Hawaii with the McFarlane's

Yes, we went to Hawaii. We own a timeshare out in Ko'Olina on the island of Oahu. It's located about half-hour west of Honolulu. It's an ideal location because it's not near anything touristical, but if you need anything it's only a quick drive away.

Here are all the kids (except Miles) that went on this trip. Yes, that's Lena Latour. She's a great friend and her parents agreed to have her come along with us on the trip. So, if you count it up, that's 6 from the McFarlane's, 4 from the Nings, and Lena makes 11 people in a 2 bedroom resort. Luckily, there was plenty of room and we spent most of the time at the pools.

I don't know who had the wise idea of sending Susie and Tannya to Target shopping together. They were gone for HOURS and when they came back, Crew and Simon had several matching outfits. As you can tell, Simon got tan, but crew pretty stayed white.


There were several pools at the resort...2 main pools which had various features. One pool had a beach walk-in and was only 10" deep which made it perfect for Simon and Crew to just crawl around. There were at least 6 hot tubs. If you ever felt crowded, you could just walk over and jump into another one. Another pool had a cave, waterfall, and a slide. This is Paige coming down the slide. The older kids really enjoyed this one.


Simon of course had arm floaties on. We brought a floating island for Miles to sit in. That way we all could enjoy time in the water.

Crew and Simon really enjoyed playing with eachother. Crew, being able to you know, speak...would ask where Simon and Miles were all the time. Here they were chasing waves out at 1 of 4 private man-made lagoons.

A 10 minute walk down the beach brought us to the Ihilani Hotel which had an exotic fish pool where we went and saw very color fish, hammer-head sharks, and sting rays.
















There were all sorts of activities that you could do there. Everyone who could swim, went out on a catamaran ride one morning and saw dozens of dolphins, snorkeled and also saw giant sea turtles. Every morning you could also walk over to the Ihilani to feed the tropical fish which were trained to show-up there every morning for food.


Depending on his mood, Miles would some times just look at us all from the stroller while we enjoyed the water. He was a trooper.


Simon always wakes up at 6:30 PST. Being 3 hours earlier, we were worried that Simon would wake-up at 3:30am, so we kept him up really late the first night. He still woke up at 3:30 the first night, then 4:00, then 4:15, then 5:00, then 5:30, 5:30, 5:30, then we went home. He would routinely head out to the living room where Lena was sleeping and climb all over her.

After the first couple of nights, she requested that we not have him head out there until at least 7pm. We caught her several times pushing a nap in the afternoons.

We all had a wonderful time. We were able to go out in the evenings and spent some quality time as adults in hot tubs, dining at Roy's, and watching Wolverine in the theatre. It had been a long time since we spent this much time with all of the McFarlane's. There were free/open BBQ pits outside the buildings which we probably should have taken more advantage of. But there was a CostCo, we went to see the LDS Temple in Laie', and went body surfing at Hukilau beach, at Shaved ice, shopped at the Swap Meet, walked the Alamoana Mall...and we never walked in Waikiki. Very fun and relaxing trip.

Chillin'

Kelvin's parents came into town and helped out by watching both Simon and Miles. As usual, Miles got pretty messy after dinner. Instead of taking a bath, Miles decided to accept the chore and treat it like a hot-tub.

Susie also wanted to mention that if Miles keep up his figure, he'll need a "Bro."

We all love Miles. We'll try to post more of him and how big he's growing.

Timeout

Simon got a couple of minutes in his room for this one.

Jackson Hole

So, it's been awhile, but I'm now reporting on our family trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming. The flight was good practice for our trip to Hawaii. In retrospect, we probably packed too much just for the flight. We were separated also on both ways because apparently you can't have 2 lap children in the same row on the plane; something to do with the number of people vs. number of oxygen masks. Most of the passengers were really into the kids. There was one passenger who made it a point to get out of his seat, walk back, and tell us not to have Simon play with his toy that quacks like a duck until we touch down again. Once we touched down, several passengers encouraged Simon to commence maniacally playing with the quacking duck. :)

We loved watching the boys play with their cousins. Miles looked so happy...we were worried about him getting cold.

This was probably what Simon wore 85% of the entire trip. He was always about 5 minutes away from being ready to hit the snow.


Miles and his Cousin Annie Owen were both born on the same day. We call her his twin-cousin. Kelvin prefers the term "Twin-co".

Simon also spent some good time bonding with his Uncle Tay. He loved sitting on the chair with anyone who would watch Bolt.


The tickets to Jackson Hole were pretty cheap. Ski season was already at the tail end, and the snow was melting rapidly. This made the snow around the cabin a bit slushy but also perfect for sledding. Grace and Ben were sledding along the grounds of the cabin. Kelvin caught this video of the two just outside the dining room window. We all suspect that they wanted to maintain the element of surprise by not seeing where they were sledding. In the end, I think Ben got the bad end of this trip.



Simon is famous for putting "a lot" into his mouth. Whenever he can't hold all the food in his hands, he'll put some in his mouth, then grab the rest with his mouth. At a young age, he was able to put a whole binky in his mouth. This time, he stuffed an entire hard-boiled egg in his mouth. I don't even know if I can do it.



Here's a close-up of the event. He had to push the egg in front of his teeth in order to chew. We all would follow him around the house just to see the progress.

On one of the sled trips, we found this on Simon's forehead. It scabbed over nicely but we all were wondering how he got it.

Then we went through our film collection and thought to ourselves, "Maybe this was how he got it."

We all had such a great time with family. Simon loved walking around on the snow. He loves eating ice, so he often got out and would just start eating the snow. No matter how intense the sled ride, he would always get up and start walking back up the hill.

From this slide, you can hear Simon screaming with pure joy down the hill.



The car at the end of the sled ride was actually Susie's Mom. Don't worry, she saw Susie coming down the hills.

We loved the trip. Simon did such a good job on the plane. Miles was a dream. He was definitely loved by all at the cabin.

Simon turns 2

It's hard to believe it's been 2 years since we received Simon. Last year we had a combined housewarming/birthday party...a bit more formal. This year we invited those who were in the area and that kids who played well with Simon...really trying to keep it small.

We focused on Simon's love for chocolate and fruit, and made him chocolate cookies with fresh whipped cream and fresh fruit.

It was a hot day, and thanks to Target, we were able to get a $7 "Slip-n-Slide" which he absolutely loved.

For everyone else, we made some of our famous BBQ Ribs, corn on the cob, and people brought some great salads. Simon really likes his corn...so he separated himself from all the attention to enjoy it himself.


We love that Simon...he continues to entertain us.

Shoes anyone?

It is not a secret...Kelvin can shop with the best of them. He can shop Susie to the ground and still be looking for a great bargain. Over Christmas it was time to purge a couple of pairs of shoes. Shown below are 18 of the 21 pairs of shoes Kelvin currently owns. After pulling them all out, he had to decide on keeping just 15. The 6 pairs were sadly sent off to good-will.

The Boys again....

As you can tell, Miles has been putting on the "LBS". We had a problem trying to get him to sleep during the months of December and January. Apparently, his throat had not quite fully developed, and so he "gasps" at night trying to breathe if he sleeps on his back. What worked the best was swaddling him up and either sitting him straight up on pillows (as shown below) or on his belly (I know...but weren't we all raised sleeping on our bellies?)

Simon still is pretty much oblivious to the new child. He doesn't mess with him, but he does find playing with our shoes and all of Miles' toys quite amusing.

Here he is wedging himself into the Bumbo...he seriously had to tip over to get himself out.

Cary and Simon

In January, for Cary's birthday, the Ning-clan went to the San

The Bacon Weave

So, credit needs to be established first. Kelvin first received a link to this concept from Charles Notley whom he used to hometeach in the Stanford Single's Ward back in 2001. The idea sounded like something we all could not pass-up during Christmas. The original link content is what could be described as, PG-13.

Because of the way the bacon was shaped, Kelvin ended up doing a 6x7 sized square of woven bacon.

Kelvin thought it would be tough the flip the assembly but it was fairly easy with a pair of chopsticks (those asians...so typical) The original link had this cooked in the oven.

The cheese melting and the smell was just to die for.

Rolling it was fairly easy. It was folded such that it could be as long as it could be.

As you can see in the close-up...all yummy goodness. They were quite good. Everyone had a little piece for breakfast.

Christmas 2008....Multiple Family Events

Despite everything going on, we couldn't pass on getting a Christmas Tree. We finally chose a spot in our dining room. The stars added a nice touch. We enjoyed it for the 2 weeks we were home in December.Simon's feet are, well, HUGE. Many times, when he has his shoes on, he runs and isn't use to them being so big, so he trips and falls forward like sliding into homeplate. This time it happened on the sidewalk in front of our house, and we traveled around with a nice scrape on his nose.

Christmas Eve and morning was spent with the Nings. Everyone had Christmas PJ's.

While in Phoenix, we had a couple of special opportunities:
- Christmas with family
- Witness the sealing of Nate and Cari Owen
- Witness the sealing of Baby Annie to the Owen's
- The blessing of Baby Annie.

The sealings and the blessing took place on the same day at the Mesa Temple. The sealing was in the afternoon and we had the best seats in the house. From our vantage point we could see across the altar while baby Annie was held in place by her Grandma Robinson.

Immediately outside, we had everyone gathered for the blessing of Annie. Here we had the Great-Grandmothers.

I don't even know how to caption Sam's expression.

Susie wearing Kelvin's coat standing with her brother Tay (he's currently not dating anyone, that we know of)

We would have thrown some pictures of Grace, but she was shy. Ben however, was just all smiles for the camera.

The boys getting bigger...

So, we are getting used to having 2 boys in the house. Simon still enjoys his bath.

Miles is definitely getting bigger...all attributed to the "straight cream" mommy's providing.