Happy New Year and Hawaii!

Hello everyone!  Part 2 of my updated blog.  We rung in the new year with our friends Ryan, Davina, Fin and Cabot (Davina's Dad.)  We have hung out for the past few new years.  This year I didn't have to work so I got to enjoy all the festivities.  We always have a theme, thanks to Davina.  This year was Japanese.  To keep it simple, we ordered some rolls from our favorite sushi restaurant.  The Wolters also picked up some sashimi and such.   Mike surprised us with some yummy champagne and sake.  My new fridge came in very handy.  It was all delicious!  And we introduced our friends to Apples to Apples.  Good times.

And now my favorite part to share with you....our trip to Hawaii!  We went to Waikoloa, just outside Kona on the Big Island.  My parents joined us too.  This trip was to help celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary!  And it was a much needed vacation for our family.  We did lots of relaxing and some recreation.  As much as an almost 2 year old will let you anyway.  We spent 7 days there and yes it went really fast.  Let's start with the plane ride.  Kaylen did pretty good considering its a 5+ hour flight.  We took her car seat (as advised by our friend Kristen) and had a DVD player (borrowed from my friend Lauren)...both of these were lifesavers.   It was a very long day for my parents who flew from Texas, met us at LAX and we flew to Hawaii together.  We crashed out when we got to the resort and then woke up with a fresh start.  We ventured into Kona and visited the local farmers market.  I have to mention that the avocados and pineapples were the best we ever had!

 Then we had lunch at Kona Brewing Company and went to Target for some groceries for the week.  Then we checked out our resort the rest of that day.  It was such an amazing place.  The condo was huge with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.  They had a kiddie pool with a slide and an adult pool too.  Kaylen loved playing in the pool and going down the slide.  Here are a couple of pics of the resort....

Here's one of my favorite pics....Mom is relaxing and enjoying herself!

And I love this one of Dad!

So the next day was Saturday and the boys went to play golf and the girls hung out by the pool.  Did I mention the perfect weather?  A nice 80 degrees during the day and 70 at night.  That night Mike and I snuck away for a little date night after putting Kaylen down.  We went to Sensai, a sushi restaurant.  We were so excited to go there because we had been to a sister restaurant in Maui & Oahu.  It was all that we remembered it to be.  Awesome food!

On Sunday, everyone but my Dad headed to the beach.  My Dad needed to rest after his golf excursion.  Beaches are not in abundance on this island but we managed to find a couple while we were there.  This day we had to hike down to the beach over some black lava rocks.  Not easy with a toddler but we managed.  The sun and sand felt great!  We had a great time.

That night we went to the big Hilton resort down the street for dinner and a luau.  We had lobster and steak for dinner and watched a perfect sunset.

One of the highlights of this trip was watching Kaylen enjoy the luau.  She loved the music and watching the dancers.  She clapped after every performance! 

Monday.....Mom & Dad had their own excursion to Oahu to see Pearl Harbor.  They had an amazing day and we got to hang out just the three of us.  This was the day that Daddy took Kaylen down the water slide for the first time.  She loved it of course and wanted to keep doing it over, over, and over again.  And Daddy got tired of taking her so she climbed up the stairs and did it by herself!  So I hung out at the top and Daddy hung out below so she could keep doing the waterslide.  When we managed to wrestle her away from the slide, we headed to the timeshare presentation to learn more about it. 

Tuesday....the boys played golf again and the girls headed to the big Hilton down the street to enjoy their facilities.  We did some shopping then went to the pool for a while.  Another perfect day in paradise.

Wednesday.... we found THE beach, Hapuna Beach.  The sand was like butter.  The waves were perfect.  Kaylen had so much fun in the water.  She cried when we took her out!

Here are some group pics....

I love this pic of Kaylen taken at the Kona airport.....

That wraps up our trip to Hawaii.  It was the best vacation ever!  It was so awesome that Nanna and Poppi got to hang out with Kaylen.  A once in a lifetime trip for sure.  Would love to do it again though. We got back to some cold weather.  And now the sickness has returned to our family.  Can we just go back to Hawaii?

And my favorite Christmas gift for Kaylen from her Auntie Mindy.....

Okay my fingers are tired of typing.  I didn't expect to go into such great detail about Hawaii.  But I will want to remember every day of that trip, so it was mostly for me.  Hope you enjoy it too.

Sorry I didn't get to the videos yet.

Busy end of the year

Hello everyone!  I keep getting behind on my blog posts!  So let's catch up!

We celebrated my friend Courtney's 30th birthday on November 10th.  A fun cruise around Long Beach with food, drinks and dancing.  Plus all of us friends got together without kids!  It had been a while, so we partied hard.

Also in November we had a fun get together with some out of town friends.  The Bains were here from Washington so we gathered at their family's house in south Orange County.  The Guymons, the Wolters and the Cascarini's were there too.  It was fun to have all the kids together. 

Here are some fun pics of Kaylen in her USC cheerleader outfit.  Mike and I enjoyed going to the home games this season.  Thank goodness for Hayley our babysitter!

So the night before Thanksgiving, our friends Marco and Stephanie had their beautiful baby boy Sebastian.  I was at work so we went to visit them on Thanksgiving (after having our meal that my hubby put together.)  What a way to celebrate!  This is actually a pic from us visiting at their home.  Kaylen loved touching the baby.

That was our November.  Moving on to December.  Not too much happening so we will skip to Christmas.  We celebrated with Aunt Barb, Aunt Cyndi, cousins Sharee, Tiffany, Tony and Taylor.  We had so much fun and Kaylen was spoiled with gifts.

So on Christmas Eve we took Kaylen to Disneyland for the first time.  We had a good time but it was a little more stressful than anticipated.  First of all,  it was raining when we first got there and we got soaked.  Luckily it didn't last long and we were able to enjoy ourselves.  We rode the carousel and then It's a Small World.  It was so fun to watch Kaylen experience them for the first time.  She then proceeded to nap out in her stroller.  So we had some lunch, rode Pirates of the Carribbean and Haunted Mansion.  We bought season passes so we weren't too stressed about doing a lot of rides.

We enjoyed a nice Christmas at home.  Kaylen got a cute play kitchen with play food.  And I got a Coca Cola fridge!  It is gorgeous!  And it really works too!  I have always wanted one!  I was totally shocked!

Then on Christmas night we went to the Flynns for dinner.  The Tysons,  The Taylors and Nikki joined us too.  The kids had a great time opening presents.  And it was nice to hang out with everyone.

Here are the pics from our Christmas card....

So that sums up November and December.  I will post this and start working on January.  I only have a couple of videos but I will try to get them on the next post.