knock, knock....hello?....anyone still out there?.....

hi, do you remember me? it's been....well, way over a month since my last post! i wouldn't blame you for losing faith in me and giving up on ever hearing from me again! i mean, gosh, i would have given up on me!!

 

i know that some of you are still hanging on to the hope that i would post again (thank you so much for the email's and phone call's! they make me feel loved!), and well, it paid off because here i am! and i thank you for being a faithful "non-reader" this past month!

 

i am here to tell you that, yes, we are still alive! and yes, we made the trip to albuquerque with out any noteworthy problems. and yes, we are adjusting well. and yes, we have been busy getting settled. and yes, i am happy to say, that i think we may be getting close to the point where i feel almost at home in someone else's house.

 

it's been interesting, to say the least, and sometimes frustrating, to move into my in-laws house (this is the house mitch grew up in! pretty cool, huh! his parent's bought the house the day they got married!) and try to merge our stuff with their stuff. they are not living here while we are, but we are using most of their "stuff" so we can leave our stuff packed away until we move to the other side of town (closer to intel) after we build our house, whenever that actually happens! so i have been busy packing up some of their things to make room for our things, and cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning!

 

of course, i have also been dealing with getting the girls into school and figuring out how to be everywhere i am needed to be when i am needed to be there. i've been trying to find the best grocery stores to shop at that won't drain our savings account (i cannot believe how expensive the groceries are here!!) sadly there is no winco, oh how i miss the bulk section and the mount hood mix (anyone care to send some my way, like a HUGE bagful??? what are we going to eat at our game nights???) the other day kale'a was eating a bagel for breakfast and she said, "mom, when can we get winco bagels? these taste funny!" i couldn't have agreed more!

 

oh, did i mention that i have been cleaning a lot, too!?  don't EVEN get me started on the whole insurance drama we have been going through (i'm sure you'll hear more on this subject!). oh yeah, and don't forget that we are still trying to sell our house in a downward spiraling market (this, in and of itself, brings such joy, *read: thick sarcasm*, to my heart!).

 

all of this while trying not to lift heavy things or do too much or be too stressed, thanks to my placenta!

 

i know it sounds like i am complaining, but really i am not! this is the first time we have ever moved and it is just all so new to me! i guess now i really KNOW, first hand, why moving is one of the things on the seven most stressful things you can do list! 

 

in fact, we do like it here and i just have to share one of my most favorite things about living in albuquerque this lovely november:

 

 

this was from our first day here. see the beautiful blue sky? do you notice something about it? i'll give you a hint...something is missing from that blue sky? do you know what it is?.... CLOUDS! and do you know what has replaced those clouds?.... bright, beautiful SUNSHINE, E-V-E-R-Y-D-A-Y! notice the girls in their shorts and short sleeves and nani is quenching her thirst because she is so warm!  can i just tell you that we DO NOT miss the gray, drizzle that is falling in oregon right now!

 

 

see, the girls are loving the sunshine, too! oh, and that is "coug" or "cougar" in the background. a very dear part of our family, we love "coug"! he stays at grandma great's house just down the road a bit! we wave to him and say "bye coug" everyday as we take kale'a to preschool!

 

anyway, blah, blah, blah.... this was supposed to be a short post just to say i am alive and well. but i guess it became a long post to say i am alive and well. such is the case when i haven't posted for awhile. you can blame mitch who has abandoned us, his lovely ladies. he drove away this morning headed back to oregon for job training! yeah, i know, that was poor planning! intel should have just trained him before we left! boy how i wish i was in that truck with him when he left! there are so many of you i would have loved to see again! (to our oregon friends, stop by and say hi to mitch this week. he should be there tuesday, wednesday, and thursday staying in our empty house! i'm sure he'd love to see you!)

 

so, i am holding down the fort for 8 or so days (cry, whimper)! which means a lot of blog time for me!  once the girls are in bed at 7 sharp every night, i plan to catch up on my blogging! yipee! there is so much i want to post....from before we left oregon, to the trip here, to once we arrived and everything in between! so, forgive me for backtracking, but if i don't (since this is my "journal") there will be a huge void in my life from october '08 thru november '08 when i look back on what  we were doing then. and this has been a pretty major event in the life of us!

photo tag

my dear friend, darilyn, tagged me with this photo tag, and since i love all things photography, i couldn't pass it up!

 

what you do is go into your pictures folder and take the 4th picture in your fourth folder and post it.  my 4th folder is "2004 Jan. - Apr." and this is my fourth picture in that folder:

 

if you can't tell from the date of the folder, or the picture, this is nani and lala. nani was a few months shy of  3 and lala was 3 or 4 months old. i just love the big eyes on lala! you can see her spunky personality already forming! i love the rosy cheeks on nani! what a sweet girl she has been from the get go! she loved lala from day one and  puts up with a lot from her spunky sister, but never stops loving her and teaching her!

 

i tag my sister and anyone else who wants to take a peek back at their fourth picture folder and take a walk down memory lane!

birtrhday week

we are quickly approaching "birthday week" for our family. the second week of october has always been a pretty busy, but fun week for us in my family growing up.

it all starts on the 6th of october, the most important day of the month, of course, with my birthday! then, it is followed, very closely, by my mom's birthday on the 8th.

next, my two best friends in high school, i know that is not "family" but it is pretty darn close, have their birthday's. sara's is on the 9th and sarah's is on the 11th (yes, my two best friends were both named sara/h).

needless to say, it was a very fun time of the year for all involved!

well, if that wasn't enough birthdays for one week, we had to go and add more to the mix. lala was born in 2003 on october 11th. almost exactly 3 years later, kawena was born on the 13th.

so, on monday (MY BIRTHDAY) we officially begin "birthday week" in our family! and this year, it culminates with kawena's 2nd birthday, monday the 13th, and the day we drive away from oregon, set for the sunnier skiesof albuquerque(good thing she's only turning two and will have no clue that we are skipping her birthday party!). that is if we get everything packed and ready to go!

let the celebrations begin!

the good and the not so good

first of all i want to thank you all for the congratulations and well wishes! i knew i could count on you guys to encourage us through this crazy time!

 

i know many of you were surprised by our little announcement, but those who know me, shouldn't be too surprised. i have a tendency to keep it a secret for as long as i possibly can. i don't know, it just seems to make the 9 months go so much quicker. i mean, look, i've only got 4 more months to go!

 

typically, i choose not to tell people when i am pregnant just because it is fun. this time around, however, there were other reasons, as well.

 

so, by way of explanation...

 

the good: fertility drugs that make it possible for us to conceive

the not so good: the adverse side effects of fertility drugs (ohss)

 

the good: in may, we got pregnant with twins (yes it was during my whole fertility "drama")

the not so good: in june, we lost one of them at 5 weeks

 

the good: at the 6 week ultrasound, we saw a good strong heartbeat

the not so good: at that same ultrasound we saw the empty sac of the baby we lost

 

the good: at the mid pregnancy ultrasound, 2 weeks ago,  we were able to see our baby. baby is healthy and growing properly. baby has all 10 fingers and all 10 toes. everything looks great with baby. baby is VERY active, the girls were laughing at how much it moved around during the ultrasound

the not so good: at the ultrasound we also learned that i have COMPLETE placenta previa. unless the placenta moves out of the way (very slight chance) of the cervical opening my only option is a c-section (coming from this mama who has delivered all three babies naturally without any drugs, it is hard for me to take) i DO NOT want a c-section! not only that, there are several other possible complications with this diagnosis: bleeding during pregnancy, bedrest, hospital bedrest, low birth weight, having to take the baby early, hemorrhage at delivery, to name a few, not to mention that i will be in a new place with new people. but more concerning is the fact that i will be without my support system of friends that i've come to love, and rely upon dearly over the past 8 years  while living here in oregon

 

the good: i have come to rely heavily upon prayers and faith and blessings. my family held a fast on my behalf and we all went to the temple this past saturday. i feel my faith increasing through this trial and i feel closer to my family and the Lord. i feel a peace that only comes through the spirit that everything will be alright

the not so good: i was an emotional wreak for about a week after learning my diagnosis and i still have my days, but just not as often as that first week

 

the good: we are having a baby!!

top 7 stressful things

have you ever heard of the top 7 stressful things a person can do in their life? i hadn't until back in 2000 when one of mitch's co-workers pointed out to him that we were doing almost all of these things, at the time we were not yet pregnant. according to him they are (in no particular order):

1. graduate from college
2. start a new job/change jobs or careers
3. get married
4. move
5. buy/sell a house
6. have a baby
7. death of a loved one

well, in the year from 1999-2000 mitch and i experienced all of those top 7 most stressful things.

1. august 1999 i graduated from byu with my bachelors degree and went on my first date with mitch the same week.
2. december 1999, 4 months to the day from our first date mitch and i got married
3. february 2000 mitch's grandmother passed away
4. march 2000 mitch graduated from byu with a masters in chemical engineering and that same week we moved to oregon
5. march 2000 the week we moved to oregon, mitch started his first "real job" as an engineer at intel while i worked as a personal trainer
6. july 2000 we found out that we were pregnant with our first daughter, noelani
7. september 2000 we moved into our newly built and purchased home (the home we are currently trying to sell)

maybe, because we didn't know that these were on the top 7 most stressful things you could do list, we survived with very little stress. we were excited to graduate and move on from that stage in our lives. we were excited to get married. we were excited for a new adventure in a new place. we were excited and grateful that we had jobs. we were excited to be new homeowners. and we were most excited to be starting our family. maybe we were just to naive to really know what we were getting ourselves into. nevertheless, we survived!

 

the other day i was thinking about this exchange that mitch had with his co-worker. as i thought about it, i realized that we are back in the same boat that we were in 8 years ago. while we won't be experiencing all 7 of the above list, during the year 2008-2009 we will have experienced the following:

1. september 14, 2008 my uncle ned passed away
2. october 2008 mitch will start a new job
3. october 2008 we will move several states away to new mexico
4. sometime soon (we hope) 2008 our house will sell and we will purchase the beautiful 1 acre lot we found while in albuquerque and begin designing our new home
5. october 2008 nani and lala will both start school in a new place with new friends
6. early february 2009 we will welcome baby #4 into our family
7. we already got married, so we won't be doing that again

let's hope that we can survive it this time around as easily as we did the first time around!

 

hah! that's wishful thinking! already we are way more stressed out than we were the first time around, but that really wouldn't be hard to do!

 

i can think of three things that we didn't have last time that might make things a bit more difficult...namely, nani, lala, and kawena! they'll just make the ride more enjoyable....right??

hawaiian sunday

today, was hawaiian sunday again! thankfully we made it through without anyone getting peed on! in the hopes that we would make it through all of church without needing a wardrobe change, i brought my camera and got rachael (my fellow photographer) to take some family pictures of us after church! the lighting was not the best because the sun was so bright and high in the sky, but i think she did a great job with what we had to work with!

 

so, here is our little hawaiian family:

kawena was playing "limp noodle" and didn't want to cooperate. that's what happens when a two year old has just endured 3 hours of church in the middle of her nap time! so, this was the best we could get from her. at least, she managed to slightly look up at the camera and almost gave us a smile!

 

this is what she looked like in most of the pictures:

 

 

of course, i had to snap a few shots of the girls:

                         noelani ("nani")- 7 1/2

 

 

                                       kale'a ("lala")- 5

 

 

                                            kawena- 2

 

 

 

i must admit, as much as i fought wearing the mu'u mu'u to church the first time around, i finally embraced it and have actually enjoyed wearing it to church!

"hawaiian sunday", much to the girls delight, has become a new tradition for our family!

not quite ready for a pet

today when i was picking lala up from her dance class, she found a roly poly in the bark chips outside the dance studio. she was thrilled beyond belief. she first showed miss heidi and then she showed me. after which, she began to shake it violently in between her cupped hands while saying, "look i'm shaking it up!"

miss heidi said, "you're going to give him a headache!"

and i replied, "whoa, be careful! you're going to make him sick and then you'll have roly poly throw up all over your hands!"

 

that thought made her face cringe, and she quickly stopped that "fun" activity. it was a classic look, oh how i wish i had my camera at that moment trained on her face!

 

on our way home, ever so cautiously, she carried it in her cupped hands making sure not to squish it. once at home, she caringly got a jar, put some dirt and grass and leaves in it to make it comfortable for her new roly poly "pet".

 

well, tonight after dinner i mentioned that we would need to let him go tomorrow because we didn't have the right kind of food to feed him and he could die if she kept inside the jar. this did not make her happy! she said, "but i want him for my pet!"

to which i said, "i know you do, but if we keep him he could die."

and it was in this moment, aside from the violent shaking earlier in the day, that i knew she was not yet ready for a pet when she said, "i want him for my pet! i don't care if he dies! "

 

it's a good thing we started out small!

i'm a winner!

about a month ago i entered a smilebooks photo contest (you can view all winning photos on this link). it was a smiles of summer photo contest. i thought, "heck? why not?" so, i dug through my pictures and came up with this one:

 

well, i won third prize (along with some other photos)!! so, now i have $100 to make my own smile book! i am excited to put something together of our 2008 year. i've done a photo book every year since 2006 and have been wanting to do one for this year and now i have the motivation and excuse!

 

woo hoo for me!!  i might have some talent after all!

fun with a glow stick and a slow shutter

both nani and lala got a glow stick at nani's skate party. that night when we tucked them in to bed, of course, they had to sleep with their glow sticks. they asked if we could take pictures of them playing with the sticks in the dark. after much maneuvering and manipulating the camera on manual, i finally figured out how to get the effect they were after:

 

nani is doing a star with the blue one, while lala is doing a rectangle with the green.

 

 

in this one nani is walking back and forth as she walks closer to the camera, while lala does her own little design.

 

when they were satisfied, i tucked them back into bed and went downstairs. mitch asked what i was doing up there with the camera. i told him. then he said, "i want to do it, too!"

 

so, i got the camera back out and we both headed back up to the girls room. of course, they were thrilled to be able to get out of bed for a second time after being tucked in. this was what mitch had in mind:

 

who ever knew you could have so much fun with a glow stick and a camera!?

flashback at skate world

nani turned 7 in march of this year and for some reason we never had a party for her. last year we didn't have a party for her either (i know we sound like lame parents!). so, when we found out that we were for sure moving, and the girls would be leaving all of their friends behind, we decided that nani needed to have a birthday party. but what do you do when you are leaving before her next birthday?

 

well, we celebrate with a half birthday party, of course! i looked it up online and her actual 1/2 birthday is this sunday, september 21st. what perfect timing!

 

so, tonight we had a little skate party for the half birthday girl! and when i say a skate party, all you have to do is imagine the skate center you used to go to as a child! seriously, we walked into this place and all of the adults were taken back to their youth. the first thing mitch said was, "this looks exactly like the place i skated at as a child back in albuquerque!" from the disco ball, to the carpet, to the paint on the walls, not to mention the 80's music and the smell. i am positive it is all original! yuck, don't even talk to me about how dirty the place must have been! but all that aside, the kids had a blast!!

 

check out the color of the walls!

 

uh-oh lala! it took a little time for her to get her skate legs. look at that carpet! ugh!

 

unfortunately, it was too dark on the skate rink to get any photos out there. all of what i got was in the bright green and yellow and red painted party room.

 

stephanie, an amazingly talented cake decorator made nani's cake and it turned out adorable!

 

 

once everyone left and we packed up the car to leave nani said, "this was the best birthday party i've ever had!" music to a parents ears!

one party down, one to go! (that's kawena "smiling" for the camera!)