Hanalei Day Sandcastle

Our friend Jeff Peterson has become quite the sandcastle builder since moving to Kauai. He assures us that Hanalei Bay has the highest quality sand on the island. He creates a masterpiece every time he goes there. A few weekends ago he built this sandcastle. His tools include leftover construction materials and c clamps for forms, a random assortment of shaping tools, a squirt bottle full of water and hairspray to keep the sand in place. Another of his creations, the "Hanalei snowman" was featured in the newspaper under pictures of Kauai. He always has people taking pictures of his sandcastles and doesn't know who sent that picture into the newspaper. This one turned out really neat. Way to go Jeff!

Naiya is ONE!!!

It seems like it was just yesterday that we met our little Naiya for the first time. Was there ever life without her? It seems hard to remember. We love her so much. For her first birthday we had a super fun party at Mike and Holly's. The entertainment included a raging game of noodle ball. Noodle ball is where you try to hit one of the small 99 cent grocery store balls with a swimming noodle to your goal. The only rule is that you can only hit the ball with your noodle. My favorite part about the picture of noodle ball is that Rusty is carrying Naiya and Mike is carrying Katelyn. That's kind of the way things work around here. All of the kids are all of our kids.

We also had a disk toss game.

The prizes were water squirters, which the girls haven't stopped using.

We got Naiya two presents, one she can use with Mom and one with Dad. Kyky and Katelyn each wrapped one present with white tissue paper,then got to decorate their box with stickers and crayons. Her "Dad" present was her first set of rock climbing holds, an airplane, a train and a boat. Her "Mom" present was a set of matching aprons that Kyleigh and I sewed together, one for her and one for Holly.

She wasn't too terribly excited about schmoogling in the cake, but did take a few bites.

Happy Birthday Nai Nai!

Makahiki

On Easter weekend we had a fun Saturday morning at Makahiki. Rusty is a den leader and I was just recently released as his co-den leader. I'm not sure what they call Makahiki on the mainland. Maybe a scout expo. or something. Each troop, boy scouts and cub scouts, have a booth with some type of fun hands on activity. They sell tickets to the event as a fund raiser. Our troop has grown so much since we started. Last year at Makahiki we had three boys there to help. This year 13 boys from our troop came. Our booth this year was walking on stilts and puddle jumpers. Rusty is always so great, he made the stilts and puddle jumpers. The kids had tons of fun. We sampled cookies made in an oven created from a box and aluminum foil, rode on a shop vac powered hover craft, played games, shot plastic bottle "rockets" after pumping up the psi with a bike pump, etc. I learned to walk on stilts through the course of the day. For anyone who might be wondering, the trick is to pull the stilts up with your arms when you lift your foot up to keep tension where the stilts meet your feet. Rusty did the brackets for the district pinewood derby races. Bracket expertise is another talent we can chock up to all the years of wrestling. Makahiki-another good day in HI.

The girls shooting a rocket. Kyky in purple shirt, Katelyns red head behind Kyky.

Chasing the rocket they just launched.

Kyky trying to walk on stilts.

Daddy and Kyky on the puddle jumpers.

Garden Update 4-15-09

The garden jury is still out. Do you want the bad news or the good news first? O.K., we'll end with the good news.... The red headed cardinals are eating the corn seeds out from underneath the stalks. The Anaheim peppers will not sprout. We had to replant 3/4 of the beans because nothing grew. The transplanted tomatoes and green peppers aren't flourishing. The beans that are growing have holes eaten in the leaves. Word on the street is that snails are to blame. Who named this place the garden isle anyway? They probably never even tried to grow a garden. The good news is.... We bought a bird net to fight the red headed cardinals and we replanted the corn that was sabotaged. We are going to go on a spotlighting snail hunt soon. We bought some already sprouted anaheim pepper plants. The tomatoes and green peppers aren't dead...yet. The lettuce, onions, carrots and green onions all look good. Best of all I bought the girls cute garden gloves and Kyleigh got a new pair of rubber boots. Katelyn inherited Kyky's old ones. So, they look really cute in our struggling little garden. Wish us luck, we need it.

Happy Easter.

We always try to make Easter a Gospel centered holiday. The girls get a small gift, usually a religious book of some sort. This year each of the girls got a small journal and the family got a large "Book of Mormon for Latter Day Saint Families." We plan on helping the girls write short entries in their journals on days when we do something fun or different, or whenever they want to write in it. However, we also love secular Easter traditions. This year we dyed Easter eggs on conference Sunday (we get done with conference at noon here because of the time difference, so it leaves alot of time for other things). We made Grandma Graves' rice krispy Easter nests for family home evening. During the middle of the week the girls got two packages, one from each set of Grandparents. They arrived on the same day. This has happened once before on a Valentine's day and it is like Christmas morning. Just look at the picture and you will see what I mean. While Rusty and I were manning a booth at Makahiki (the oldest show in scouting, look for a later post) Holly and my friend Wendi took the girls over to the public Easter egg hunt that was being held across the field from Makahiki. Kyleigh got a prize egg and came back with 4 new things of play-doh. That afternoon we had another Easter egg hunt in John and Wendi's back yard. If you are anything like me you will be shocked to know that Wendi had 240 plastic eggs to stuff. I made my huge contribution of 30 eggs and we let the kids have at it. John and Wendi have three daughters, ages almost 7, barely 5, and 2. Of course, Naiya was there too. We bbq'd chicken afterwards and had a picnic. That night Rusty and I went on a date so the girls were up a little late with their babysitter. As a result of all the fun and a late night, Rusty and I had a super quiet Easter Sunday. The girls BOTH fell asleep after church and didn't wake up until we woke them up 4 1/2 hours later to go have Easter dinner at Mike and Holly's. Hope everyone else had a great Easter Holiday.


Both the girls are sitting the same way. I think that is so cute.

One more try

We have officially started a garden.....again. We do not have green thumbs. We have no house plants, not even one. We haven't even had much luck with the flowers you can buy that are already bloomed and all you have to do is drop them in the ground and water them. Our gardens of the past have failed, miserably. We decided that since we live on the "garden isle" we will give it one last go. If it doesn't work here we give up. We tilled up a spot of ground that has held only weeds since we moved into this house. We planted corn, lettuce, beans, cucumber, carrots, onion and green onion directly into the ground. We started our tomatoes, watermelon, bell peppers, chili's, and pumpkins in the house. The garden spot isn't really that big, but we just have a few of each plant. Rusty is all kinds of excited about this. Every day he comes home and almost passes me by to hover over the pots on the countertop, then reports on the progress of each plant. I'm kind of surprised he hasn't named each one. So far our lettuce, corn, carrots, green onion, onion and one bean plant are growing. Just tonight we transplanted some tomatoes, peppers, and watermelon. For fun we are even going to buy a topsy turvy to see if it works (we'll let you know).

Our lettuce sprouting.

Newly planted garden with pretty rows.

Garden helpers.

Katelyn and daddy planting some seeds.

The girls are excited, too.

Cantelope Animal

Rusty has been telling the girls lots of his hunting and trapping stories lately. Tonight at dinner Kyleigh told us that she wished there was a cantelope animal so we could go hunting for it. We asked her what she meant. She said, "you know, a cantelope animal. So you could eat all the cantelope meat. I like cantelope." If anyone knows where we can find a cantlope animal, let us know.