Officially the Christmas season...

The tree is up, the house is decorated, and we are eating cranberry muffins. It must be Christmas time! We spent part of the day after Thanksgiving preparing for Christmas and the other part of the day swimming at the beach. The girls were so excited to start decorating we had to pry them away from the Christmas bins to go swimming. Kyleigh got to put the Christmas topper on the tree. It was Katelyn's turn this year, but she said she didn't want to be lifted up that high. Maybe next year. We filled the advent calender with treats and Katelyn has already climbed up on the counter to steal candy from behind the little doors. Holly has already read the girls about 10 Christmas books. We started burning the Christmas candles we got from Jenny last year. We are looking forward to a great holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We got to enjoy our Thanksgiving with the "Portersons." It was our NM reunion holiday. I didn't have my card for my camera to take any pictures of our delicious feast. You'll just have to take my word that it was a delicious feast. I did get my card prior to the after dinner festivities of kickball and ultimate frisbee at Kaliwai park. Thanks to our host's for a great day!

Everyone playing kickball.

Daddy, the scary monster on the park toy.

Katelyn isn't quite tall enough to get a drink.

Kyleigh and her NM friend.

Daddy and Katelyn running for home base.

Remember when...

Between Holly and I we didn't have enough pie pans to make pies for Thanksgiving. We had square pies that year. November 2000.

If you are counting the number of pies... YES, there are more pies than people. It isn't a genuine Cook Thanksgiving if there aren't more pies than people.

Kokee Sunday

Last Sunday we went to Kokee to feel the cold air, play games, and have a bbq. We had a great time. Kyleigh's friend from dance happened to be there so she played with her friend for awhile while Rusty and Katelyn explored and poked mushrooms with sticks. We played catch and soccer. We had a bbq, and realized that the little bbq we bought 10+ years ago needed to be thrown away. A sad day in the Cook family. It was rusted out and the only place a flame was coming through the grill was a big rust hole right in the middle. Rusty had to position our meat around the one flame and rotate it every couple of minutes. We watched the stars come out, but had to leave because we were all shivering and freezing. When we got back to the truck we saw that the temperature was about 54 degrees. What have we become?

Katelyn turns 3!

I can't believe Katelyn is three. Even typing the title for this post I had to remind myself that she isn't two, but three... already. All she wanted for her cake this year was a smiley face cake. Easy enough, even I can handle that. We made it a smiley face party. We had smiley face pancake men for breakfast. We had smiley face pizzas for dinner. Everyone got to make their own pizza face. We even printed an ehow article on how to throw pizza dough and tried our hand at that. We also made our plates into smiley faces. After dinner we had cake and opened presents. What a loved little girl. She was so excited to open all of her presents. Kyleigh was so excited to get her a gift this year. She got her a horse coloring book, wrapped it in two layers of wrapping paper with about a whole roll of tape and helped Katelyn open it. We got her a dance cam, so she can dance in front of the TV and watch herself while she is dancing. For quite awhile now she has claimed "I dot dis for my birday," every time she plays with any toy. Now she can actually say that about all kinds of fun things.
Happy Birthday Katelyn. We love you!

Why even buy toys when all you need is a mattress propped up in the hall. It's a climbing gym, secret hideout, and place for toy storage all wrapped up in one.

Yesterday we were driving home from the beach and Kyleigh was reading words along the drive. She came across Kukuiula and asked what it meant in English and how you would say that in Spanish. She then decided to try her hand at combining a word in English and Spanish. She chose the words hola and hello. From the back we here her say... O hell. It took us a second then we both started busting up laughing.

We tried our hand at homeade pretzels...



We measured,



and concentrated,



and one of us wanted to make a boat instead of a pretzel.



They turned out good and we ate them at the lagoon with Daddy for lunch.

We have said good-bye to our Princeville house and are official residents of Kalaheo again. I promised Kyleigh we would have a welcome back play date when we returned. The timing coincided with the end of our study of the 6 be's. We decided to make it a 6 be's party. We made sand man bee's...



and bee cupcakes. The girls also had plenty of time to play.





Kyleigh didn't think it lasted long enough and made me promise that her next playdate could be ATLEAST three hours.

Movie night

Yesterday Rusty got to come home from work early. It was windy and rainy so we spent the afternoon reading books, playing games, making cookies, and having a movie night (we watched the original Benji).





Kyleigh told Rusty it was the best day ever.

I know, Katelyn should be entered in a contest for the best rambo mullet.

Yesterday the girls were playing PBS kids on the computer. Katelyn didn't find it too exciting.

Dorothy and Snow White

This year we had Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Snow White, without the seven dwarfs, show up for Halloween. We spent Tuesday night in Kalaheo at our ward trunk or treat/chili cookoff/carnival.

Halloween night we had a hot dog dinner with the Giles and trick-or-treated Kipuka street in Poipu. The girls had so much fun. They ran from house to house. Katelyn was in the front of the pack. When her bag was so full that it was hard to carry a nice lady gave us a plastic bag so we could help Katelyn carry her candy. Kyleigh emptied her bag into it, but Katelyn refused for several more houses. She did not want to let that candy out of her hands. Kyleigh told us her mouth was getting numb from saying trick-or-treat and thank you so much. We told her we could go home, but apparently it wasn't that numb. Naiya said trick-or-treat, thank you, and bye-bye to everyone who gave her candy. We had to drive back up to Princeville when we were done (about an hour) so the girls were asleep when we got home.

Sunday morning we had the candy sort. We talked the girls into giving us most of the chocolate to freeze and cut up for cookies at a later date. Then we divided everything equally (the odd amounts going into the parent pile) and the girls each still had a full bag. Rusty and I had the big halloween discussion. Do you take the candy away and dole it out bit by bit, or let them have at it and get it over with in a day or two. I was for the latter. In the end it's not like we really had a choice anyway. Katelyn slept with her candy bag and woke up the next morning half asleep with a piece of licorice in her mouth and her bag around her neck. She ate the licorice, fell back asleep and woke up crying for her candy bag (because I had taken it off of her neck).

Sunday night we took another load of stuff to Kalaheo. After we unloaded it we went to Mike and Holly's for dinner in a pumpkin. This year they ran out of pumpkins on Kauai, so it was dinner in a plastic pumpkin. The pumpkin "guts" were delicious, as were the rolls, and pumpkin pie. We attempted to make frankenstein jello. We used washable paint to put the mouths and scars on the plastic cups and it never dried. Rusty thought it was melted chocolate and ate a fingerful. Oops.

Anyway, Halloween is over. The costumes are in the dress up bin. The candy is mostly gone. I hope I have picked up my last candy wrapper. I hope that Katelyn will eat some regular food again. I hope Halloween comes again soon, because I love it as much as the girls.