#5

Thanksgiving Under the Stars!!

What a cool way to eat Thanksgiving dinner! The hotel had an amazing feast and we got to eat it out under the palm trees and stars. Katelyn liked the ice cream, I liked the mashed potatoes and the key lime pie, and Eric liked the meat. :)




Katelyn in her Hawaiian girl Thanksgiving outfit!


Here's Eric with his 4 kinds of meat plate, mmm. He had turkey, ham, beef, and I don't remember what kind of fish on there.
I caught Katelyn doing this and she said she was "looking at the stars" while she ate, so cute.

We all said our thankfuls and my favorite was probably Kurtis', he said "fun parents" since he's the only kid left at home now :( It was cute.

I am so thankful for two healthy beautiful little girls.

I am so thankful that Whitney is such a smiley adorable little baby.

I am thankful for a wonderful husband who is such a "hands on" father. He is a true partner in this parenting thing. He is my best friend and I just love being with him, we have so much fun.

I am so thankful to not be pregnant and sick as I have been 2 out of the last 4 Thanksgivings. :)

I am thankful for a beautiful home.

I am thankful that Eric enjoys his job.

I am thankful for me and Eric's wonderful parents and siblings. I miss my siblings!

I am thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the church.

I am thankful for the plan of salvation and it's central figure, Jesus Christ. He is my Savior and Example. I am thankful for the hope He provides and the repentance He made possible!

I love Thanksgiving.

We Elfed ourselves!

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#6

Get ready for lots of pictures and some great videos, cause #6 is...


Dancers and the Luau!!

Monday night we happened upon a performance going on at this shopping area, so we stopped to watch and the girls LOVED it!! This is what we saw:
And this is what Whitney started doing:



Kicking with the music (and drums!) and kind of screeching! I think she was a little afraid and REALLY excited! So fun. Then Katelyn started doing this:


Later she really got into it with her arms, but she couldn't move both her arms and legs at the same time and she almost fell a couple of times, it was SO so cute and funny. The best was how hard she was concentrating, she looked all serious, Eric and I were just dying. And Kurtis, Elizabeth, Mary and Brad, we were all just staring at her.


So then the next night we went to a luau!It was sweet we got leis and everything. It was one of my favorite things about the trip, well obviously it's making the list. :) But the food was incredible and exotic (taro rolls, mmm...), they were nice enough to give Kate mac'n'cheese, and the dancers were amazing. Kate and Whitney totally loved it. I loved the variety of dances from different island nations, so cool.
This one's Tahiti, I think?

The Haka, love it.

don't remember.
Here's Katelyn mesmerized, and my finger in front of the flash.

Whitney eating my lei, of course. I took it off, don't worry.Towards the end they had couples who were there for their anniversary (there were several) get up and dance to some "marriage song" and Katelyn really wanted to dance too! So of course Eric loves her and they got up and danced.

I love this one, I did not know it was being taken, but it's just us playing with our girls that we love so much. :)

Afterwards Katelyn couldn't stop talking about the guys who were "flinging fire" and "eating fire" (they had these incredible fire dancers!) and she wanted us to have luaus in our hotel room, where we all had to "move our hips really fast" and "dance like those girls". So fun. Now she's having luaus with her cars and fire trucks. Yay for new learning experiences. :) Thanks again Grandma and Grandpa for the Luau! And the whole trip!

Top Ten Reasons Why Our Thanksgiving in Maui was AWESOME, #7

#7 is...
Boogieboarding with Kurtis

Eric and I left the girls with Mary and Elizabeth one afternoon and went boogieboarding with Kurtis. The waves at our beach broke right on the shore, so we kept trying to get rides up the beach. We thoroughly enjoyed getting slammed repeatedly into the sand and nearly drowning or getting buried in the sand, and getting our swimsuits (and my hair) completely filled with sand!! It was so so fun and totally satisfied my need for "catching some waves". Mary caught these pictures of us from far away, obviously Katelyn wouldn't let her go on the beach.

here's me in the wave and Eric down lower.

Eric and Kurtis getting ready to catch one

All three of us discussing our last pummelling.

THis should be with the last post, wonderful babysitters.
This one too, so cute.

#8

#8 is Free, wonderful babysitters!

Every day Eric and I got to take a few minutes and leave the girls with someone (usually Mary and at least one other person) and go do something fun. Many of these things had to do with the ocean, since Katelyn wouldn't go near it. (Here's the story- she has never wanted to go in the waves, but she would play on the beach in CA and on the first day in Hawaii- until about an hour into her sandcastle-making fun a "rogue wave" as Brad called it came up and soaked her and started carrying her toys back into the ocean, thus proving to her that even the beach wasn't safe. If we tried to set foot on the sand with her after that, she cried and screamed in genuine fear. So sad. I LOVE the ocean and was looking forward to playing in it with her...) Anyway, Eric and I got to go on the very fun hotel waterslide, play in the ocean, go boogieboarding with Kurtis, go kayaking on the ocean, shop at Whaler's Village, and take a romantic walk on the beach at night :) It was wonderful to leave the girls for a half-hour or hour here and there and do fun stuff together. And obviously they had fun while we were gone! Here's Katelyn with Kurtis, sadly I didn't get any pictures of Kate and Elizabeth, they played together A LOT, so cute.

And here's Whitney just waking up from a long nap on Grandma (in the shade!), she got to do that a couple of times.

Top Ten Reasons Why Our vacation in Maui was AWESOME!!! #9

See #10 below for an explanation.
#9 is...

The Sugar Cane Train!!

We heard about this little train ride you can take and Katelyn loves trains so it was a no-brainer. Mary came with us but no one else wanted to ride a 6 mph train for an hour and a half.

It was so fun, they took us from Puukolii which was close to our hotel, into Lahaina and back. At the end we got to see the sheds where the trains park, Katelyn loved that, and the train blew off some steam and it sprayed us! Mostly it was just cool scenery and the experience for Katelyn of being ON a train, with the bumping and swaying and the wind and everything, that helped this make our top ten.

Here's Kate singing her train song, it's from a Thomas the Train movie we have. She sang this song repeatedly for about 50% of the train ride. That's 45 minutes. Okay maybe not quite that long. :) I love at the beginning where she's "chugging" with her arms, and also you can see some Maui scenery in the background.

Top Ten Reasons Why Our Thanksgiving in Maui was AWESOME!!! #10

So--we just got back from a week in Maui, Hawaii! Eric's wonderful parents took us and his siblings there for an amazing vacation...mmm I can still feel the warm sun on me if I close my eyes... anyway I'll be posting our top ten countdown of our favorite things about the trip over the next couple of days. I have also considered posting the top 10 reasons to NOT take your small children on a vacation to Hawaii, especially if they are deathly afraid of the ocean and scream if they even see it. Just kidding :), well not about the afraid of the ocean part. :( Katelyn had her moments but it was mostly really really fun, the chance of a lifetime!! Anyway here's our #10.....
The Aquarium!!
We loved the Maui Ocean Center. Katelyn was really interested in tank after tank of fish, and kept commenting on all the things they were doing- hiding, sleeping, eating, waving to her. Here we are in the best part, the tunnel where there's water and fish all around you and you feel like you're under the water with them! Whitney's smiling at Eric of course.

Whitney in front of the shark tank.

Katelyn saying "cheese", more like "chayze" in front of the awesome turtles.

I love this one, we kept trying to get them to look at the camera but they were too interested in the sharks and stingrays behind them and neither one of them would look at us, so funny.

Tons of colorful fish- you can't really tell. Eric and Katelyn stood in front of this one for a while.

Oh yeah, and we saw the sharks getting fed, so if you ask Katelyn what a shark eats she says "octopohss", we don't know where that pronunciation came from, so cute.