Hawaii

Aloha! We took a six day trip to Oahu, Hawaii last week and it was amazing! The kids did so well travelling (over six hours the way there and four hours on the way home)...except for the one breakdown Grace had on the way home. She screamed bloody murder because we wouldn't let her hold the full cup of orange juice the flight attendant gave her that had no lid on it. You'd think we were pulling her toe nails out.

We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach which is an amazing resort when you have kids with you. It has three pools -one has four water slides. It has tons of pool areas that are great for toddlers to reach the bottom. It has at least a dozen restaurants, two Starbucks, an ice cream shop and tons of other attractions. We would get up everyday and head to the pool for a few hours. Then back to the hotel for family nap time (which was a success every day!), then back to the pool for an hour, Mai Tai times two, dinner, dessert, then a movie in the room.

We were greeted with leis off the plane! The kids were iffy about them.

26th floor hotel room!

Caiden mastering the art of chopsticks! 

Diamond Head in the background

Caiden spotted the paddle boats the first day and begged us everyday until we gave in. $40 to pedal a boat against the wind for an hour ;)

Mahalo!

Movie Time! 

 The kids slept great in the room. I usually shared a bed with Grace and Marc with Caiden.

We had a lot of fun! The kids are getting easier to travel with...and when you go to the pool everyday and let them have treats because they are on vacation it makes for some very happy kids. We will definitely be going back to this place! Aloha!

Grace: 2 and a half years

She loves to have her hair done. Every morning after I get her dressed she sits on the chair in her room and I do her hair. She never makes a peep even if I'm pulling hard to get it in pig tails or trying to braid it -she puts up with all of it. And after her bath she loves when I blow dry and brush it until it's dry.

Her favorite food is cheese. She will do anything to get her hands on some cheese.

She also likes to pick out her outfit in the morning. Her favorites are her Paw Patrol and Winnie the Pooh t-shirts. She is also getting used to the idea of wearing dresses and skirts. When she puts them on she instinctively twirls around in circles.

When she gets up from her naps she almost always says, "Caiden?". And wants to know what he's doing and where he is. They are becoming very attached to each other.

We are a few months away from full on potty training. At this point it is just me getting my act together to do the whole thing. She already goes both #1 and #2 in the toilet before her nap and bedtime every day. And quite a few times tells me when she needs to go #2 before doing it in her diaper. Now that I think of it...I don't think I've changed a poopy diaper in many, many days.

She's fully on board with asking the question, "Why?", a hundred times a day. She is stringing two, three and four words together to speak in sentences now which is making communicating so much easier! She is also starting to understand reason. We can tell her why something is not a good idea if she wants to do it and she listens to our answer and accepts it.

She is getting less emotional when you use a stern voice with her if she's doing something wrong. She used to immediately start crying and run to whomever wasn't the one raising their voice.

She is such a lover...especially of ME! I can fix almost anything that she's having trouble with and I'm the last person she wants to see before bedtime and the first person she calls for when she wakes up in the morning. Sometimes it drives me bonkers but I always try to remember that this is a short time where I'm her favorite person so I try to hold her and kiss on her whenever she wants. She also loves her 'night night' (the little blanket that she sleeps with). But she loves to carry it around ALL DAY LONG. I have to wash it almost every other day because if I don't get it away from her before we leave the house it gets carried around to every activity that day. I recently discovered that the second/spare one we bought is different than the original. For months now she would push it to me and say, "see, see?" while holding the tags and I just thought she was showing it to me. Well come to find out that one of them has two small tags and one has three small tags. I can't believe they would do that to us...haha. So far it hasn't seemed to be an issue (because she never has two at the same time) and she just deals with it...but sooner or later I'm sure she'll figure out that there must be two different blankets.

She is just such a love bug. She randomly tells me all the time, "I love you, mommy.". I love you too, muffin!

My Aunt Sue made Grace a My Little Pony. She loves it and also insists on sleeping with it.

She had her first dentist appointment last week. No cavities! They said she was the best 2 year old they've seen. She sat completely still all by herself and they even did x-rays because she was so good.

We see this face all too often.

Caiden: 4 and a half years

I can't believe we're half a year away from having a FIVE year old! So much has happened since he turned four and I feel like I can see him getting more mature every single day. Sometimes it breaks my heart when I see him getting older and just want him to stop growing. He's tolerating Grace more and more everyday. He includes her in on activities and I hear him playing make believe with her and it makes me smile. We went to an indoor play center last week and he made sure Grace was always right behind him and showing her where to go and helping her if she got stuck. All of these things just make my heart melt (and then the other half the time they are fighting ;).

He loves Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He's only watched clips of the cartoon but he knows that they "battle" and he can't wait to watch it. I've been telling him for about a year now that he has to wait until he's five to watch it...and now that he's almost five I think he needs to be like eight or nine. But he is DEAD SET on watching it when he turns five. Not sure who's going to win that battle when the time comes. We got him a Ninja Turtle comforter for his bed and he's obsessed with it. All the turtles have to be displayed perfectly all the time, which pretty much means he makes his bed all the time...win, win! Although quite annoying at first when he would wake up in the middle of the night and his comforter would be all tangled up and he would wake us up to, "straighten his bed". He's gotten over that now but boy that was an eye opener the first few times he came in our room at 2am.

He's finally starting to enjoy school! He used to get bummed when it was a school day but now he's pretty excited. His teachers have told me that him and a few other boys have been playing, "Ninjas" on the playground. He loves to tell me about what the other boys choose for their turtle name and how they play. We've been setting play dates with those kids in the class and it's great to see him making friends.

He's starting to phase out of his naps. He'll go two or three days without taking a nap and then take one. It's another one of those big changes that really make you take note of how old he is getting.

He's still a big cuddler with me and almost every morning runs to our bed, jumps on me and just lays on me while I hug and kiss him. I call him "muffin" all the time and the cutest was when he got up from his nap and Grace ran up the stairs and yelled "muffin!" and gave him a hug. Marc and I were in tears with how cute it was.

He is such a good kid and we can't wait to see what he gets in to this year!

Christmas 2016

We headed back to Nebraska for Christmas. We left eight days before Christmas, so had a lot of festive time to spend before Christmas. The kids LOVED the Christmas tree (or mostly the candy canes my parents had sprinkled on it). I had to remove them shortly after we got there because it was getting a bit out of control. Especially since Grace just bites and chews hers up and is done in about 30 seconds. Caiden takes his time and sucks on it and makes it into a little point. Either way they were trying to eat candy canes one after another.

My parents surprised us and bought a shuffle board table -it is awesome! It's such a fun activity to have at the house...especially when it's 20 degrees BELOW zero. It was COLD when we got there.  The minute we stepped out of the airport and the wind hit the kids Grace started crying and Caiden immediately turned back around and went inside the airport. I had to coax him out and tell him to run fast to the truck.

After a few days the weather started reaching into the 30's and we were able to go outside for minutes at a time. My Dad and Marc took Caiden up the goose blind behind my parents house for the first time. Unfortunately they didn't see any geese the few times they went up so I think Caiden still thinks you just go up there to pick up the shot gun shells off the floor and play with the dump truck my Dad put in the blind. And Caiden's favorite part was when my Dad let him "drive" the truck. He thought it was so cool and always made sure that was going to be a part of the adventure.

Marc and I went out to dinner with Mickey and Bill and they came over with their twins a few times as well. Love them!

On Christmas Eve Santa came to visit and all the kids just ate it up. They all followed him around until he sat down and all wanted to sit on his lap. Caiden and Grace each got light-up shoes they've been wanting (Grace didn't take them off for days...you can see in the Christmas morning picture below -she put them on immediately after waking up and wore them all day long).

On a side note. Caiden commented this year, "There are a lot of different Santas".  I guess I should tone it down on the visiting of different Santa's each year. This year he probably met six different Santas...I'm surprised the cat wasn't out of the bag with that boy.

On Christmas morning everyone slept in until about 10am so it was a late start. Caiden ran to the Christmas tree and just couldn't wait to open the presents. He immediately started asking who's was who's and handing them out. I loved watching his excitement! Grace is still trying to understand what is going on. She kind of just does whatever Caiden does but still doesn't care too much about opening gifts.

After ten days in Nebraska Marc and I got out of town -we went to Vegas! We saw a show, gambled (and won!), went to some amazing restaurants and just had fun! Thanks Mom, Dad, Sara and Dustin for hanging with the kiddos while we regained our sanity!

Thanksgiving 2016

We left Tuesday morning on a nonstop flight across the country.  A cool 5 hours on an airplane with a two and four year old was happily uneventful. Caiden sat in his seat and watched a few shows while eating snacks. Grace has her own seat now which makes her uber happy but she doesn't watch a show for too long before she's standing up, getting on my lap, standing in the aisle, sitting on Marc's lap then sitting back down. She's all over the place...but in a good mood all the while.

On Wednesday Caiden had a haircut at Fery's salon. While we were there Grace ripped off her headband and started shouting, "My haircut, too!".  So Fery sat her in a chair and gave her a few teeny tiny snips off the back. I'm going to be so sad when she gets her first real haircut because all her original blond hair is going to be gone and it's starting to grow in darker and darker.

On Thanksgiving Day we went to the Bahrami's for dinner.  The kids had fun playing backgammon with Osi, playing pool and eating unlimited amounts of tortilla chips that were in arms reach. I love catching up with all of the 50+ people and eating the best turkey dinner!

Friday we went to the Rafii's.  Always so much fun, I love these people! The kids are almost outnumbering the adults but they are all about the same age and play so well together. They also had some leftover fireworks so we got a good show once the sun went down!

Saturday was low-key...I'll keep the details minimal.  But Grace was up Thursday night vomitting, I got it for six hours straight Friday night then Marc got two days later.  Needless to say the following day after each of these events went down there wasn't much we were physically capable of doing.  So it made for a pretty uneventful trip.

Grace got a chance to play with Fery's jewelry and she was in heaven.  She'd go to her room and come out saying, "See mommy, see!".

On the way home the pilot stopped Grace and took her to the cockpit.  He asked what her name was and she said, "Two!".