Holiday News

We have good news! Our new AuPair, Lara, will be arriving from Germany on January 26. We are very happy that we were able to locate an AuPair that fits our family's needs in such a short period of time. Lara recently graduated from college this past December with a degree in speech therapy. She has many hours of experience working with children so we are comfortable that Lara will bring tremendous child development knowledge and experience to our home and we have the added bonus of a speech therapist.

Hawaii was so much fun. Nathan boogie boarded for the first time and just had a blast!! We have lots of pictures of him in the water. Gillian, the little rascal wouldn't so much as put a toe in the water!! If you brought her anywhere near the shoreline, she would break down sobbing in tears. I thought for sure that if we gave her a little time to get used to the beach and the water that she would be ok, but no such thing. She was quite happy to sit on the upper most part of beaches and play in the sand.

Frances and Cris went snorkeling and since I'm a wimp when it comes to putting my face underwater, I happily sat on the beach all day with Nathan and Gillian and Erin while they played in the sand and surf. Well as I said before Nathan and Erin played in the sand and surf and Gillian just played in the sand.

We went to Paradise Cover to a Luau which was delicious and so much fun. Mai Tai, need I say more? Ok, so the kids had non-alcoholic beverages that were simulated Mai Tai's but yep Cris and I had the real things and our designatated driver was a 200 lb Hawaiian driving bus number 3. Since it was a 27 mile walk back to hotel, we decided that we better make sure we got on the bus. No problem!! There were only 9 other buses that all looked the same. Needless to say we did make it back to our hotel without any trouble.

We hiked to the top of Diamond Head just under a mile basically staight up with over 600 steps to climb. Erin climbed to the very top, not one complaint, or moan or groan. This was a very big deal for her to climb so far. It took us over almost 1.5 hours to get to the top and then another hour to get down. Cris and I carried Nathan and Gillian all the way. Bet you guessed that one. My legs were so sore the next day, but it was worth it. The view was amazing!

Cris and I rented a kayak for an afternoon and kayaked to three tiny islands off the coast of some little town that I cannot pronounce...kalipali, kaneope, kappaboggy who knows they all sound the same to me and I can't say or spell any of them.

We spent an afternoon on the North Shore at Turtle Bay, again, Mai Tai's on the beach and massive massive ocean waves, watched a few surfers, and of course this is where Nathan boogie boarded. We visited Sunset Beach, and Hailewa, the historical surf village and saw the Bay Watch house from the TV series. Cris tried to get me to do the Bay Watch run down the beach like those life guards do on the TV serices, but I didn't want to show any of them up or cause a tsumami on the West coast in case I fell into the ocean.

We went to Dole Plantation and rode the Pineapple Express Train and visited their botanical garden. The kids all said that they actually learned something about pineapples from the morning's excursion and I loved the gardens.

Christmas Day we took an evening dinner cruise in Waikiki on a ship which was so much fun and the food was delicious. The only problem was that Frances got some kind of stomach bug that started up earlier in the day and continued for the next 3 days. This put a damper on her spirits and her activities but she was feeling better by the time we took our flight home.

Cris and I had a few evenings out for dinner alone as Jessica and Frances stayed with the little ones. We went to see the illusionist John Hirokawa. His show is worth seeing at least once. Cris and I also went out for sashimi(well he had sashimi, I had cooked food). Yum is all I can say.

Overall our trip was pleasant. We discovered that Gillian gets car sick now, which is not cool at all as we cleaned out the car seat 3 times over the course of our trip. I'm not sure if it was entirely car sickness or if she has what Frances had too. Nathan and Gillian were playing with the safe in our room and Gillian slammed the heavy door just as Nathan was putting his head inside and he had a black eye for most of the trip. I finally turned the safe around so that the door faced the wall so they would't get into any more accidents.

With a 22 month old and a 3 year old, it's safe to say that expecting them to sit down for a meal without squealing or squawing or figiting is next to impossible. So meal times in general were our greatest challenge. Some days meal times were tolerable, the rest were disasters. I think both mine and Cris' blood pressures were at their worst. Thankfully we had enough of us to manage the little rascals when they got too much to handle. Thank goodness for Jessica and Frances and of course Cris' never ending patience.

The only major glitch on our trip was that our return flight was delayed by more than 2 hours. So instead of getting home at a reasonable hour like 9 pm we got home about 12:30 am. Then we all stayed up opening the presents that we didn't take to Hawaii with us. I think bedtime finally rolled around about 2 am for us.

So all in all, we had a great time.

Cris and I will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary in May, perhaps we can sneak away for a 4 or 5 day trip...ALONE....wouldn't that be nice?