27MAR13

This is a long time coming!  I've been asked quite a bit for pictures of the new house and I kept forgetting till Mary reminded me again last week!  So it's not perfectly clean but eh we're too busy having fun at the beach! :)  Here is the new house! The living room, kitchen, dining room, half bath and laundy room are downstairs and all the other rooms are up stairs. :)




The living room.  Ryan was having a self proclaimed jammie day!  :)

Kitchen (my fave is the bar!  I love not having to go to the table when it's just the kids and I!

Dining room.  Eventually we are wanting to make the corner with David's swing into a craft area for me!

The girls room.  It's hard to get a pic of the whole room!

David's room/ come visit and you get this room all to yourself with an air matress! :)

Our room.  Bathroom is to the left of the bed and the closet and our dresser are right in front of our bed.

Girls bathroom and our little reading nook. :)

Trav's room.  When I told him I was taking pic for the blog he grabbed my iPad from me and took about 5 pictures.  He gets 2 put up.  He's pretty excited about having an actual room instead of just a closet like in GA! :)

24MAR13

I've been SO excited to share this post!  Before Cristine and I got pregnant with Anya and Lexi we used to run together and SAID we wanted to try running a half marathon.  Then we got pregnant.  Then pregnant again.  Then we moved away from each other (and I got pregnant again! :)) Then we moved apart... :(  Fast Forward 8 years later and we've registered for the Hibiscus Half Marathon the end of May. We started training for a 10k and Cristine found one for us to run!  (Bonus:  A lot of it is the same route that the half marathon will be so we realized we will need to do some hill training since there were a few pretty good hills!)  My first EVER race.  I am ADDICTED!!  It was so incredibly fun!  The adrenaline was so high!  Was I fast?  No.  Did I zone out so bad sometime after mile 4 that I don't remember much of the last 2 miles?  Yep.  Did Cristine have to tell me more than once let's go you can do this?  Absolutely.  Was it worth it?  100%  And we finished.  Together.  I even left her hanging on a highfive because I had to book it straight to the bathroom.  (I blame my 3 children! :))  I can not wait to cross this off my bucket list and continue to run 5k's, 10k's, and whatever else I can find!  For the record I ran 6 miles again yesterday and I have already built up more endurance after only 3 weeks b/c I didn't feel like I was going to die until about the 5.5 mark. :)  I am so thankful to be in Hawaii back with Cristine!

 

 

 

Before shot with our socks.  Don't be jealous.

Lined up ready to go!

We were right in the middle of the pack.  There were about this many people behind us as well.

After with our roses.  I'm telling Travis how much I rock! :)

Not sure why I'm holding my phone all weird!

This was the view we had for most of the race.  Ya we have it rough...

23MAR13

Sweet Ryan Pyper.  This girl is so amazing.  She makes life so much more interesting and FUN!  The other day Cristine and Nate said it best, "No ONE can say that girl doesn't have personality!"  HAHA It's so true!  She loves to be the life of the party.  She has never met a stranger.  She loves her big sister and wants to be like her but not to the point of not being herself which I adore!  She loves helping with her little brother and loves to make him laugh.  This morning on our hike there was some slippery downhill parts I was helping her down and she says, "mom, I'm just worried about you right now."  Melt my heart!  Happy fifth Birthday Ryan!  You are our sunshine!

 

For her birthday she wanted to go to White Plains Beach (they love this beach b/c the waves are just right for them and they get to boogy board!)  Followed by pizza, Hello Kitty, (new obsession no idea where it came from) a pinata, and an ice cream cake!  It was a great day!!

She's not excited at all.

David got in on the waffles minus the strawberries and whipped cream.

Chilling on the beach.

Trav tried out surfing for the first time also.  And of course he was able to get up on his first time out!

PIZZA

Pretty girls!

Eric was a machine!

HAHA love this pic!

Oh ya we did a little a ghetto rigging on the pinata!  Go Lex!

You can't see her face and she looks dainty but Anya was INTENT on breaking that pinata.

The nicest pinata kids either.  They were yelling out who doesn't have a coloring book?  I already have this here's one for you!  Adorable!

My sweet 5 year old!

20MAR13

Back to our regularly scheduled programing! This place is called Maunawilli Falls.  Trav and I had heard mixed reviews on if it was kid friendly or not so we went to check it out first.  The hiking part isn't too bad at all but it was SUPER muddy (Tucker was almost all brown before Travis washed him off in the falls.) Mud=slippery so we may wait a bit before taking the kids.  Or at least David b/c we both almost fell a few times and having David on his back is probably not a great idea!  The end result was BEAUTIFUL of course.  When we first got there, there were hardly any people so we got some great pictures and then it got packed and we got to watch all the braver people jump!!  There were a couple girls Lexi's age that jumped and I was pretty impressed (though not sure I could have let Lexi jump maybe I'm paranoid...)  We'll be doing this hike again for sure!

This was our drive to the hike. Taken with my phone and from the car.  The drive was almost as great as the hike!

 

Tuck and I chilling at the bottom of the falls.

This picture truly does it no justice...

This cute bird was keeping us company.

15MAR13

We had so much fun with Uncle Nathan here. :)  Please come back halfway across the world soon bro!!!  Here are a few other random pictures of stuff we did while he was here.  One of those things was going to turtle beach.  AWESOME!  They just come right up to the shore and hang out.  They have volunteers that rope off areas when the turtles come on the shore to protect them but it was so cool to see!  Have I said it enough?  I LOVE HAWAII!!!!

 

 

Uncle Nathan became famous for his burying skills.

Shave ice on a school day for Lex?  Yes please!!

Turtles!!!!  David especially thought they were fascinating (haha he had no idea!)

13MAR13

My brother got leave for the month of February so he decided to spend a week of it here with us!!  (He's in the airforce stationed in Germany.)  I thought he was coming to explore Hawaii and felt bad b/c Travis was going to be in the field for a good portion of his time but he was content just hanging at the beach with the kiddos.  He kinda loves his nieces and nephew. :)  One place I've been wanting to check out but Travis is NOT interested is the Dole Plantation.  So we decided to take Nate.  It wasn't a big deal but it was cheap and a fun day activity so I think we'll go back (especially for some more Dole Whip YUM!)

 

 

Dole Maze.  There were 9 check points and we found TWO!  It's a HUGE maze.  David got a little crabby but the girls thought it was great!

Train Ride!

Pineapple girls.

HAHAHAHA!!!!

Dole whip= DOLE-Licious.  See what I did there?  ;)

The garden was beautiful but I won't bore you with too many pics of the flowers...

Just one more.

10MAR13

Sometimes living in Hawaii is actually hard because you have to do everyday things when all you want to do is go to the beach. Trav has to go to work, Lexi has to go to school, doctors appointments, grocery shopping, laundry... At least it's fun to do those normal things and see a different side of them. Lexi's new school did a President's Day Parade and she was picked to represent one of the First Lady (First Lady Abigal Adams to be exact.) It was really cute and she was absolutely adorable!

 

 

Not a great pic but this was the before pic of how curly her hair was... :)

By the time school started it looked like this! :) President and First lady Adams.

Waving down the hall.

I love this pic b/c she is telling him how they are suppossed to be holding their hands. HAHA! She's such a rule follower!