Life in da Harbor

Good food, fun family...life in da Harbor is lotsa fun!

Stretching our stomachs the night before Thanksgiving with a ham dinner.

Hmmm...I wonder where the kids get their clowning around from?

Our little Thanksgiving art project--more to come in the next post.

We tried to play a family game of Five Crowns while the kids terrorized the house. Ezra was enjoying a rare quiet moment with grandpa here.

Still loving each other. Thanks for driving over and playing with the kids, guys! These wonderful folks had to head home on Thanksgiving day so that Aunt Emily could be to work at 4:45 am for black Friday. Icky!

Thankfulness

So much to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving day. First and foremost we are thankful for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. All the blessings we enjoy here on earth are given by Him. Below are some of the many folks we are thankful for. And waaaaay down south, in California there is a group of folks gathered together at U-Nate and A-Megan's house who we are thankful for. Hope you all are having lots of fun!

Starting Thanksgiving right. Pjs, rainboots and a raincoat out in the backyard after a breakfast of huckleberry waffles made by grandpa. We all slept in here at the house and enjoyed a leisurely morning while daddy and all the uncles went off to play football. Uncle Heffay should have stayed home and relaxed with us, he suffered a separated shoulder--ouch! It should be healed soon, because Ezra offered up a very heartfelt prayer on his behalf this morning. There is nothing like the faith of a child!

Gobble Gobble. This was the turkey pinata I attemped to copy from the Alpha Mom site. This is where all you tech-savvy bloggers would have a hyper link or some other such fancy-shmanciness. I'm a little simple minded in that way, so, no link. Plus, without the link, those of you who haven't seen it already will have no idea how gorgeous and professional SAJ's turkey looked. The comparison to ours is quite sad. But, Ezra, Emily and I sure had fun making this little guy! We were very thankful for Aunt Emily during the process.

Feeling the effects of Thanksgiving dinner at Great-Grandma Kilcup's house.

Real silver means washing alllllll the pieces by hand. Ugh. The memory of this scrumdidilicious (Tadd created word) meal lingers still in my mind and on my hips.

Denise and Shelly--cousins and friends.

Caroline cuddled right up to Uncle Mikey for after turkey reading.

We took the opportunity of togetherness to get a family shot.

Tadd and I were the only ones to get the funny-face memo.

The only ones still living in the Harbor.

It's a Monday!

And what I mean by that is so much more : ) These kids have it in them today. We've had the vacuum cleaner out twice already and now I can't see the carpet for all the puzzle pieces. However--this is so much better than had I jumped out of bed at 5, dressed two groggy kiddos, taken them to daycare and rushed off to work. Ahhhh, praise the Lord I get to complain about spending time with my overactive toddlers!
Last Friday we headed to Gig Harbor for Mommy Group. These women know how to uplift and support one another. Being fellow believers and mommies together is such a wonderful feeling. And they also know how to have fun! Nothing is run of the mill when you put 8 women and 21 kids all 7 years and under in one house.


Sharing coffee, tea, muffins and good conversation.

The glowing hostess for this week's meeting.

Four more babies will soon join the other 23 children already enjoying Mommy Group play time.

Ezra had a blast playing with his mommy group friends.

Sometimes we even enjoy a quiet moment in the middle of mass chaos.

Back at home, Caroline is becoming a much better eater since she's recently been weaned.

More oatmeal please!

Uncle Jake and Aunt Emily stopped by on their way to Dad and Mom's Saturday night. Uncle Jakey-pooh was quickly saddled up to be Ezra's horsey.

Having so much fun.

Jacob decided to take a ride of his own.

Don't forget about me, guys!

Today (if I can ever get packed up and ready to go) the kids and I will head to the Harbor to spend time with Uncle Jake and Aunt Emily and the others. Jake and Em have to head home on Thanksgiving day, so we want to see a little of them now. Daddy will join us when he's done working on Wednesday. So, off we go to Grandpa Tractor's! We'll try to post about the fun from there. But just in case we forget--Happy Thanksgiving!

Visit from an old friend, Snack Time and Cookie Baking

We started this week out with a visit from one of my high school girlfriends. She loves to be tortured by our children...and they love to torture her, so we try to make our get-togethers a regular thing : )



Ezra loved having some new reading voices--thanks for all the reading and playing you two did! Miss Aura also brought some beeea-uutiful roses as a hostess gift. We are still enjoying the bright spot they create during these gray days. Thanks for a fun evening Miss Aura and Justin-doctor!

The after-nap time snack plays a very important role in our lives. Caroline is starting to both talk and enjoy eating. She often asks for "csheeeze" which sounds quite similar to "please". Here they are enjoying some bootie, Pirate's bootie, that is--and cheese.

"We eatin' the bootie, momma!"

And finally, today we started the Christmas cookie baking. Shortbread has been sounding good to me. And chocolate is a staple in my life. Why not combine the two and make up a batch of Mrs. Field's chocolate dipped shortbread? Perfect for pre-Thanksgiving snack cravings and also to be put in the freezer for Christmas cookie baskets next month. Ezra enjoyed being my baker and kept saying "This is LOTS of fun, mommy!" Of course, I stopped caring about the mess and also about having perfect looking cookies at that point. All of my cookie cutters were in storage except for a tea party cookie cutter set. Here he is with a freshly cut out tea cup.

The mad cookie cutter!

This is serious business, folks.

I was quite surprised at how well he handled the rolling pin.

The little tea pots, sugar and creamer bowls, spoons and tea cups waiting to bake.

Little Miss Car-kine sipped the traditional accompaniment to cookies (milk) and watched.

The finished product. I know, these are circles and the dough I showed you was a tea set. The tea set was small and thus...browned to the point of almost burning. These circles stayed golden and flaky like good shortbread. The chocolate dip makes them quite decadent.

Enjoying his afternoon project.

One last little segment before I forget. Miss Kine has been imitating words more and more each day. Here current word list includes: car, bird, cheese, dad, mom, ball, please, thank you. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. The please and thank you she has learned to say without prompting at appropriate times--so cute!

As for Ezra, he talks a mile a minute. On Monday I left the room to get Caroline up from her nap. When I returned, Ezra was gone from where I had left him. I said quietly to Caroline "Now where did Ezra go". From the other room a voice yelled "I checkin' my email!"

Hawaiian Left-Overs

We've been home for several days now and are attempting to settle back into a routine. The weather has helped us transition nicely as the rains stopped the day we got home. The weekend was sunny and near 60, even. Our local parks are not an option for the kids and I right now, as the flood waters covered all of them. So, if we want outdoor play, it's the backyard or a drive up to Snoqualmie Ridge where the word "flood" is not in their vocabulary. Actually, the kids are very much enjoying the sandbox with their new toys they got in Hawaii to play with. And with fewer hours of light, we don't get out nearly as much. This is the time of year when we spend our mornings at the indoor playground and going to classes at the community center.
Now--to finish up with Hawaii. I'm throwing in the pictures from our last 3 days in this post. We relaxed, ate rice and beans every night for dinner to save money, played on the beach and stayed close to the condo most of the time. Daddy did spend an afternoon by himself at Pipeline while the kids and I napped. He had a lot of fun watching surfers and waves. Monday morning, Tadd and Ezra walked down to the Alii beach just down from our condo where the Vans Triple Crown surf competition was getting ready to start. They saw Bethany Hamilton get in the water and paddle out with her one arm just as strong as all the other girls with both arms. When Ezra came back, he looked at me with a sad face and said "she have only one arm, mommy".
On Tuesday we were all set to enjoy our last full day. We had plans for a lunch out at Breakers after all the rice and beans we'd consumed at the condo. Red meat--here we come! Then we were going to head to Pipeline again so that the kids and I could see those gorgeous waves. But, halfway through my burger and fries my itchy eyes started to swell and I felt like my throat was closing. Instead of watching waves, I got to watch the walls of a doctor's office. I received a steroid shot and a prescription for Prednazone (I'm quite certain this is NOT how you spell that). Praise the Lord the reaction was stopped and we were only at the doctor's office for 35 minutes or so. I was drugged up on Benedryl and Prednazone for the remainder of the trip. We don't know what caused the reaction since I did not eat anything out of the ordinary and I do not have any known food allergies--so I now get to make an appointment with an allergist--yah!
Wednesday we played on the beach until the last second, cleaned up our stuff, enjoyed Maui Mike's chicken in Wahiwa (thanks John Tysor for the recommendation!) and drove to the airport. Vacations are always hard to say good-bye to, and especially so when you're leaving Hawaii and heading home to a possible flood. But what a gift this vacation was. An unexpected surprise that we fully enjoyed! AND--the flood stopped 2 or 3 blocks from our house. We have so much to be thankful for!

Strutting her stuff.

Enjoying one last walk on the beach under the almost-full moon our last night in Haleiwa.

Our neighbors two doors down. The husband and wife are both surfers (from Banff, Canada of all places) and come to Hawaii pretty much every year to surf. He is a helicopter pilot for heli-skiing in the winter and they contract out to aid fire fighters in the summer. Hmmm...could our family seem any more boring after meeting them? It was nice to have a family with kids around to share toys and an understanding smile when kids are running around minus diapers in the outdoor shower!

Ezra's new little friend. They enjoyed playing together for the most part--and fought like a 3 year old and an almost 3-year old the rest of the time :)

This is the only family picture we had taken the whole time. We had it taken just before we went out for lunch at Breaker's and I became a swollen mess : )

Miss Cheesy enjoying Hawaii and the camera.

A beautiful wave at Pipeline. Tadd went and spent an afternoon watching the surfers and taking pictures.

This was our condo building. You can see that they were re-roofing the whole time we were there. The noise just became background after a time. Our room is the fourth from the left--behind the trees.

Caroline loved to run in and out of the waves. She often got knocked down, sucked back in or washed in the face with water. Most of the time she just laughed and enjoyed all the excitement.

Ezra fell in love with "gobble juice" (guava juice) on the plane ride over to Hawaii and consumed many cans and cups of it during the vacation. It was mommy and daddy's favorite drink as well.
...And that's all for the vacation posts. Be ready for more boring daily activities from here on out : )