happiness are so much more important than any material thing we can buy at the store.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

halloween 2013

Halloween this year was a mellow affair.  Since selling our townhouse and moving into our rental in the ghettos of Lower Pearl City, added to the stress of trying to find a new home in our desired neighborhood (that we can actually afford), Halloween costumes and decorations have been the furthest thing from my mind!  

So, poor Seavey kids had to make due with whatever I could muster together in a very limited time frame.  But, then again, when all is said and done...it's really all about the candy anyway, right?  Right.

 We DID managed to carve our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch this week! Yay!

The quality of the carving may be a little lacking...but the kids each got to choose their own designs and Daddy graciously carved their desired jack-o-lanterns.  

And since we live in Hawaii, they were carved ON Halloween day...and will be thrown away the day AFTER Halloween to ensure we don't get bombarded with flies and roaches and any other pesky creatures we'd rather not invite onto our doorstep thankyouverymuch.

 Poor Kaden.  He totally got jipped on costumes this year, but since he is NOT one for extra clothing and random accessories, we kept it simple.  Mitch cut out a "steering wheel" out of cardboard and painted it black.  I drew on a little stubble (that smeared and just looked like a dirty face after 5 minutes) and we called him a truck driver.  I know, not my best work, but he was happy so we called it good.

 Anna and Jolee both wanted to be monarch butterflies.  

I bought these wings and fuzzy antennae off the internet, and dressed them up in all black and we were good to go.  Easy and simple!  Sure, I could have done better with some make up and or sparkles here and there...but I didn't.  

Please remember: We just moved.  And are living in the ghettos.  And frantically searching for a new home.  

Halloween costumes were number 99 on our list of important things to do.

 Kela was a cowgirl.  She actually kind of looks like a sheriff (probably because the costume package said sheriff on it!) and I had to FORCE her to wear that bandana scarf, but in the end, she was content to be a girl cowgirl/sheriff.  

 Kela with her cousins Hugo (Obiwan?) and Luke (Gohan).

Happiest of Halloweens to you all!

And hope you got just as much candy as we did.  Which was a lot.  

anna, our lavender dolphin

The great thing about AYSO soccer is...that they let anyone play!  Regardless of experience, skill, or whatever.  Everyone plays.

The bad thing about AYSO soccer is...that many times, this leads to unequal disbursement of experienced/skilled players.

This season was painful for Anna.  Excruciatingly painful.

Anna may not be a stand-out star soccer player, but since she's been playing for about 5 seasons now, she has developed some skill on the field.  She knows where the goals are, how to guard an opponent, and how to find the opportunity to shoot.

Out of the 8 players on her team this season, I'd say less than half of them were equal to Anna's skill level.  A couple were above, but most were below.  Far, far below.

While Jolee's team didn't really know better...Anna did.  

She felt it.   And saw it in the score card at the end of the game.

One painful game, Anna scored 4 goals all on her own.  Her team still lost because only one other player managed to score a single goal.  They lost by 1 point.

Like I said...painful and frustrating.

But if this taught Anna (and us parents) anything, it was that life isn't always fair....but we still try our best and work hard.  And we still get rewarded with frozen yogurt for our efforts.  :)

Here are a couple of pictures from Anna's final game since I can't seem to find any from the other games.  

 Anna with her coach, Christian.  Who was a TROOPER and worked super hard with these girls  And the girls really did try their best.  It was just unfortunate that so many other teams had really tough players.  Not to mention the fact that our girls were almost all 6-7 years old (younger than most other U-8 teams).  Okay, no more grumbling!

Regardless of their track record, we were super proud of our Anna for always trying her best and giving it her ALL every Saturday on that field! 

Good Job, Anna!

jojo's first (and quite possibly, only) soccer season

On a whim, we decided to enroll Jolee into soccer for the Fall season.  She entered at the U-6 level, even though she's only 5 years old.  I still don't quite understand the way AYSO distributes their players...seems a bit lopsided and unfair for most teams, but that's just my opinion.

Anyway, Jojo seems to enjoy playing soccer!  

She also enjoys playing with her friends, skipping across the field, and picking flowers by her feet during practice and even the games as well. *sigh*

That being said, by some miracle, she managed to score several goals throughout the season!

And per our usual bribe agreement, when a child scores a goal in soccer, we all get to celebrate with some frozen yogurt.  Here she is enjoying one of the fruits of her labors.

 Honestly, it is mostly Anna's efforts that allow us to indulge in some post-soccer fro-yo...but when it's Jolee's turn, it always tastes a little sweeter.

She isn't the strongest (or tallest. or fastest. or most skilled. etc.) but she does try hard and seeing her hustle down the field with her tiny little legs, we can't help but feel proud of our little Jojo.

Here's some pics throughout the short season.

 And then all too soon, the season was over.

Here she is with her 2 coaches.  They were super nice and patient with these 5 girls.  Some of whom had never played soccer before (cough, Jolee, cough).  The girls always tried really hard, but ended up with a pretty sad score card (I think they won 1 game?) But despite their struggles, Jolee seemed to have fun and was more happy with their daily treats and the goodie bags and trophy at the end of the season. 

 Oh well. "A" for effort!

waimanalo pumpkin patch

It's Fall. 

And that means we need to get our pumpkins ready for Halloween.

This year, we decided to try something different and hit up the Waimanalo Pumpkin Patch (instead of the HUGE and DUSTY one in Kapolei).  The cute thing about this farm is that it is small, family owned and operated, and relatively clean.  Did I mention it is small?  And that means less walking for me.  Which is a HUGE deal when dealing with 4 kids (plus many, many cousins) without the Daddys.

 Here's the gang in front of the cows and goats and pigs.

See? Baby pigs!

 ....AND another picture in the kids play area enclosure.  

Everything was cute and tidy...

 Except for this huge tractor that the kids were climbing on.  After we took these pictures, Kaden wanted to sit up on the tractor seat like all the other boys.  And then proceeded to cut his heel on the rusted floor of the tractor!  I spent the rest of the day freaking out about tetanus and lockjaw ( I kid you not.  I was pretty freaked out!)   Not to mention Kaden was super unhappy the rest of the day.  boo.

 BUT to make up for all that mess...this cow train ride was a BLAST!  The kids LOVED it and kept riding it over and over again. 

The great thing about this small farm was that since it wasn't super crowded...they got to go back and ride it again and again!  Seriously-they could have ridden it all day long if we let them.  

But we didn't.  

We had to ride the dusty hayride.  Which wasn't really a hayride at all. It was a huge tractor trailer with slatted seats that we all crammed into while farm owner's son played his very own gospel/country/folk song CD.  

Which we did NOT buy at the gift shop on our way out, much to his chagrin, I'm sure.  

 After riding the train and tractor, it was time to pick a pumpkin.  And since this farm is so tiny, we didn't even have to walk far to find the perfect one!

 Kaden had to limp across the field, but he eventually found his perfect pumpkin. 

 And before heading home, we had to ride the cow train one last time....

 ...and bought a yummy souvenir to take with us. 

(p.s. Kaden did NOT get tetanus or lockjaw from his nasty cut from the rusty tractor, Thank goodness.)