A Novel; Sit Down and Strap Yourself In!

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

What is under tent #1? Our house of course! I know you're all dying to see our new home we just bought (well, new to us) but it'll have to wait for another day. This is what it looked like when it was being fumigated. Pretty sweet huh? =)

As for now, I have to catch up from two and a half months worth of 'non-blogging' and I will begin with the most recent, descending to the oldest event (mid-February.)

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This is Ryan and I as of yesterday, May 5, 2010. It was our 9th wedding anniversary! We went to dinner in Honolulu at Ruth's Chris- the ONLY place I will order a steak. This is significant because I simply DO NOT order steak. Normally I don't think it tastes that great. But at this place... WOW! As my M-i-L would say "it's so good your tongue will slap your brains out!"

We decided to splurge for our anniversary (plan to drop $100) because we never ended up celebrating my birthday in January OR Valentine's Day. I figured if you roll all three dates into one, we'd spend about that much. =) However, the other thing about Ruth's Chris is that you get the royal treatment~ at least for your anniversary! Not only did we have a booth with fresh rose petals all over it, they also brought us a complimentary dessert of chocolate, coconut dipped strawberries (in the picture) AND we received a $25 gift card for the next time we want to go back!! Which of course we can go back in the future and just order dessert and it'd be more than covered. Yay! It was a great night!

The last two days have been filled with May Day performances by Hunter's Elementary school and Gabriella's pre-school (which combined with another Elementary.) These kids are amazing! The dancing was phenomenal and I was shocked that I was watching children do the types of dances we saw...

Of course, the "joke" goes that not much learning takes place after December around these parts because every class is busy practicing for May Day! Well, it certainly shows! In poor test scores and their beautiful performances. It's very oximoronic. (Is that a word?)

Here is the King and Queen of May Day and their court. These are all sixth graders.
Each grade did dances from a certain country. The theme was "Treasures of the World." The Kindergarten portrayed England. Basically they were a bunch of hippies dancing all over the place to Beatles songs. They had fun- but compared to the other grades and costumes, they kind of got the shaft! Ha!

Hunter is in the middle of the picture at the back with blond hair and an orange bandana.
Here he is in all of his English pride glory. =)
Here is my darling Gabriella waiting for their May Day program to start. Can you believe how she blends in with all of these cute Polynesian girls??
They were about to walk out to the floor- they were arranged to look like a flag. It was really cute! Gabriella is a funny girl. She's very happy and normally wears a smile until she sees me watching her. Then suddenly she becomes all sullen. I haven't figured it out yet. Hence the unhappy faces in these pictures! Silly Ella!

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A random picture from a couple of days ago. Hunter was sooooo excited... he'd snuck up on this butterfly and caught it! He put it in his bug catcher for a couple of hours to admire it and then let it go. It was really fun to observe it so up close!

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Hunter has been taking piano lessons since the beginning of the year. Gabriella also began, but we stopped after about 8 weeks and decided we'll give it another couple of years for her to "be ready." Hunter, however has excelled at the piano (although he complained every week!) This was his first recital and he did so well. Way to go Hunter!

Kolea is an aspiring pianist as well. She's posing next to "auntie Stef," Hunter's piano teacher.

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A few weeks back our wonderful friends, Rick and Tiina came to visit us from Texas! We had so much fun with them... so much in fact that I hardly took out the camera! So there are just a few pics of our fun times. We went to the Big Island for two days to go through the temple. We left the kids behind with our friend, Ashleigh who was brave enough to watch the kiddos- just kidding, they really are good kids =) and she was awesome with them!

It's always nice to take some time away from your children and remember why you fell in love in the first place with that person that shares your bed every night! Thanks Rick and Tiina for some great memories!!

We went to Roy's for dinner one night and I had to take a picture of our dessert. It's a molten lava chocolate cake. YUM!
We explored and chilled at a couple of different beaches. So cool.
Check it!
And enjoyed the gorgeous sunset that Kona has to offer.

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Another fun thing we did (why is this underlining?? It's so annoying) was go to the PCC. Hunter and Ryan tried their hands at doing the stick toss. This is done while the dude there chants.

Gabriella was showing her skills as well.
And here you see Kolea's skill. Her skill of being cute.

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So we are down to EASTER! Whew! What a ride!

Every year I throw an Easter Egg Dyeing Party. And every year it's so much fun! So even though we're the newbies here I couldn't have it any other way. Keep in mind we lived about 15 minutes away from the rest of our ward and friends so I simply announced what I was planning and brought it to them! I told all of my friends to spread the news and that anyone was invited-- all they had to bring was their own hard boiled eggs to color and I would provide the rest.

So this is a sample of the crew that turned out for our "party." It was so much fun, and over so quickly!!

There are Hunter and Gabriella hard at work.
Smile! Yay we love dyeing Easter eggs!
We even had a new comer try her hand at it. This is our friend, Sandra from Guatemala City. She'd NEVER dyed and Easter egg before! So we were glad to oblige. =) This was on Good Friday.
We have a tradition in our family. One that Ryan forgets about EVERY year. But that's OK. It was a tradition that I grew up with, not him. The Easter Bunny visits our house on Friday night so that the kids can find their Easter baskets Saturday morning. They can enjoy all the candy they want. Enjoy the secular side of it and have their major sugar highs all day Saturday! That way when Easter Sunday rolls around, all of THAT hype is gone and we can focus on the true meaning of Easter. I love that my parents did this for us growing up (we NEVER knew any differently until we'd left the nest!) So this is how we do it now for our kids and it works great!!

Along these same lines, we've decided that we like to give a little gift to the kids at Easter time since both of the older two have birthdays in December. So they don't get much else the rest of the year, ya know? Anyhow, Gabriella is four now (and the size of a five yr old) and seeing as where we live... she desperately needed a bike!! I decided that this was the perfect time for her to get one. The Easter Bunny could bring it! That way it doesn't look like I just went out and got her one- which is what I was about to do. I don't want the kids to think that we can just get them whatever they want, whenever. I like to reserve that for the holidays...

Anyhow, that's what she got! And she LOVES it. She and Hunter ride together and play together so much better ever since she got her bike. =)
Aren't they cute!?! Of course we couldn't give her THAT and not give Hunter anything. He got a Nintendo DSi. He's been asking for one, but we have a PSP so I reasoned that it was good enough- even though there are only like two games for it. Anyhow, I realized that with the flights we have coming up to the mainland and all the travel this summer I would need BOTH kids to be busy. So we have a friend that put movies on the PSP for Gabriella (she can watch during the long flights) and Hunter got a DS (that he can play all during the flights.) Smart huh? So really, it was an investment for my sanity. =)
We did do one little Easter Egg hunt on Sunday. This is not typical for us, but I actually pushed for it since we'd missed the other TWO hunts that had happened on Saturday. Remember this was during General Conference (well not "during" but the same weekend) and we were tired of being cooped up inside. So here is cutie Kolea "finding" eggs.
What is a typical thing you do on Easter Sunday? Have a big dinner of course with your family!! Well, seeing as none of us students have family here we wanted to host a pot luck at our house so we could create the "Easter Sunday Dinner" atmosphere. We had a great turn out with a lot of delicious food. Thanks to everyone that came and made it special. It's nice to be able to celebrate with our newfound friends!
And besides the church or outdoors- our living room/ kitchen area is the next largest place to hold this type of event!

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And last, but not least...

In the middle of February there was a competition at BYU. It's the Business Plan Competition. Basically you can submit a business plan and it is judged. The top winners receive a cash prize to help them get that business started and turn it into a reality.

Last year was the first year it was done. The winner was our friend, Brett. He started a little company up at Turtle Bay (the ONLY hotel on the No. Shore) where he rents out scooters, motorized bikes, and none other than the awesome SEGWAY!! Well, it's actually a segway tour which is so stinkin' fun! But the others you can rent for a day or two and take off property. He's been very successful with it so far and it hasn't even been a full year yet! But thanks to the money he received from winning the Business Plan Competition he was able to get things under way and start building the company.

Anyhow, Ryan and our friend, Axle (from Mexico) entered and came in SECOND place! Yay! Their plan is to start a Taco truck on the island -- selling D-lish Mexican food. There is a real "need" here since it's extremely hard to come by. So we are very excited for them! As a side note, the first place winner is also a friend in our ward!! Way to go Mike! I think it speaks volumes of the quality of people we have around here.

So we come to the end of the novel. Did you survive? Did you see it through to the end? It's OK if you didn't, but then you don't know about Ryan's most recent endeavor! He's the busiest guy I know. And I'm sooo proud to be his wife!