Halloween

I had big plans for Halloween this year. I was gonna hit every haunted house/attraction I could find. Halloween crafts all week long, Halloween meals, jack-o-lanterns, fun kids outings, the whole bit.

Well, the month slid by... it came down to the last week and I hadn't hit a single haunted house yet. Derek's on one of his more annoying rotations that has him up at 5:30 and home at 5:30, so he's always tired and not interested in haunted anything.

And I find myself halfway through the week and my babysitters are all going to be at a Halloween party- together. Not that I expected to get anyone-- I mean, c'mon, it's Halloween. What kid doesn't have plans?

So at this point, I decide to pour all my Halloween effort into Friday and Saturday. Friday morning is Avril's Halloween book parade--- dress up as a character from a book and bring the book and march around the school twice while all the parents cheer their kids on.

Avril's costume for Halloween this year is a devil costume. Know any good childrens books about devils? Yeah, me neither. So we opted for the easier route-- a Cinderella costume which she already had for a Cinderella (ok, princess) book she already had.

Isn't my little girl beautiful?

I didn't use enough hairspray or something, because by the time her parade was to start (30 min later), her hair looked like this. Oh, well. She's still so stinkin' cute.

So that night my plan was to hit IHOP for their free Scary Face Pancakes for kids under 12 and then the mermaid show at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel.

Well, neither of those things happened, but we did miraculously find a sitter (a friend of mine hooked us up. How awesome is she?!), so we took advantage of a Halloween date night and got delicious sushi and went to Zombie Prom. Classic love story-- boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love. Parents forbid girl to see boy, girl breaks up with boy, boy commits suicide in local nuclear power plant. Girl mourns boy, boy comes back to life as zombie, campaigns for equal rights for zombies so he can graduate high school and take his girlfriend to prom.

If you ever get the chance to see it, you should. Definitely made for a fun date night.

Saturday morning we got up, made our own scary pancakes (the kind of scary pancakes that it takes about three guesses to figure out what it's supposed to look like and why it's scary) and got dressed.

Borders was "supposedly" doing a Halloween activity with scary stories, a puppet show, a craft and a parade. So we showed up all dressed up and made up and all excited....

and ok, an hour or so late... and of course missed it. I thought with all that stuff we might at least catch the parade by then, but no such luck. Maybe the wrong Borders? Anyway, I let the girls pick out a few books and used my coupon (40% off!) and went home, pretty let down and tired...

By the time we got home, Xandri was asleep, Roman was still napping, Derek was still watching football and Avril wasn't too happy because the day hadn't been fun enough yet.

So we discussed what to do with the rest of the time-- trick or treating and festival thing at Aloha Tower or jack-o-lantern carving and no more driving until the ward trunk-or-treat slash potluck. She opted for jack-o-lanterns and trunk-or-treat, so we got out the pumpkin and she designed the face and I cut it out.

By the time I finished, I was done with Halloween. I got my expectations up too high and tried too hard (well, ok, hard, but not hard enough since they fell through from my own lack of planning) to do all these extra special things that the kids didn't really care about. And then ran out of energy when the day wound down to what they really did want to do.

But I pulled it together anyway and we went to the trunk-or-treat slash potluck (about thirty minutes late which didn't improve my mood any) but when we got there....

"Look at the camera, Roman!"

Xandri made this face BEFORE Daddy said "Silly faces!"



Silly Faces

And why was Roman missing from the previous pictures?

Ahh..... here we go....

The sole picture I got of Derek that actually turned out. Hawaiian pirate. Meaning pirate top, bottom in flipflops and cargo shorts.

and found that we were actually quite fashionably late and it was an easy, laid-back affair (c'mon, where did I think I was? We're in Hawai'i!) I let it all go and enjoyed the potluck (I was a taker this time, I'll admit it) while the kids ran around with their friends and played on the playground equipment.

When it was time for the trunk-or-treat, there weren't many cars, but they had a lot of candy. By the time the kids were done and we left, I think every kid had gone around to each car at LEAST five times. Which worked out fine for us since that was pretty much the only trick-or-treating they got in this year.

All in all, Halloween was fun for the kids, which is the most important thing in my book. It was disappointing and stressful for me (except the things we actually did), but ended well.

So, if I DO have any lurkers out there, you know, you people who read my blog but never comment, I'm asking you to step out of the shadows and give me your ideas. What do you do to make holidays and birthdays special? What kind of traditions do you have for special days, any of them really, but Halloween specifically?...... Bueller?..... Bueller?.....

Nic's Visit to the Sandwich Isles

So my lil' bro Nic came out to visit us- well, actually he was going to try and find a job and a place and move here for a few months before school started in January- but unfortunately had to go home after three weeks of unsuccessful searching.

In any case, we tried to make his time here enjoyable and even extracted some babysitting from him while he was here- thanks Nic.

First beach we hit up was Hickam AF Base beach-- simply because it's easy to get to and easy to take the kids to.

Roman and his manly buzz cut.

Watching airplanes take off. Another perk of the beach- we're RIGHT next to the runway and the kids LOVE that.

Next big thing- the KBay Air Show. Tons of people, tons of cool airplanes, both parked and flying around and plenty of vendors selling yummy food. We met my friend Heather there and we all walked around, checking stuff out. I'll do another post for that with a few more pics.

Nic caught this shot-- I can't take credit. Super cool, eh? Actually, while we're on the subject I think he took a lot of these pics, but they were all combined with mine.

(c)Roman!!

We spent a day up on the North Shore, and of course hit up Matsumoto's Grocery for some shave ice. You can't come to Hawai'i and not.

Roman was good at sharing.

Next stop, Laniakae Beach, home of the international honu (Hawaiian for turtle) preserve or something like that. About 26-28 sea turtles live in this little bay and periodically come up on the beach to warm up and dry out, staying anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days.

You can also snorkel in the water and while you can't touch the turtles on the beach, if they come up to you in the water, you don't have to retreat-- go ahead and make a new friend! Btw, I love how in this picture it becomes impossible to tell the difference between the ocean and the sky...

The girls were all up and down the beach checking things out, looking for hermit crabs and climbing on the rocks. They loved it.

Roman pretty much stuck to playing in the sand-- as usual.

Also checked out the temple in La'ie. Gorgeous, of course, and this is the view going down the steps.

And since Nic's visit overlapped a bit with Sean's, some cool pics and fun things were in that post.

It was a bummer to see him go. It would have been awesome if he'd been able to find a job here, I felt like I didn't show him enough of Hawai'i while he was here because I thought he'd have more time to explore it himself! Oh well. You'll be out here again if I know you like I think I do.

A Thousand Words

A typical photo series at our house.

Any questions?

I Don't Know Either

Aug 2nd: Avril's First Day of School

I've been trying to organize my photos and ran across these and realized I never posted Avril's first day of school!

Sorry hon!

I suppose it's appropriate in some ways that I'm writing this blog today, my first ever Parent-Teacher Conference for the first quarter.

Anyway, it's a little atypical because Avril's first day of school was not her first day of kindergarten. Allow me to introduce you to my first grader!

Since Avril's birthday is the beginning of August, I had opted to start her in kindergarten this year so she would be the oldest in her class instead of the youngest. But then we moved to Hawai'i where the cutoff is December. So when I attempted to enroll her in kindergarten, the vice principal informed me she would be in 1st grade. Naturally I was concerned since that's a whole year of school she just missed. On the other hand, she's had two years of preschool. And she's really smart. And she will fit in better with her peers since first grade will include kids up to 4 months younger than her, while in kindergarten she would be four months older than the oldest kid in there. In addition, the vp's questions about Avril's academic prowess (can she write her name? count to 20? print her alphabet?) reassured me that if that's all they covered in kindergarten she would be just fine in first grade.

Anyway, we decided that since Hawai'i schools are reputed to be behind mainland schools, we might as well go with it and put her in first grade and see how she did.

Doesn't she look excited? This is the mural by the cafetorium (yes, I finally figured it out: cafeteria+auditorium=cafetorium). Isn't it adorable?

She was really nervous for school. So of course I did the natural thing and took her shopping for cute new clothes, the classic Brand New Outfit for her First Day of School.

It actually really helped.

Sitting at her new desk with her fresh school supplies and soon-to-be friends.

Xandri and Roman were very interested and jealous of all the cool new things their big sister get to check out and play with and learn.

And how did Avril's mom do?

You know, I never thought I'd be a mom who'd cry on the first day of school.

And then I started thinking I might be a mom who cried on the first day of school.

Those of you who know me... what do you think?

Meanwhile, Avril's report card has gone from not reading at all (K.0 level reading) to passing kindergarten (K.3 level reading) since the first of the year. That's some serious progress. I've been blown away by how quickly she's picked everything up. The other kids had learned a LOT more in kindergarten than the vp had led me to believe. She tutors every Tues and Thurs after school to work on reading and writing. She's proficient if not excelling in math, proficient and progressing well in science and proficient in social studies. Her PE teacher loves her. She gets along well with all the students, performs well in class and communicates well. I get comments from perfect strangers when I go to her school about what a great kid she is, how obedient and well-behaved she is. I'm so proud of her and how much she's progressed in so many ways. She loves school, her teacher and her friends and answers my daily question in the same way every time,

"How was school today, Avril?"

*blissful sigh* "Perfect!"

A Sean-Filled Weekend: The Rest of the Time

Ok, so I'm cheating a little and putting pics of my kiddos in this post. Because even though the weekend was Sean-filled, they didn't stop being cute.

Xandri- post beach. She was cold and kinda tired and so naturally....

Waimea Beach was naturally the next necessary beach to hit.

Roman got right to work in the sand.

There were waves to play in and a rock to jump off of. I confess I was really worried about the girls playing in the water this time. It was quite placid for Waimea and this time of year, but the shorebreak was still pretty decent, and they weren't used to the waves breaking so close and so powerfully. So, naturally they ran out to the water with gleeful, reckless abandon.

This pic makes me giggle ever time I see it...

I love these shots for three reasons:

1) I told you so. I knew those waves would be crazy. But just wait, we got an even better shot later.

2) They're just plain cool-looking. I believe Derek snagged both of them--- what great timing!

3) My children are still alive.

Ok, so now to the Sean part of the post. Because even though the waves were big for the munchkins, they weren't having quite the same effect on the slightly larger Sean. He and Derek naturally adapted to this, however, and created a very characteristic game of hurling themselves over the waves and into the ocean as hard as they could. At least I think that was the gist of it. I'm not entirely sure. But they were both shrieking (well, Derek was shrieking and Sean was laughing at the shrieking. You know.) and filling their heads with sand and salt water. Nic joined in on the fun for a bit as well.

Anyway, after we were all funned out, we decided to cap off the Waimea fun with some rock jumping. Sean and Derek led the way, as usual...

peer-pressured Nic into leaping as well,

and I of course couldn't resist and jumped twice myself as well.

Now this is where it gets "funner". I was swimming back in after jump #2 when the girls saw me and got excited to come greet me. They didn't realize that right here and right now the waves that were coming were even bigger and crazier. So Avril swims out to me and manages to get to me fairly unscathed. Then I notice all the sand in her hair so I drag her, somewhat unwillingly, back out to rinse her hair. Well, unfortunately for all of us, Xandri, being the little opportunistic monkey that she is, decided to follow us out.

She didn't quite make it past the shore break before the next wave was breaking and as I went to "save" her and Avril, we were all knocked down by the wave, the water churning all around us, turning up the sand and girls all over the place...

As the water began to recede, I desperately tried to get my footing and grab onto both girls before it pulled them back in as well.

FAIL.

No, I barely made it out with Xandri and in the Ocean vs. Mom: Tug O' War Over Avril, I lost. But I snagged her back once Xandri was in Derek's arms and helped her up the beach. And then guess what.

I took her back out to rinse her hair out again.

Yeah, I'm that mean. Even Avril couldn't believe I was that mean.

To make up for it, though, and also because Sean wanted to go (hmmm... when I say it like that it sounds like Sean was the only one who did. But believe you me, we ALL wanted to go) to Ted's Bakery for some dinner and pie. (And when I write "pie" like that... you don't grasp the deep longing and desire in my voice that you would should you hear me utter the word.) Chocolate haupia, peach bavarian cream, pumpkin haupia....... excuse me for a minute.....

-----------------------INTERMISSION-----------------------
(elevator music playing)

Ok, now where was I?

Oh, yes, after Ted's Bakery, Sean introduced us to a secret little cove that not many people know about.

To get to it, we had to walk through the faery grove...

And here it is! Thank you, Sean, for introducing us to this gem. We'll be making this a regular haunt I think.

Gorgeous, serene and empty. Absolutely perfect. If Sean hadn't needed to get back to the airport I think we would have lingered and maybe played in the water.

Back through the faery grove....

And off to the airport. It was great to have you, Sean. Come back out and see us again soon... there's far too much of Hawai'i to revisit and enjoy in just three measly days!