Another Beach Day

We discovered a new beach today called "Bellows". It is an Air Force private beach and has cabins that you can rent right on the water. We are thinking about spending a Thanksgiving or Easter weekend there in the future. It is a great beach for boogie boarding which we realized Asher is completely ready for so now Joel is on the hunt.

Fun with daddy. He was WAY more fun than Mommy who was plopped in her beach chair most of the day after a miserable 4 hours nights sleep thanks to the aches and pains of pregnancy. I did have a picture of me in my beach chair but who wants to see that when you can look at these kids?!

Anna and Asher buried.

This picture is now one of my all time favorites and will be framed on the wall before long.

Anna and Asher lounging in their "chairs" like Mommy and enjoying their lunch.

Happy Easter!!!!

Family photo outside of church this morning. We were hoping to make it to the sunrise service but we barely made it to the 8am service (we were 10 minutes late!). Anna woke us up at 6:30am this morning by running in the room and exclaiming "It's Easter! I want eggs! Jesus loves me!". We were so shocked. We have been spending the week talking with Asher about Jesus's sacrifice and reading Easter books, and we never really thought Anna would have been picking it up as well. It is pretty cool to see them both learning more about Jesus and knowing it isn't ALL about the Easter eggs and baskets.

Here the kids are enjoying their Easter baskets. Anna received a new princess book and my little ponies. Asher got sunglasses and a sword (I know seems silly, but he has really been wanting one! It is his favorite gift from his basket.) And then they both got bubbles and tattoo kits which they are showing off in this picture.

Here is the big Easter egg hunt in our backyard (notice the NICE grass!!! This was the 1st time the kids have been able to play out there and it was great). We had 8 kids here for the hunt. 2 families joined us for Easter...both wives with 3 kids and husbands away. They were really on my heart as the holiday approached and we were so happy they decided to spend the holiday with us. It made cooking my 1st Easter dinner much more eventful! It was complete chaos for 2 straight hours, but what a great afternoon we had. And the food didn't turn out too bad.

And here the kids are enjoying coloring Easter eggs with their friends at a playgroup last week. I have just joined this playgroup and it is so nice to see the kids making new friends that they recognize and look foward to seeing each week.

We hope you all also had a wonderful Easter holiday celebrating with those the Lord brought around you.

Some House Photos

For those familiar with the color wheel...we decided to paint the kitchen in brocade blue and the living room area a shade lighter than more mustard. We really wanted to chose different colors from our house in MA because we didn't want to feel like we were trying to make this home be that home. We are pretty happy with the colors and the house just "feels" better. We are not particularly happy with this house and are doing our best to make it the best we can and be content with what God has given us, and we are please with how things are coming along. Even the backyard is looking better!

Here are a few pictures of the kids' room. We made it into a surfer's room. And yes Leslie, I made the curtains out of sheets!!! Can you believe it?!?!....well, I must admit I had Joel coaching me the whole time.

Please still keep our MA house in your prayers and the decisions that need to be made. Thank you all for your encouraging comments, phone calls, and emails. You are all very special to us and we feel your prayers. Happy Good Friday everyone...may Jesus be in all of your celebrations throughout the weekend. Praise God for what He did for me.

Hope, Something to smile about

Yesterday was a terrible day, a day where I felt defeated, and lost with nowhere to go. I have no other way to describe it. Joel and I found out that our renter, after we had uncovered some lies, deserted the house with a damaged basement, without a word, breaking our contract and leaving us behind on 2 months rent. We have no way of finding her. The house has to be fixed, mortgage has to be paid, and we have to revamp a plan for the future of this house. It has been a soul-crushing, finacial planning diasaster, and eye-opening experience for us that we are a bit unsure of the way out. But this morning, I found this flower and budding leaves on the hibiscus in my garden of dead leaves and sticks. There is hope. God is in control and will work this too out for our good and His glory.

And Asher gave us this to smile about. His first drawing of Thomas the Train. We were so impressed and he was so proud. God has given us much to be thankful for despite other things that we don't understand.

Weekend Fun

Here are Asher and Anna having fun at the beach with some new friends. We went for a couple of hours on Friday and I was the one who ended up sunburned. I mean glow in the dark sunburned! That was all I needed...something else to aid in my sleepless nights.

Then Saturday we went to zoo. This is actually are 3rd trip to the zoo since moving to Hawaii. We have bought a yearly pass and it is such a fun and easy thing to do every now and then. The kids love it there, and I think it is pretty cool myself. My personal favorite is the hippos. I don't know why but they are just so cool to watch...being so big yet so graceful in the water. Asher favorite this time was the rhinocerous, and Anna was a monkey all day.

Here is Asher with the giraffes and Anna ready for a burger after the busy morning.

The week has been filled with completing many house projects. The painting is done so look for some pictures this week, and yes I am very happy with the colors! And it makes the house feel much more warm and like a home. The backyard has been "sodded" so now we are watering and waiting for the day that the kids can play back there again. This week we hope to tackle the baby's room...only 6 1/2 more weeks!!! Hopefully by then we will be done with the settling-in process of this move. I can't believe it has only been 3 months. It feels like so much longer.

I will leave you with some fun tidbits about the kids from this week. Asher told me today that he wants to be 3 things when he grows up to be a man (yes he used those words) - "superman, a mailman (loves the mailtruck), and flying planes"...boy, he is going to be busy! As for Anna, we have decided there must be a girl's wrestling team somewhere because she is the queen of pinning Asher down until he cries for us to rescue him. Torturing Asher is her daily sport. We really wonder how a 3rd child is going to change the dymanics of their relationship.

Watch Out World, Here I Come!

Well, I guess I should say "watch out stamping world, here I come"! Yesterday, I sent in my paperwork to become a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. Yes, me, the girl who 3 years ago said I would never become a stamper and please stop inviting me to these parties. I am hooked and obsessed with stamping. Becoming a demonstrator is an idea I have been toying with for awhile and after attending 1 stamping party here, decided to jump in with both feet. I already have 2 parties lined up in April (I think...). Joel is hoping that I just support my hobby :), but I am hoping to just enjoy what I do, challenge myself a bit, and be able to have fun with others who share the same passion as me (OK and I hope to support my hobby too!!). Now that the paperwork is in the mail, I am sick over it and wonder "what was I thinking"!! But I am going for it. If I fail, I will fail trying...so look out world!!

And of course, I felt I needed to leave you with a picture. Nothing too exciting this week since the week and weekend have been spent doing yardwork and painting. So here are the kids attempting to hula. Gotta love the grass skirt.

Backyard Living

I need everyone of you reading this to submit my name to the magazine "Backyard Living" so that maybe they could come and rescue me with a yard makeover!! Most of you know that I love to garden and let me tell you about the garden I dream about having here. It seems in Hawaii, everyone has the most exotic and tropical gardens and perfect backyards with beautiful grass, toys, patio furniture, and palm tress. Well, it hasn't been so with us. I am posting this so that I can laugh at our misery a little, and that hopefully in the future there will be a blog about my beautiful garden and backyard and you will know how far we came!

Here is a picture of "my" garden. There was nothing there before. I dug it up, placed the stones, filled with soil, and planted. But instead of spending a fortune on plants and flowers, I dug up the gardens of houses that our scheduled to be torn down and moved them to "my" garden. Boy did it look good on the first day! Now it looks like this and everyday looks worse. My dad assures me they are traumatized, that the leaves will fall off, and it will bloom again. But I am still pretty discouraged. I worked from 9am-4pm on this one day last week and couldn't move the next 2 days! I am not a very patient person and want my instant beautiful garden. But I have to wait, and wait we will.

Here is our backyard...Joel's project since returning from Korea. The grass was dead when we moved in. We were told "water it and it will come back"..it was not coming back. Maybe we aren't patient enough, I don't know, but we raked up all the dead grass and turned the yard into a mud pit. We then through down full sun seed and watered and watered. And the birds came and they came. Our yard was literally covered in birds! So after a little research, we learned the best thing to do was dig up another person's yard (again houses that are being torn down) and sod it into our own. So here is where we are at. All the toys are loaded onto the patio, the yard is a mud pit with patches of sod, and the kids can't play back there for who knows how long!

So you see, not what I expected in Hawaii. I hope you can laugh with me and pray for our success! Any lawn and garden advice out there?

Welcome Home Daddy!!

The jailbird arrived home safely on Friday. The kids were so excited to go to the airport and pick him up. All week, we prayed that the Lord would keep him safe while he was away and when Friday came and it was time to go, Asher said "and Jesus kept him safe so we can go get him!". It is pretty neat to see them starting to understand things like that.

After coming home though, the weekend has been busy with yard and housework...no beach trips this weekend! Many of the houses around us are being torn down in phases so we went and dug up flowers from houses scheduled to be demolished and moved them into our garden. I really wanted to show you a picture of that, but the poor flowers are traumatized and I am praying they come back! We also pilaged some ceiling fans from a house too..hehe. And I have convinced Joel to paint so hopefully that will happen this week. We just decided to make this house "our own" so that maybe it won't feel so much like someone else's apartment. Picking out paint colors is always so scary and we wanted something different from our house in Mass. So, yes, I chose my colors based on Stamping Up colors so hopefully the color wheel won't let me down!