The Big One

I know, I can't believe it either, but Barett turned ONE last Saturday!!  I thought Adelyn's first year went by fast, but this one has been ridiculous.  It has been a great year and I feel sad for those of you who live far away and haven't gotten to be a part of it because this little guy is irresistible.

Those of you who do live around here know that he is a very good-natured guy who is serious about one thing: FOOD.  Even if he is has just eaten, if he sees someone else eating he goes and begs, if he hears the sound of a wrapper across the room, he goes and begs.  Just like a little puppy.

Last Saturday the 18th was the actual day, but the poor thing got a little lost in the shuffle of us trying to get our new house ready to move in to and our current house ready to rent.  Plus we had Aaron's cousin's wedding reception two and a half hours away that evening.  Good thing he had no clue about the neglect...bread in hand and he is happy!

The reception was at someone's house in their ward with some nice property so we took some birthday photos.  Big sis was more excited than he was that it was his birthday.

We didn't throw a fancy party, but took a break from demolishing and painting long enough to at least have some cupcakes and presents with family.  He was a much bigger fan of the carrot cake than Adelyn was at her first birthday (I have to start that indoctrination early on!)

He goes in for his one year check up this week, but I think he is about 28 lbs right now, with eight teeth and lots of hang time behind his ears.  He is definitely not the talker that Adelyn was, but he does say ma ma ma, da da da, na na na (for food), and a-da for Adelyn.  And he is VERY good at grunting.  Apparently he got that from me (when I was a baby that is).

He is much more physical than she is too, so I guess there is something to those gender "stereotypes." He loves climbing on anything and everything, getting into the cupboards and banging pots and pans; to listen to us trying to change his diaper or clothes from the next room you would think we were torturing him because he does not want to be forced to sit still.  You can imagine how he feels about sacrament meeting!

He started walking a few weeks ago and I figured you could see his skills while witnessing his enthrallment with his new truck.  He is very happy to get some "boy" toys after being surrounding by Adelyn's pink girly things everywhere.

I love him so much and am grateful to have him in our family.

July July

Just when I thought we had a busy spring, we are having an even busier summer!!  For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am actually looking forward to fall.  Or maybe I am just looking forward to finishing fixing up our new house, renting out this one, and being all settled down into normal life again...which all probably won't happen until fall.

But while it is still summer, I thought I would share some of the fun things we have been up to.  The 4th of July was a gorgeously perfect northwest day, so we decided to start celebrating early by hitting the Steilacoom parade with Aaron's family.  The gun salutes were a little much for Barett, but Adelyn had a blast getting candy thrown at her.

Yes, she is wearing a scarf.  One of her independent wardrobe choices.

The kids napped in the car on the way back down to a yummy BBQ at my parents, followed by a great night at the Tumwater Artesian Festival.  This is our yearly tradition thanks to my big sis working there, but we weren't sure how little Barett would do.

We decided to all get our faces, or something, painted this year...even Barett sat long enough to get a little lightning bolt on his cheek!

We didn't think we were going to last through the festival and into the fireworks with the young kiddos, but we actually did!!  Barett refused to go to sleep with all the excitement going on and was loving every minute. But even he is only so stubborn and was so tired that he finally fell asleep...sitting on my lap...right in the middle of the booming fireworks show. Ya gotta love him!

Jadyn begged and begged Aaron to do the jousting with her and was surprisingly sad she didn't do better against him.  But she gave it her all...do you see her determination in this picture?

We had the kids in swimming lessons, gearing up for what I hoped was going to be a summer spent lazing by the pool getting tan, but the Washington weather had different plans.

Thanks to the Rosados, we did get a few good days of swimming in!  And crossing my fingers we will get at least a couple more in before all the pools close on Labor Day!!

Fresh berries from Spooner's are another of my favorite parts about July, and it looks like I am not the only one.  I turned my back on the open door to the fridge and found a couple of scavengers when I turned back around.  They were shoving them in by the fistfuls like they hadn't eaten all week!  Spooner's just closed for the season...:(  Maybe I am not happy about fall after all.

While Aaron was gone on one of his too many/too long business trips, we decided to meet up with my sister to go to the Woodland Park Zoo.  Believe it or not, this was my first time ever going, even though I lived practically next to it for two years.  Zoos aren't really my thing, but while my kids love them, I love them.

And they definitely had an awesome time!  Though sometimes they seemed to have more fun with the statues of the animals than the actual animals themselves.  This was our best attempt at getting a cousin shot.  With those two boys being mobile now it was obviously a little out of our skill set.

Since the Tacoma zoo doesn't have lions, this is what Adelyn and I were most looking forward to, and boy did we get a good shot!!  I do NOT have a fancy camera with great zooming, this was just how close we were to it!  It was RIGHT on the other side of the glass, which another lady said this was the closest she had EVER seen the male lion and she goes to the zoo a lot.

The elephants were awesome too, though not long after this my kids started to break down a little as it got more and more past naptime.  It was just a little too big to see everything in the two hour window that Barett can usually stand being awake in between naptime.  He screamed the whole 20 minute walk back to the car and all that beautiful Seattle traffic somehow didn't seem to brighten his mood or help put him to sleep.

 In bigger news, Aaron's sister had her baby, Brynnalise Rose in July!  She came close to sharing my birthday, but ended up coming the 24th, while I was gone at Girls' Camp.

The kids got to see her though...here is a little better cousin shot of the Anderson side cousins.  We are so lucky to have the cousins all fairly close right now!!

Hope you guys have been out there enjoying the summer too!

Maui

I know it has been forever since I posted the first part of our trip, but just in case there is anyone out there that still cares, here I am with the second half.  We start right off with the flight over there, which was most likely the shortest trip of my life.  I thought this captured the spirit of Aloha quite nicely!

We stayed in Kaanapali, so we bummed around Lahaina for our first evening there and ran into a celebrity.  Well, I'm sure it probably wasn't him, but doesn't he look an awful lot like Chuck Norris?!?!

Aaron worked the next morning while I was busy getting a sunburn and reading the super-depressing-I'm-so-glad-I'm-an-American A Thousand Splendid Suns.  He thought he would teach me to surf, hence the long board but my back wasn't up for the challenge.  Maybe next time!  I was content just chilling in the gorgeous water, working a little more on my sunburn.

We hit up Duke's that night and took this picture just for you Erica!  The infamous Hula Pie came courtesy of our condo, so we couldn't resist.  It was the only thing that made Aaron partially forget about the tiny rock that had imbedded itself in his foot that afternoon.

He asked me to look at his foot for him to see if there was a cut there, but there was much more than a cut!  Poor guy...I had to pretend I had any nursing skill whatsoever and try to dig it out with tweezers and a needle from a basic first aid kit.  We think there may even be a little piece left in there now a month later!

At least he had an excuse to drive this around the grocery store.  He was having a BIT too much fun with it I think.

Because I get car sick so easily, we did not commit ourselves to the Road to Hana.  But we had a little extra time the next day after our boat excursion so we decided to head out there to see what all the fuss was about.  The bark on these Eucalyptus trees was so cool and they smelled amazing.

I thought it would help if I drove, but wow those turns were unbelievable!!  I was loving the scenery, but we decided to head home after hitting our first waterfall.  

This was the view from our balcony.  So beautiful!  And we didn't have to make any sharp turns to see it, just roll over in the morning and open the eyes.

Since I was feeling all the Asian love, I figured a visit to the Giant Buddha in Lahaina before heading out was a must.  Apparently it is the largest of its kind outside of Japan.

Speaking of giant, we had to snap a photo of the ridiculously huge Banyan tree they have there as well.  When it was first planted, it was 8 feet tall, but now is close to 60 feet tall and spreads out to cover over a 200 ft area.  Crazy. 

We also visited the Iao Valley, home to this Iao Needle, a famous landmark of Maui and a formal sacred burial ground.  Apparently this was an important location anciently and was where the battle to unify the Hawaiian Islands was lost by Maui's people.  

The rest of these pictures are all from the boating adventure that we took.  When deciding which little splurge we would do, i said I wanted to see turtles and dolphins, and supposedly this one saw both.  We weren't prepared for how rough the ride was--it was a pontoon boat that felt like a jet ski ride on the open waters.  It was awesome, though a bit nail biting at times!

This ride (Blue Water Rafting) was also unique in that it took us down around the southern tip of the island, the Kuhio Coast, where the lava flowed into the ocean most recently.  If I were a geologist, I am sure I would have gotten excited about the formations.  We just thought they were gorgeous.  And don't you love the color of the water?!

Of course we got to do some snorkeling while we were out there.  This is us at the Molokini Crater.  Try not to be scared by my snorkeling face.  Or my weird finger formation.  Yikes.  I thought the reflection on the underside of the water was pretty cool.

We thought the snorkeling was better when we were down in Key West, but some people on our boat saw a shark and the scuba divers saw an eel, so maybe we just weren't sleuthy enough!  I WAS glad that there weren't millions of tiny jellyfish and barracuda though like in Key West.  This was much more relaxing.

Aaron got pretty far down.  We had thought about trying out that Snuba thing, but the water was so clear there that we were glad we didn't.  Anyone tried it before?

 So yes, we did manage to see some turtles!  We saw quite a few of them at this place they aptly call Turtle Town.  Aaron and I followed this one for a long time before he decided he was bored with us and dove back down to the bottom.  I was surprised at how fast they are.

Not on the list of things to do: have a bird eat right out of my hand.  But it happened and we captured it for posterity.

And finally the moment came that I had been most anticipating: DOLPHINS!!!  Ever since I was a little kid visiting Galveston, TX in the summers, I have wanted to see one up close.  One time we were down there and someone spotted them in the distance and I swore one came and nibbled at my feet because it wanted to be my friend.  

The excitement in the video is 18-22 seconds in.  That's when Aaron got smart and decided to just stick the underwater camera down into the water to see if we could get a better glimpse of something more than the dorsal fin.  So cool!

Anyway, we had a great time and really appreciate Michelle for watching the kiddos while we were gone and making it all possible.  I think I am ready to do something like that again as soon as she gets back from BYU next summer.  I don't know how we are going to get along without her. :(

Oahu!

Most of you know that we recently went to Hawaii, and most of you probably know how long I have been wanting to go there.  So I thought it was pretty awesome when we had a fairly last minute opportunity to go courtesy of Aaron's work.

Little did I know how much it (Oahu anyway) was going to remind me of a place I have spent a lot of time...Taiwan!!  Any of you who have been to both agree with me?

Similarities:

Asians everywhere

Lots of delicious fresh fruit

Lots of fish and rice

Crowded on the westside, rural on the east

Tropical climate and plants

Anyway, you probably don't care, just had to share.  It was just so nice because it made me feel so easily connected to the spirit, such peace.  Or maybe that was my lack of children!

The first morning we got up and Aaron went surfing while I tried the stand up paddle but we didn't have the camera.  For about 20 minutes of being stuck in one place I thought I was going to get carried out to sea, but I said a prayer and was immediately directed how to get back (see what I mean about the spirit?) .

After his meeting we headed to Pearl Harbor but they weren't doing tours because of the high winds, so kept heading north to check things out.  Below is the North Shore.  Hard to believe how big the waves get in the winter because it was like a lake the day we went.

We stayed the next few nights on the windward side in Kailua.  The beach there by our house was GORGEOUS!!!

The next day after Aaron's meetings we headed up the east coast.  Here is the Chinaman's Hat island (more things sending my thoughts to Taiwan).

We hit up the temple, which had just been reopened from remodeling.  It was beautiful and the grounds amazing.  You notice our pictures are pretty cloudy...yes it rained a bit most days we were there...so much for escaping the Washington clouds!!!

After the temple we hit up the Polynesian Cultural Center for a luau and the night show.  I couldn't believe how good those fresh leis smelled!

Taiwan also has a native people and customs separate from the mainland Chinese who fled there during their revolution.  

We got to see them taking the pig out of the ground.  It was pretty good, but I have to say I loved all the taro stuff more (poi excluded), yes, more similarities to Taiwan and more good memories.  Are you sick of it yet?  Definitely never saw fire knife dancers in Taiwan though, which was so awesome.  I must admit to almost falling asleep in the night show until those guys came on.  Amazing.

The next day Aaron was actually in meetings all day, so I biked up to this little hike through the jungle to a viewpoint overlooking the bay.

This is where I went, though I didn't go all the way to the top.  The guy at the gate at the bottom told me they had two people fall last year, one of whom didn't make it.  Definitely enough to scare me off!  I did manage to see some wild pigs on the hike, though they were too fast for me to get a picture.

We had enough time that evening to do a little bit of boogie boarding at Mokopu'u, which was of course really beautiful (and yes, yet again cloudy).

We weren't the only ones who felt like hitting the beach...we were joined by a Hawaiian monk seal.  The lifeguard said she was pregnant and would come here to rest while swimming between the islands on her way back home.  

She slept the whole time we were there and missed my awesome skills.  There was a huge rip current there that would suck you out even just standing on the beach, so we took it easy but still had a good time.

The next morning we headed to Maui, so more on that to come soon!