President's Day

Holy Cow...this week has been nothing but play! There have been 3 days in this past week that we've totally just played the whole day! Jeremy's Bday, Valentine's Day, and here's the last in the lineup...President's Day. After a lazy morning, we took a McDonalds picnic to Kakoako Waterfront Park. We thought it was going to have a beach, but it's really just a lot of beautiful grassy hills, as far as we could tell at least. It was way fun just to run up and down like kids...with the kids...:) People often bring cardboard boxes and go "sledding" down the hills...have to do that one next time! Here are a few pics. I just love the colors of green and blue! It was a beautiful day!






Look what I wear to the beach-- a sports bra!! Can you believe it? I need to get a new suit!!

Valentine's Day

Just a quick recap of our Valentine's...Breakfast at McDonalds in Waikiki...Honolulu Zoo from breakfast until about 2pm...frozen yogurt at Menchie's (I miss Yogurt Hill!)...hung at home...Broccoli and Ham ring for dinner, new recipe I tried...movie after kids went to bed...I wrote him a letter and he got me chocolate and a monkey (it's a long story... :) Not what you'd call super romantic I guess, but it was a fun day. Here are some pics:
She was scared to move a wink, I don't blamer her.

In the Keiki Zoo Practicing to be farmersWalking through the aquarium tunnel

Jeremy's Birthday

Jeremy's getting so old! ;) I remember turning 27....I thought it was the end of my young life. Anyway, we're lucky to have our birthday boy at home a lot these days, so it was easy to take a full day to celebrate! After preschool finished in the morning, we headed to Makapu'u Lighthouse trail on the east side of the island. Jeremy's first time up the paved trail. We both helped pushed the stroller, but with it only being about 1/2 hour hike, it wasn't too bad at all. And such a pretty walk! There were tons of whales out too! It was so cool to see them spraying out of the water. We didn't see any of them breech, just watching the sprays and splashes, but it was so cool!





Jeremy likes this picture of me that he took. I have no idea why! He thinks it should win an award...whatever!! Do I always look so troubled and stern?
Afterwards we went and played in the water at Kailua Beach before heading to dinner in town at Dave and Busters. We finished up the day with some chocolate cake at home. Love these beach hawaiian days! And especially when we have a fun reason to celebrate! Happy Birthday my Happy man!!

Punahou Carnival

Wow, I don't remember any carnival ever being this expensive. But, at least we didn't have to worry about parking! The Punahou school carnival fundraiser is just a couple blocks from our house, which was pretty fun. From opening day I could hear the screaming from all the rides and I couldn't wait to go! The first night of the carnival, I went to a girls night though- it was awesome, Thanks Stephanie!! So Saturday we went to the carnival. I was bummed I never found elephant ears! But anyway, we first went on the ferris wheel: about $12 for 5 minutes of fun. That's okay- for the last week every time we drove by the school, Lucy would excitedly exclaim, "Ferris Wheel! Do Ferris Wheel, mom!" So we had to go! She was all for doing all the other rides too (awh, young innocence? I bet she won't be that eager next year, when she might be tall enough to go on a few more rides, well, maybe a couple years from now.)


We spent the other part of our script on a few kiddie land games- nothing too noteworthy actually. And got some teriburgers and chili rice.

We also took Lucy once around the carousel. Looks like she's getting pretty tired.
Dad was the only one that went on a real ride- the Fireball. It was kind of his birthday present I guess you could say.

My "L" Day

What a fun day- there's lots you can do with "Ll." Preschool was at our house today, Lucy's house- L for Lucy! After our Reader board and walk through the house, we got into as many 'L' activities you can stuff into 2 hours!
-"L" Bag. In my bag was: leaf, lipstick, lei, a wooden ladybug, lightbulb, lotion, leash with stuffed animal dog whose name happened to be Loke.
-L seek and find. I cut out of old xmas wrapping paper a big L and a little l. Then I wrote in all different colors (on the back plain side) different 'l' words. Kids had to find the L's, and for the older ones I had them trace it and the younger ones just had to circle it, then we said the word together.
-London Bridges
-Left: emphasized left arm, left leg, left ear, etc. Put stickers on all their "left" parts. Then played Looby loo.
-Lunchbox: We used a brown paper lunchsack, and I had printed off a bunch of real looking foods and cut them up. The kids just "packed their lunch" picking different foods and gluing them inside their "lunchbox." I tried to emphasize getting a "lot" of this or a "little" bit of that.
-Ladybug Love Letters: I had the kids make ladybugs using their thumbprints. Dipped in a red ink pad and then added details with a black pen. They turned out sooo cute. The outside of the card had ladybugs, and on the inside you use two thumbprints to make a heart. I don't think this activity reinforced the letter as much as I thought it would/should, but it was just fun to do. I thought it would be fun to have them take home a little card with ladybugs on it to give to a relative for Valentine's or whatever.
-Snack: lime jello, lemonade with licorice straws (way sugary, but I'll try and do better next time ;)
-Played library. I had gone to the library and scoured for as many books that started with "L" in the title as I could, to put on our library shelf. I also made up some fake glasses out of cardstock for the "librarian." The librarian had to check the books out and gave out bookmarks. One child was a "volunteer" and was organizing our shelf of books. The other two were students there to find a book at the library. I had made library cards for the kids to pretend with, using a scanned copy of my own library card. The kids got into it and it was fun. We read one book at the end and then I also gave them an "Itsy Bitsy Book" starring the letter L.

-Pin the Lips on the Llama: like pin the tail....

-Lollipops. I wanted to just give them lollipops and then dance to the song, but that would be more sugar, right?! So I cut out cardboard circles and glued sticks on the back and painted them. Then I had the kids glue a fun multicolored piece of yarn in a sprial around the front.
We ran out of time to dance to the lollipop song, and I was also going to have them dancing to "love songs" but didn't, so I put all the songs on my blog and told the moms it would be their homework that week to do the lollipop and love songs.

*Pictures are curteousy of helper mom Maggie! Thank you! She did such a better job being the helper than I did last week! I'll have to do better- especially with the camera.

Lasagna

I should be folding clothes...but when lunch becomes a learning lesson, let laundry wait a few minutes. ;) We're learning letters at preschool, and this week is letter L. I actually taught it (I'll post that soon I hope), so we've been doing a lot of "L" stuff. To be honest, I wasn't sure the kids were getting it. Lucy can't even say her L's. Anyway, cutting to the story, today Lucy refused to eat lunch, then later comes up asking for cookies. I tell her she can't have cookies because she hasn't had lunch (well, she didn't like the stir fry I had made for our lunch a half hour ago.) So, seeing her earnestness to comply with my request to eat lunch, I pull out the lasagna from last night. She asks for a sandwich, and I say no, we're going to eat lunch. (Isn't that a sound explaination? ;) She's onto me and asks, What's that mom? I tell her, "Lasagna." I start singing the Labamba song half under my breath, my mind is not thinking anything particular. But her mind heard the L sound and thought mom was encouraging her to repeat it. She chimes in, and says, "Lll, lll, lasanga." I look at her, and smile, "that's right!" "What letter does lasagna start with?" I ask, throwing it into the microwave. "L!" she says. I look at her in surprise. I didn't think she even could really say it, let alone really 'got it' and here she had got the sound and the letter association down pat. Hooray for preschool. Hooray for Lucy! She's happily finished her second helping of lasagna and eating a cookie. Yeah, we'll talk about my level of sweets in the house and playing the "short order cook" later, right now I think it's a good enough victory!

A Walk in the Woods

Matching overalls, yeah I know, too much eh? I couldn't resist. I think I might call this the kids first "hike." They didn't last too long. We didn't go far, and they still wanted to be carried some. And I was alone. Well, that was my workout.

Princess' Castle

"Where should we go Lucy?" I asked (anywhere was fine, we just had to get out of the house.) "The princess's castle! Sleeping Beauty's castle...Jasmine's castle...Ariel's castle..." she replied, as she was going through the names of all the dolls she had somehow managed to clutch in her hands before we left the house. So the "castle" is actually this church that happens to be just out our backdoor. We didn't go far, but it was a fun walk nonetheless! Needless to say, Lucy was very much in a fairytale mood and took in everything there.