Ivy's funny

The other day Ivy was singing a song about itches to Kezia and interrupted herself to point something out. Here is what I heard:

" I have an itch on my forehead,

I have an itch on my shoulder,

I have an itch on my arm,

I have an itch in my bum -- and that's for real life!

I have an itch on my ....."

Why our girls don't need a tv

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We have had a TV in the middle of our livingroom since the end of June. It was left behind by tenants who had moved out and we thought we'd take advantage of a bigger movie screen for a while. It was actually a lot of fun, considering we had been watching movies on a 4X6 portable DVD player screen (can you spot it in the picture?). But as I took it out of the house last Saturday, instead of hearing a complaint, I heard Ivy exclaim, "Oh, look, Kezia, at the pattern the TV left on the carpet!! That's so cool!"

Who needs a TV if you're that easily entertained?

My girls need a touch of fashion sense

Perhaps it's the generous amount of hand-me-downs we receive. Or my insistence to wear out their clothes til they're holey. But I discovered on our latest shopping trip that my girls definitely lack a sense of fashion. My first clue was when Kezia begged to buy a skirt she held up to me that was half denim and half a yellow polyester fray that curled on each end. I had no other excuse to give her except that it was dang ugly. Then as I perused the shirts, I asked the girls to find one they thought would look good. Ivy said, "Oh, Mommy, I got it! I found just the one!" I laughed outloud when I saw it: a black t-shirt with a lacey red heart in the middle encircling the words, "My heart was stolen by a cowboy". I asked, "What would Daddy think?" Kezia said, "He'll be sad." I don't know what would make him more sad, that my heart was stolen by someone else, or that it was a cowboy who did it.

Happy Fourth of July!!

We celebrated by going to a fair at the military barracks. Ivy and Kezia were in line to go on a ride, but the attendant said Ivy was too short, so at the last minute I got pulled into the barf ride. But I figured if I was going to get sick anyway, let's go for it!! Needless to say, the rest of the fair I was holding my stomach.

The next "must have" was face painting...




...followed by a petting farm.
And what's a fair without a cheesy board photo? (May our skin never be so white)


Then we headed home because I had a lesson. It was one I don't think I'd soon forget. It was 3 siblings. One of them had brain cancer and was told by his doctor that it was progressing so quickly that he ought to go enjoy life. He's my age. It was a very emotional thing to take this man out on an activity and to a place that he would never do, and never see again.

We then had dinner at Kay's with our friend Mara and her daughter Nicole and set off fireworks.
The girls' reaction to the fireworks
May God continue to bless our nation

Kezia and Ivy pics

A friend gave us dresses her daughter had grown out of. The girls looked so pretty in their foofy "princess" dresses I had to do a little photo shoot.

Happy Father's Day!

(Well, Kerri, looks like you're not the only one post-dating your blog ;)

I just wanted to share some shots of Nate's Father's Day. He took advantage of a relaxing day. Although I'm not one for blogging love notes, I do want to give a shout out to our girls' daddy: YOU TOTALLY ROCK, NATE!!!

Morning nap:



Afternoon spent on couch:


Late afternoon watching a movie with the girls:


Evening spent eating good food at Nate's mom's house...and brownies:

Thank you, Erica!

Erica made Ivy a new blankie to replace her well-loved one that she had made for her before she was born. Thank you!

Silly Girls

Now I am just trying to maintain the order that we now have. But someday I'll post about the dizzying 4th of July we celebrated, the ideal camping trip we went on, and other fun stuff. But here's a cute one to end with. In an attempt to make them hurry, I told the girls to get dressed and whatever they were wearing by the time Elysse was ready for bed was what they were going to wear to bed. Here's how they ended up:

Check this out

Soul Surf Media interviewed Nate as part of their stand up paddle surfing videos that are coming out. Here's the clip:

The Stand Up Project Trailer1 from Soul Surf Media on Vimeo.

Can you tell Nate loves this sport?

Camping!

I finally have the time to blog about our highlight of the summer-- a wonderful, spur of the moment camping trip!!! I found a place to camp at 10:00 am on Friday July 10th. I quickly got everything I thought we needed and we arrived at 3:00. The place was awesome. It is a botanical garden at the base of Kaneohe's steep plant-covered cliffs. The place is called "Ho'omaluhia" and means "place of peace". It was appropriately named, too. Hopefully the pictures give some sort of an idea how lush and peaceful it was there. This was our view from our tent. There is something very telling about that stop sign in the picture....

Hardly anyone was there (despite the garden workers' assurity that the place was packed --were we in the same campground?). Although this is the rainy part of the island, it only rained when we had finished dinner and it was time to get in the tent anyway, and during the night, but stopped right before we got out.

Here we are collecting firewood. Elysse was a happy to help her daddy.

After making a rush trip to the grocery store before we were locked in for the night, we settled down to a cookout of hotdogs and marshmallows. Of course.

The next morning there was free catch-and-release fishing. Ivy was the fisherwoman of the day, catching 5 fish against our 0. Well, not true. I caught one, but I felt so bad catching it that I quickly got the hook out and released it to its freedom. I felt more guilt than accomplishment.

Kezia took the situation personally and sat a ways off sulking yet confident that she'll catch a fish at this special spot....

It didn't help that once Kezia gave up and left, Ivy went over there and caught another fish!

Elysse just said "forget it" to the whole "sit and wait" idea and tried stabbing the fish instead. Any sign that her daddy is a spear fisherman?

On the way back from fishing we found a grove of banyan trees that the girls swang on. Actually, I was hoping it would cheer Kezia up from her miserable defeat to her little sister. It worked.

Then we got bombarded by dozens of hungry ducks eager to taste our left over fish bait.

We had such a great time, we were just regretful that we didn't make the plans necessary to stay longer. It's an appropriate time to blog about this because we were hoping to return this long weekend. But we're at home instead because we would have been #71 on the wait list. Hmm, no thanks.