cousins!!!

today we went and picked up the girls (fashion princess,9 and mack,13)for the memorial day weekend. we did some shopping at the outlet mall while waiting for them, and then of course had dinner at zaxbys (i think this was about the 3rd or 4th time we had already had zaxbys....but you have to make the pregnant girl happy...and no not me, but more to come on that later). we did some shopping, i bought a new coach purse (its a beautiful blue one). little miss was so excited to see them, but was very shy at first. before we made it out of zaxbys though, she was talking non-stop and wouldnt leave them alone :) the fashion princess couldnt believe how much she was talking! (little miss has a tendency to never shut up).

by the time we got home, you would have never believed that it had been a year since we had seen them. little miss quickly got settled with her cousins and forced them to play tea party with her. (she talked her grandma/i forced grandma to buy her one for while we were there, so that grandma could have payback and water all over her floors too like we do at home...grandma bought her that one too :) haha) there were very good sports about it and even let me get a few pictures.....little miss loved it!

fresh strawberries and a preschool graduation

there is nothing better than fresh pick strawberries. we always had a big garden in our back yard every summer, and most years growing up that also included strawberries. my parents dont grow strawberries anymore, but that dosent stop us from going to pick them somewhere else :) so we all headed out to the strawberry farm on a scorching hot day to pick some strawberries.

little miss' cousin, little man, was one of the ones with us. he is an old pro at this, we dont have any of these here on our island, little miss only gets to do it once a year. and little man is a good teacher....so good in fact that we ended up having to take away his basket because we could never get it filled....he kept eating all the strawberries we picked and put in his basket :) and then grandma bought them homemade strawberry ice cream for doing such a good job. i think the pictures speak for themselves at the amount of fun we had :)
























then after getting home and a much needed bath, it was time to head to little mans 3 year old class graduation. they did a song and then walked across the stage to get his diploma. it was cute, and especially funny because he was more interested in pointing out his parents in the crowd and talking to other people than actually singing.....makes it all the more fun if you ask me :) what a fun 2nd day.

we made it

after a long day that included me going to work, getting some last minute stuff packed, going to the beach for some last minute friend time and the wearing out of a little girl, a quick shower, and then heading to the airport........we made both of our planes and made it to ga!

lucky for me little miss slept almost all of the first flight, and then most of the 2nd flight too. i was able to get some sleep on the first flight, and read on the second one. and with the 6 hour time difference it was a really big help to get that sleep. little miss had her trusty winnie the pooh blanket, penny puppy, and her elephant olivia to keep her occupied most of the time. although i have to say penny and olivia did not act nearly as well behaved as little miss did. she kept having to get on to them for not being nice to each other. she also found the airplanes barf bags.....she immediately put it on her hand and started talking with it. but over all they were both easy flights and we were both excited to be landing and ready to find my parents.

its also worked out really cool, that my cousin amy was landing about 30 minutes before us and was able to find out the gate and come meet us. we both did our best not to bust into tears and pretty much succeeded, i only heard a few sniffles out of both of us. and now the busy but fun trip begins!

anns birthday and her turtle

one of my really good friends, ann, will join our 30's club soon, and to celebrate i made a turtle cake. tonya and i had been talking about it for a while, and knowing that ann loves turtles as much as she does, we decided....thats what she has to have. i always love the adventure of making a new kind of cake, but it means even more when its for someone who is such a great friend.





i got to use the sports pan again (getting lots of use out of this pan!!!) and kind of formed it like i did the lady bug cake. i used a star tip for the whole shell and kind of made an octagon type shape on it and carried it out in one color on the whole shell, then came back with a different shade of green to fill it in. for the feet i made some mini cupcake and actually ended up cutting them in half and then a cupcake for the head, which i also cut in half. i wasnt as happy with the face for the turtle and should have used some of the oreo cremes for the eyes again, but didnt think about it until too late ( and yes ann, i do still have some of those oreo's you gave me for haley's cake..haha). for the bottom cake i used some partially mixed blue icing. i wanted it to look more like water so when i put in the blue coloring, i mixed it, but not to a solid color, i think it looked more like water with some of the white still visible. tonya and i had also made some chocolates to put on the cake and to give to ann since she liked the ones we had made before. so we put a few palm trees and flip flops on the cake too. and again for the beach i used brown sugar...and for some reason its not as sweet as you would thik it would be....the brown sugar and butter creme icing combo....but it sure is good.



to fully celebrat the occasion, we had a cookout over at our friend renee's. tonya had the decorations, renee had the hamburgers, and me the cake. tonya also made this really cool "beach bucket cake" and then put beach ball sugar cookies on the top....and she did an awesome job at icing the cookies! they looked like much better beach balls then the ones i had helped her with before! we had a great time hanging out, making ourselves "fancy" flip flops and just enjoying each others company. hope you have a great birthday ann!!! and welcome to the 30's....its not so bad :)

babies

little miss has always carried around a baby doll or puppy, since the time she was little. she calls them her baby or her baby animal (insert puppy, elephant..etc) and then plays with them. she has even recently started to put diapers and clothes on them....yep, even the puppy and elephant. but she has now taken that fun to a whole new level.

we had a friend, who up until 3 weeks ago, was pregnant. little miss was at the beach with her 2 days before the baby was born and started asking all sorts of questions. they were pretty funny. it ranged from "when can i meet your baby?" to "mommy, do you have a baby in your belly?" (josh didnt appreciate the last one...haha) she kept asking "when can i play with your baby?" and it was just so cute. she kept touching my friends belly and talking to teress about her baby. so when baby dylan was born 2 days later, we told little miss we could go and meet him, and she was beyond excited! and this is when the real fun kicked in....

so me, josh and little miss were in the elevator heading down from our hotel room when an old man with a nice round gut, gets in with us. before we can stop her, she walks over-hand out, and touches his belly.....and then asks "wheres your baby?" not fully understanding the question (thank god!) he tells little miss his kids are older and big now. she didnt quite understand either.....she thought he was pregnant...and he did have a nice round belly.....so now josh and i are trying our hardest not to bust out laughing and playing it off that shes just 3....luckily the man didnt understand that she thought he was pregnant.

so later that same week, when we were on the whale watching cruise with barbara sara gets this wonderful idea.....puppy wants to hide, so where does she put her....up her shirt.. yep! right up the shirt. she didnt really have whole lot to say at the time about it, but just that puppy was her baby.


so the next week little miss and i are at the grocery store getting a few things and while we are waiting in line, it happens again. but this one defiantly takes the cake....so far. so its busy, and we just have a few things so we are waiting in the 15 or less line with about 7 other people...we are right in the middle. when little miss decides "puppy wants to be a baby." so again, puppy goes right up the shirt. i just started laughing. she starts walking around me and to some of the little stuff right in front of us talking about how puppy will come out soon to meet us, and she cant wait to meet puppy. so puppy stayed in her shirt for a good 10 minutes while little miss is looking at the soda's and the candy and anything else she deems worthy. and finally as i am getting ready to pay, she pulls puppy out of her shirt and shows the cashier "look at my puppy, shes my baby, i just had her!" the cashier had no idea what to do, but the look on her faces was awesome.


she did finally get to meet dylan the other day. and she didnt realize teress was who she was until we told her, but she was glad to get to meet him. its amazing the immignation she has and how smart she is, which i guess is just one of the many reasons she always manages to make me laugh.

new job

well i almost made it, i was literally just 3 days away from not having had a job for 2 years. well, not really....my job for the last two years has been taking care of my amazing little miss since we moved to hawaii, but thats not really a job. thats more like love and life, but still sort of a job. just not a job that i got paid money for, i got paid in smiles, laughter, and love...which coming from her i would take any day over money.

so the back story is...i have a friend that i met in my classes at school. she was working for a restaurant in china town, but would be going home for the summer and they needed someone to replace her....so she thought of me. i had told her that i would probably be going home for part of the summer too, but if they needed someone in the mean time i would be happy to help out. well they decided that they really wanted someone who would be there the whole time and were going to keep looking, not a big deal to me. so of course the day after i book our tickets home, my friend tells me that they would like for me to come in for an interview. i explained that i had bought my tickets and if they still wanted to see me i was more than happy.

so i went in to meet with the pastry chef and she asked me to come the next day and see how it would go...kind of like an internship. so i was off to early the next morning to be at work by 6:30am....fun! it was busy but fun and a little nerve wrecking since its totally unlike any of the other jobs i have ever had. but i survived. i was told that they were still trying to look for someone else since the pastry chef would be on vacation one of the weeks i would also be gone, but that they would let me know...this was friday....on monday i got the call that they would like for me to come back in and train with my friend! awesome! luckily this was the week that barbara was here (and josh was home) so i was able to start work!

its funny how things just seem to fall into place. i wasnt really looking for a job, and it just kind of fell in my lap. i didint have to have it, so i wasnt too concerned if i didnt get it. if it was meant to happen it would....and it did. i also got lucky because i have such awesome friends! they have made it so much easier for me, i am able to leave little miss with them without having to worry about how shes doing or if she is being taken care of. both of my friends that keep her treat her as if she is one of her own. they love her, care for her and discipline her just like they do theirs, and knowing that they would do anything for her (and me) makes them the most amazing friends a girl could ever ask for! little miss and i are truly very lucky to have them in our lives...thanks so much tonya and ann!!!!

i have now been on the job for a few weeks, its getting easier as i keep learning new stuff and where everything goes. even getting up at 5:20 is getting easier, but it sure does make for some long days. my job mostly consists of making sandwiches and tapas type stuff to sever at the sister restaurant to where i work, because they only have a refrigerator case and can only heat stuff up in a toaster oven. but i have gotten to make a cake and cupcakes a few times so far, so thats fun! plus i get to watch (and taste) all of the creations my boss makes.....and then i get ideas for new things to try at home :) josh has enjoyed it so far :)

so this is how i happened upon a job, and went almost 2 full years without one.

barbara's visit

josh's mom, barbara, came out for a visit this past week. we had a lot of fun and little miss loved having her nana around. she flew in on friday and the fun just never stopped.

saturday we had the kokua festival and since we had already bought little miss a ticket and couldnt get another extra one, we just rented a hotel room in waikiki that would be near the concert venue and then barbara would be able to roam and play in waikiki and we wouldnt have to worry about driving home that night.


sunday we walked around waikiki and had breakfast then it was home to get alexi and then off to my soccer game. i dont know if barbara was just good luck or what, but she sure got to watch me get pushed to the ground and tripped quite a few times, needless to say it was an exciting game :) and apparently very tiring :)




monday was fun! i was up and getting ready for class when i got a call from josh- he threw out his back again surfing! so barbara got to make a trip with him to tripler and then to a chiropractor. while i dropped little miss off at tonyas and went to class....luckily tonya had already voluntered to take sara to the dog beach with her and when i got home from school barbara and i joined them. it was a beautiful day for the beach. alexi was super excited to get to go with us too! we ended up seeing a few submarines coming in and out of the harbor and a navy ship heading out. pretty cool



tuesday we decided to go on the star of honolulu's whale watching cruise. even thought it was late in the season we figured why not. well it worked to our advantage, we actually got to see 2 whales. a mother and its calf were having a ball showing off for the boat, they both breached quite a few times and you could see them playing in and out of the waves. sara started to get a little bored and it was kind of hard for her to see, but she always manages to keep herself occupied (more about that later). for dinner we decided we would take barbara to our favorite spot, haliewa joe's. and of course she loved it as much as we did, the best part was watching little miss try to eat edamame. she kept popping them out of the shell, but they were flying all over the place :)



wednesday morning i had to work(more on that to come later too) but after i got off we decided we would head to the makapu lighthouse trail and take barbara on a hike. we made it to the top, but it look a while between little miss and barbara taking lots of breaks. it was really windy that day but it was nice to have the breeze because other wise it would have been super hot. but it was a nice hike and a great day.



thursday we decided to head to kouloa ranch and go on the movie tour. it was pretty cool. we loaded a bus for an hour tour and headed off to see the many different movies and shows that have been flimed there. we got to see the bunkers from pearl harbor, hurley's golf course and where he ran the bus down the hill in lost, some massive godzilla prints, areas that were in jurassic park, 50 first dates and lots of other movies. it was really cool and well worth the 20 bucks.


friday was barbara's day and we thought little miss had gymnastics, but as it turned out it was the 5th friday and they didnt offically have class. so josh took barbara to do some last little bit of shopping and we spent the day relaxing around the house and enjoying the nice breezes outside. she and little miss tried to put together some crafts but it took a little longer than expected, until we got out the glue gun :)

we had a great week and little miss is really going to miss her nana, but at least we will be heading to georgia in a few more weeks, and she will get to be completely spolied by nana again, and everyone else too :)