our "wiggly" dancer

This is our Anna. She loves The Wiggles.

And loves to dance with them.
I find it HILARIOUS.

all we "wanted" for christmas was...

...you know.

3 months late, but it's all good.

f.h.e

I apologize for the random post...

it's been a busy, but (sort of) uneventful week.

Good time for another "foodie" post, I think.

Tonight for our Family Home Evening activity, we headed out to our favorite ramen place. Right in Waikiki, this is is Tenkaippin. I always get the Kotteri style ramen.

Sooo good!

In my opinion, the BEST ramen on Oahu.

Quite possibly, the BEST ramen EVER!

And, since I cleaned my bowl of ramen, we headed out to Magic Island to run/jog off all the calories from the aforementioned ramen.

my (new) "happy place"

Ladies and gentlemen...we have arrived!

someone forgot to tell seattle...

that winter is supposed to be over! Whatever happened to Spring?!

Mitch had his bi-annual training up in Seattle, so we all decided to tag along!

Despite having to fly on separate flights (Mitch took Kela while I flew later that day with Anna and Jolee), the trip was short and super cold, but packed with lots of good fun!

The weekend before our arrival, it apparently snowed! In March! For Seattle, this definitely counts for an abnormally "white" winter season!

And despite being tired from all the travel and jet-lag, the girls wanted to savor every opportunity to play in the snow. This was the day we arrived. The snow wasn't the best for snowman-making...but it was fun nonetheless!
Oh, and even though I kept telling Anna that it wasn't snowing, she still kept opening her mouth to try and "catch" snowflakes with her tongue...

Here we are with my brother Makoto's girls. They too, have three little girls that Kela and Anna absolutely adore. Plus, they could open a daycare center with all the toys they have! For girls only, of course! They have it all: My Little Pony, Barbie, Dora, Princess-everything, you name it, they probably got it!
They even have a trampoline, which despite the frigid temperature, they wanted to jump on. See the white stuff in the corner of the picture?
Yup, that's ice and snow.
Apparently it wasn't enough to deter them from having a good time!


Like I said before, the weather was FREEZING! So instead of hitting a park, we went to an indoor playground nearby instead.

We only stayed for about a half-hour, but that was plenty of time for the girls to run around and burn off some energy.

Nap time afterwards was L-O-V-E-L-Y! :)

One of the things I love about visiting Seattle is all the good friends we have with little kids of their own! It's a two-fer! I get to enjoy chatting with friends while the kiddies run around and enjoy each other as well!

On this day, the sun came out and the weather was beautiful!

Still chilly, but warm enough to frolic in the yard!

My good friend, Rachel, now has two little girls. Little Lucy showed Anna and Kela her "pot of soup" (which was ICE cold, by the way!) as well as the cute goats they are housing for the winter in their back yard!

Needless to say, my girls didn't want to leave!

It was so funny...Anna kept picking up pine cones and calling them "coconuts."

You can take the Girl out of the Islands, but you can't take the Island out of the Girl...

We had planned to visit the Children's Museum, but due to some miscalculations on my part, we were too late...I'm still quite bummed about that...

BUT, instead, we got to visit the Downtown Seattle Waterfront district. It's always so lively and fun down there. That's when I REALLY feel like we've experienced Seattle! But, boy, was it COLD!

Taking a walk around the pier. Brrr!

I never knew, but there's a huge carousel right on the pier (indoors, of course!) Since our girls didn't quite measure up to their height requirements, both Mitch and I had to stand next to the girls. I stood with Kela, while carrying Jolee in the carrier.

(*sigh*)

I think I'm getting old. I used to LOVE roller coasters and amusement park rides and such. But lately, I can hardly ride in the back seat of a car without getting a little queasy. This carousel ride was bit more than my poor stomach could handle. I was glad it was a short one!

Ugh, I feel so old just writing that!
Anyhoo--

Next time, we're definitely going to the Seattle Aquarium. We only walked around the outside this time.

All in all, we were in Seattle for a short five days. And Mitch spent most of the time up at Boeing for his training while I played and played with the girls. Despite all the freezing cold weather, it was definitely a fun, fun little trip.

baptisms and birthdays...

My nephew Marques turned Eight Years-Old in early February, so this past weekend was his Baptism. He got baptized with his classmate, Dallen. I was pretty nervous since I had to give the talk...but what a great service it was! I was honored to be a part of the program & was so proud of my nephew. Afterwards, he even got up and bore his testimony. Boy, they sure do grow up fast, huh?

And then...

It was inevitable. Another birthday has come...and gone. I am officially (ahem) 32 years old.

Yikes! Do I look as old as I feel?

This year, with the crazy busyness of the week, we actually celebrated mine and Rumi's (my niece who happened to be born on my birthday, 6 years ago!) birthdays in increments. Which basically means we got to celebrate it TWICE! Great! TWO reminders that I'm an "old fut!"

The first celebration was on my actual birthday (the 25th)-Mitch took me out to dinner sans kids (my choice: Sushi. I didn't have time to snap a pic...to busy scarfing it down. LOL) except for little Jolee...who if you haven't noticed, is attached to my hip at all times.

Yep, it'll be a while before I can leave her with a sitter.

Afterwards, we got together with Rumi & the rest of the Kurihara's for a movie and some ice cream!! (Rumi's movie choice? Barbie princess, of course!)

And then on Sunday night, it was time for the "Happy Birthday" singing and cake.

Actually, I sort of forgot...but Saturday was Rumi's birthday party with her friends. Airi went all-out with a bounce house, a pinata, and even a cotton candy machine! It was quite the production, really.

However, since (as I stated previously) Jolee is permanently attached to my hip at all times, the only picture I managed to get with my camera was this shot of Kela, Anna and Aya in the bounce house before all the other guests arrived.

I did, however snap quite a few pictures of everyone with Airi's fancy-smancy camera that I'm sure she'll be posting on her blog any day now. As soon as those are up, I'll link it to this post. :) So for now, this is all I got. Sorry.

Here's the link to Airi's post.

'zona

Since we weren't able to visit Mitch's family for Christmas, we decided to head out after the peak travel rush subsided (not to mention the cold weather, too!) to visit the Valley of the Sun. It turned out to be excellent timing! The weather was perfect-not too cold, and definitely not too hot.

And the best part was getting to spend some time relaxing with the Seavey's! There's quite a lot of pictures, so bear with me. I decided to post as digi pages, and not a huge slide show...'cause I'm really not a big fan of slide shows.

The two little ones. We got to meet little Reina (Mitch's sister, Lynn's baby girl) for the very first time. She's just 3 months older than Jolee-and so petite! I think Jolee weighed more than her...But then again, Jolee is quite a chunker. They often just stared, and stared at each other whenever we put them next to one another. And, they're both thumb suckers, too!

Kela and Anna LOVED hangin' out with their cousin, Kai. He fits right in between them age-wise (although he's a tad taller than Kela!) and they were best buds from the get-go! All three of them were inseparable every minute of the day...well, except for early morning 'cause Kai wakes up at 5 am!!! And, our girls tend to stay up till after 10 pm while Kai hits the sack at 6 pm. So, technically, they were inseparable from 8 am till 6 pm. But, you get the idea.

We met our friends at this park in the "ghetto" area of Mesa. We didn't even know there was such a place! That is, until some cops came over to us while the kids were playing and asked us where we lived and why we were at the park. Long (but super funny) story short, we told him we weren't from the area but were simply there for the day. He informed us that some guy sitting about 50 yards away from us was a homeless guy who was spotted in a nearby alley with his pants down. Huh?
Apparently, the park we were at is next to a lot of homeless people and druggies. He nicely, but very frankly, told us to stay away from this particular park because often times, there are creepy druggies nearby, broken glass and needles in the sand, and oh-don't forget about the naked homeless guys in the alleys, too. LOL. Did I mention that there were TONS of other kids with their families at the park, too?!

Here we are at the Arizona Museum for Youth (A.M.Y)
This was our second time visiting, and they had so much fun!
What's not to love about a ginormous playground where you're encouraged to mess around, play dress-up, and make noise to your heart's content?

Jolee loved the baby corner. She apparently also loves herself. Well, the reflection of herself in the mirror. She must have stared, patted, and kissed her reflection for a good 10-15 minutes. I was cringing when she started slobbering all over the mirror...but thought "positive thoughts" and said a little prayer in my heart that no diseased or sick kids were in there doing the exact same thing before her. *shudder*

Ok, although it wasn't quite my birthday yet, Mitch's mom was kind enough to make me a birthday cake while we were there.
A lovely reminder that I'm getting old, old, old!
Thanks!

The Phoenix Zoo.
Here we are at the playground there. We probably could have stayed here for hours...

Grandma played hooky from work and came with.

The Phoenix Zoo puts the Honolulu Zoo to shame! (sorry, but true)

They had so much fun...I don't think we even saw all the animals, there was just too much to see for one afternoon. Plus, the weather was hot so a lot of the animals were just sleeping in the shade. I suppose one highlight for the girls (but not for my reptile-phobic husband) was seeing a live rattlesnake. Oooh! They were quite impressed, especially when a zoo worker came in and nabbed one out of the display window!

Just hangin' out at the park near Grandma and Papa's (Grandpa) house.

Of course, we can't leave Arizona without visiting the lake to feed the ducks. This is Saguaro lake. Can you pronounce it? I'll give you a hint--it absolutely doesn't sound like it's spelled...

Anyway, it was a short but long 7 day trip.
We LOVE visiting the mainland, but are always happy to come back home to our
Hawaii-nei.