The big present

I love watching/listening to the girls play with their new Christmas present. This pictures was sometime after all the gifts were open. I'm really surprised at how clean the room looks in this picture. The house was a total mess, I must have taken the picture at just the right angle or something. Hope you all had a good Christmas!

Christmas Morning

My sister April spent Christmas with us. I'm so glad she came all the way up here, we've been having a ton of fun together!

Christmas Story

"Joseph" leading "Mary" and the donkey to Bethlehem. We spent Christmas Eve with John's family; eating a yummy ham dinner, singing Christmas songs, acting out the Christmas story (pretty much everyone had a part in it), and lighting the angel chimes.

Like Saving Money?

So living on an island in Alaska means I do a lot of my shopping online. To save money I try to use online coupons from

retailmenot.com

You just copy and paste the coupons, if they happen to apply to the website you're buying from. It's kinda a hit and miss, but sometimes you can get 10-20% off or free shipping.

Another way to save money online is by using

ebates.com.

Here you get cash back. You just start from their website and select where you're going to shop from there. Like today I wanted to get some maternity clothes from Oldnavy.com, so I go to ebates, select Oldnavy.com and shop like normal from there. I will be getting a check sent to me from ebates worth 8% of my order. It's totally worth it to spend the extra 10 seconds to go through their site (even if you only get a few bucks back, it's better than nothing).

Retailmenot.com you don't have to sign up, but for ebates, you can click here to get an account and I think $5 on your account:

http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=j2jHzE4Iw5ZG%2BruHoNRFIQ%3D%3D

Happy saving!

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with my family in Washington this year. It was so fun to have everyone there, including my sister's fiance. We did a bunch of fun things: shopping, playing in the snow, playing games, watching movies, Chuck E Cheeses, going to the temple, eating out (at half the Alaskan price), going to the dentist (that was real fun), bowling, etc.

My girls loved playing with their cousin Clark.

So many more pictures, so little time...

Bored princess

My sister April was taking pictures of my girls earlier this week and this was when Lexi decided she was ready to do something else.

The baby is...

A girl!!! We're so thrilled to have another girl! We happen to think we took some of the best girls names already and are having a hard time picking one for this baby. Any suggestions?

Family Pictures

My sister April took a few pictures of us the other day. We asked her to do it spur of the moment and we were really happy with what we got. She has a fun style of photography you can check out at aprylmayphotography.com

Grand Opening!

Today is the grand opening of our newest store, Cariloha! You can check out what that is at: Cariloha.com (Sorry, you have to copy and paste that, I don't know how to make it a link.) This one is in San Juan, Puerto Rico so is anyone happens to be down there check it out and say hi to my husband for me! :o)

Here's pictures of other stores:

Vacation baby!

All right, so here's some pictures from the trip John and I took in October. No special occasion really, just an overdue vacation (we never really went on a honeymoon and haven't had more than a night away in our almost 6 years of marriage). So randomly I heard about a sale on airline tickets to Hawaii and decided to go. I gotta brag - $600 round trip for two! That's cheaper than a trip to see my parents - for one! Anyway, that's the why.... Here's some of what we did.

Watched some green sea turtles rest on shore, they certainly weren't afraid of people. One came right in between us when we were getting ready to snorkel one day.

Attempted boogie boarding. Kinda. Swam, collected bits of shells, went on a bike ride, drove around, got lost, but enjoyed the scenery. :)

Went to the Laie Temple Open House - awesome!

A hike in the jungle to a crazy green waterfall. We decided it definitely wasn't a good idea to swim (There was a warning sign about bacteria).

Went to Pearl Harbor, saw the Arizona Memorial and toured a sub.

Spent an afternoon at the Polynesian Cultural Center - absolutely worth every penny. Thankfully my cousin works there and got us 50% off tickets, but still, probably the coolest thing we did. Interactive cultural shows, a delicious luau (even for a picky pregnant person), and an incredible night show. I can't even tell you how awesome it was.

The best part was being with my sweet hubby in warm, sunny weather!

Family news

Well, here's some news: my little sister is engaged! Yay! It's official now! They're getting married in December and I'm so glad I get to go! She is so extremely happy and I'm thrilled for her!

Bummer news: I'm a "work widow" for 2 weeks. John is on his way to Puerto Rico to open a new store there. We're super excited to have a store that will be open year round. We'll meet up with John on our way to my parent's for Thanksgiving, which means a nice 2 week vacation for us all in Tri-Cities later this month!

Other: John and I just got back from Hawaii a week ago. My goal is to post pictures of that once I get my house under control. I'll warn you now, I look fat in the pictures because I am. We're expecting baby #3 in April! :) Wahoo!

Alaskan Typhoon

This week has been crazy! It started out in the middle of the night Sunday morning. It was raining (of course) and the wind was blowing so hard I thought our roof was going to blow off - I was half asleep. At 1am the power went off. Lexi woke up terrified, screaming bloody murder. Since their night light was out we left a small flashlight on in their room.

I had an 8:30 meeting at the church (power was still off) and couldn't believe the damage everywhere. Trees were uprooted and knocked over. A power pole had shattered half way up and was hanging by the power lines. A tree had totally taken out power lines in Ward Cove area, and there was just a mess of debris everywhere! The road to the church was blocked off with fireman caution/don't cross tape because a tree had split, pulled down a power line and caught fire. Church was canceled. Power was out for everyone on the island for various amounts of time.

We were lucky and had our power turned back on at 1:30pm. Friends of mine were without power from 1am to 11pm Sunday.

It was a wakeup call. We figured we could cook food on our propane grill. We had some candles, flashlights and our water tank, and could get by for a short time, but in no way are we truly prepared for a disaster.

More crazy winds last night broke another power pole in half, just a few houses down from us. Power was out from 6pm last night to 5am this morning.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to reset clocks around here. Power's got off and on so many other times as they're working to get everything back to normal.

I've heard the wind gusts were in the 90 mph at times. Luckily I haven't heard of anyone getting hurt, and this has mostly been just some sort of adventure.

"I am really very quite good at this mom!"

Yesterday I was working on dinner when Lexi walks in the room and asks, "Mom, can I help you with anything?" That has got to be some of the best words a mom can hear right?

So I taught her how to peel carrots and she did awesome. I was chopping up some potatoes and we were just chatting. Then after a while she said, "This makes me happy." I asked her why she thought it made her happy. "Because it makes the whole family happy when I help and make good choices." Yes! Then she says, "I think Heavenly Father and Jesus are smiling right now. They are always watching me and they are happy when I make good choices too. Do you think they're smiling mom?"

These are some of the best moments of being a mom! It's so great to see her little testimony growing, especially when it involves making right choices.

The crazy thing is a few months ago she was a completely different child - very tough to be with and I started reading books and researching ways to deal with her. For a while it was one fight after another (mainly with me or her sister). But lately she has just been such a pleasure to be with. I can't decide if she was going through a phase or we did something from those books that did it. All I know is I'm going to enjoy every bit of this sweet 4 year old!

A day out fishing

No ships were here yesterday and John's parent's invited us to go out fishing. We pulled Lexi out of school for the day (it's a big deal these days if John has a day off) and spent the day on the ocean. It was perfect weather, the girls behaved, and everyone caught at least something (but nothing to brag about).

We saw eagles, seals, porpoises, humpbacks (very far away), jellyfish, and caught a cod, a halibut, salmon, a yellow-eyed snapper (I think) and a shark.

I'm trying to sell this experience to ya'll so you'll come up and visit us by the way! :) We had a great time. Enjoy the pictures!

My salmon (my father in law is holding it for me because I didn't want to touch it and get dirty)

Lexi's little salmon - we threw it back.

Another small salmon for Kaytlin to reel in...

Just her size

Lana caught the biggest salmon of the day. At times it was fighting too hard to reel, she just had to hold tight.

The one and only halibut of the day - yeah, small but that's okay. Again, I'm not going to touch it. :)

The dog shark. They stay near halibut and usually steal the bait, but we were glad to show one off to the girls before we threw it back.

Just a little trim

Playing in the sun

Saturday morning we had our huge Home Storage Fair at the church, which was my first big thing to be in charge of in my calling. It was such a relief to have it finished well after everyone's hard work. So it turned out to be a beautiful day (and in September - what?!) so we took the girls to play at Lexi's school. We brought the bike Lexi got for her birthday and let her ride around. She's pretty cautious and went so slowly! But that was a good thing because we haven't gotten her a helmet yet - oops. It was nice to have a day together to play.

John had just worked 13 days in a row and we were happy to have good weather the day he got off. The majority of our employees are back at school and so John is working open to close pretty much every day in September. We are so looking forward to some time off soon. :o)

The school just got a brand new playground that is pretty awesome. It was fun watching Lexi run around and show it off to us (I just happen to not take any pics of that).

My big girl

.

Check out the view from her school.

"Swing high! Higher!"

We love sunny days! We thank Heavenly Father for any day we have blue skies and sunshine!

Homemade wendy's frosty

Sorry this is underlined (too lazy to figure out how to fix it)

Our ward just finished up our big Home Storage Fair, which turned out great thanks to everyone who helped. I wanted to share a recipe that surprised me. We had samples of things you can make with food storage stuff. Here's what we used for powdered milk, and once you got past the first bite it was actually really good.

Homemade Wendy’s Frosty

-www.hillbillyhousewife.com

1-1/2 to 2 cups ice water
1-1/2 cups nonfat dry milk powder
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 to 1-1/2 trays of ice cubes, as much as you can spare
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (don’t skip this, it’s an emulsifier)

Place all of the ingredients into the blender, including the oil. Use less water for thicker milk shakes and more water for shakes that are easy on your blender motor. The blender should be about 3/4’s full. Place the lid on. Process for a full 2 minutes. Pour into cups and serve. Makes 4 – 12 oz servings.

Preschool

Today was Lexi's first day of preschool. She was so excited to go! Last week she learned how to tie her shoes and write her name with the lower case letters. The public school is not only doing free preschool, but they are also having the busses pick the kids up at each of their houses. She had a great first day and even knew one of the girls in her class. There's a total of 8 kids in her class. Kaytlin asked over and over again when Lexi was coming home - that will be an adjustment to her, but I'm looking forward to the one on one time with her. We made cookies and decided to pick up Lexi from school. She really didn't want to come home with us, she wanted to ride the bus home. Ooops. But alas, when she heard of the cookies she was ready to come with us. :) I'm going to miss having her at home, she's been such a happy little helper. I only got a little teary-eyed when her bus pulled out. Oh, and check out the song her teacher taught the class today - totally preschool aged:
Don't pick your boogers. It's gross!

Silly faces

Amanda, Jenny, Kaytlin and Lexi. Jenny goes to school next month. Poor Amanda will be only one left at home.

Adios familia

We had a family dinner this last weeekend. This is Dustin and Cortney, John's brother and new wife. We had so much fun with them and all the family that worked here this summer. We'll miss 'em.

The water is wet!

Lexi says, "Russell, let's go touch the water. Hey! The water is wet!" We have such brilliant children. :)

Just horsin' around

Bean Brownies

I'm putting together a big Family Home Storage Fair next month and I can't find a recipe I need for it. We're going to have samples of food you can make with your food storage and one I've heard that's really good is bean brownies. I think pinto beans are common for food storage right? All the recipes I'm finding online use black beans, and half of them use coffee - not what I'm looking for. Anyone happen to have that recipe?

Yard, Naha, Beach

We have had some fun lately. The weather has been awesome! The first few pictures are from us exploring our upper property here. Some of the grass is as tall and me, it's seriously more than we can even get to right now. But we did find a secret hiding place for the girls. There are a bunch of trees that grow around an open area, we just cut out some grass for a doorway for them.

-Silly Faces!-

Last Saturday our friends at "Clover Pass Resort" let us borrow some skiffs. Our family, John's mom and cousin Brigette came with us to explore Naha. We had a picnic and hiked around the path (there were berries everywhere! Lexi was in heaven).

This picture is for Marisha.

This was our second attempt. First time I fell into the brush...

After a day at the beach...