Joy

It's amazing how much can change in a year. I'm happy that I've been able to live with Joy over the past +year and see all the great things she's been able to accomplish. It seems like forever ago that I was her age. I remember my late 20's as being such a mix of frustration, excitement, and anticipation. It was then that I started to see things from a more mature perspective. and I was okay with letting go of some of my wild antics (yes, hard to believe I was ever wild).

Joy has had quite a year. I've seen her come from some frustrating lows to exciting highs. She has made so many positive changes for herself and I'm so proud of her! She's much stronger than she thinks and I've seen her get through some tough times a whole lot better than I think I ever could.

Last month a job opened up at Alaska Airlines here in Cordova, and Darius mentioned to Joy that she should apply. I think this was her 3rd attempt at applying for this job over past years, and it must have been the charm. After several interviews and some mad dashes at submitting a detailed account of her adult life (tricky stuff), she landed herself a new job with some sweet benefits! The icing on the cake was that she was able to come with us to Hawaii. Her job training was originally scheduled to take place the week we had planned to go, and by some miracle it got moved back a week.

Joy is over a week into her on-the-job training and doing great. She likes flagging in the planes and driving all the equipment vehicles. She's even had her first taste of loading heavy fish boxes. What a woman! She'll be sporting some big guns very soon.

Today we celebrated the day Joy entered this word 27 years ago. Happy Birthday Joy! Thanks for being just the way you are. I love you forever and wish you happy birthdays always. Cheers to burritos, owls, and another year in life!

"You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em."....

This was Theodor Suess Geisel's response to not having children of his own. Entertain the kiddies he has and probably always will! Ben & Zach love his books! Their favorite lately is Ten Apples Up on Top, written under Geisel's pen name Le Sieg.

We just happened to have leftover ham from Sunday, so I "treated" the boys to green eggs and ham this morning for breakfast in honor of Dr. Suess' birthday.

Um...yeah, I can't figure out why they didn't go for it! I actually ended up eating their breakfast (pretty tasty) and they had cereal instead.

We have a lot of books and reading to the boys is one of my favorite things to do. Out of their collection, the Dr. Seuss books are probably the most fun to read, albeit lengthy at times.

When I was younger I wanted to write children's books when I grew up. My mom has saved my early attempts at writing and it's quite entertaining to look through it all. Now that I'm mostly grown up I find that I'd still like to give writing a go. One of these days I'll get around to it...

In Like a Lion...

It's March! It's going to be a busy month with a lot of fun mixed in and I'm excited.

I was talking on the phone earlier with my friend Patti and I told her how I keep the boys occupied while I'm working in the kitchen. I open up a few cabinets that I normally won't let them into and give them (mostly) free reign of the cupboards' contents. They were playing together beautifully and stacking boxes of dry goods, and then eventually they started chucking everything down the stairs. I didn't realize until we headed downstairs later that there was an open box of pasta that was tossed.

They had fun making a bigger mess of things on the way down. I think it took less time for me to clean up the Cheez-It debacle than to pick up all the pasta.

Aloha & Mahalo Hawaii

Sigh...our vacation is over, but the thought of seeing palm trees and beaches again in another month made our return to the cold a little less painful. We even lucked up and came home to some beautiful, mild weather in Cordova.

The break was good for all of us. Here are some of our favorite things about the trip:

Dad - The warm weather.
Mom - The beaches and ocean.
Darius - Playing with the boys on the beach.
Joy - Going for walks in the warm weather and sunning on the beach.
Me - Playing with the boys on the beach and watching the whales in the ocean.
Ben - Playing in the sand and water.
Zach - Watching big trucks and tour buses, and the huge inflated donkey at Keoki's.

When we were planning our trip to Hawaii, everyone agreed that we wanted to visit Maui. The timing of our trip unfortunately didn't mesh with lodging and flights there, so we ended up going to the Big Island instead. I think at the end of the trip we all still would have preferred Maui, but it was still nice to see a different island that some of us hadn't been to before.

There's a lot of diverse areas on the Big Island. We spent the majority of our time in the Kailua-Kona area at the King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel and stayed in a rental home south of Captain Cook the rest of the time.

We took time to drive around the south part of the island to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park where we viewed an active volcano and walked through the Thurston Lava Tube.

We drove North from the park to Hilo on the East side of the island. We drove along Banyan Drive and saw the huge banyan trees that had been planted by some famous individuals. My favorite of course was the tree planted by Babe Ruth in October 1933.

We cut back across the island on Highway 200 through the mountainous region and enjoyed the roller-coaster-like parts of the road and the beautiful landscape.

The rest of our time in Hawaii involved a lot of relaxing, beach time, eating tasty food, and enjoying the great weather and beautiful scenery.

I'll say it again and again...we're so fortunate to be able to enjoy the flight benefits that Darius receives from his job. Thanks Darius! If it weren't for the benefits we certainly wouldn't be able to visit the places we have unless we were to plan and save for what would likely take well over a year. To have the ability to travel outside of an isolated area like Cordova is huge! Especially during the long winters here.

Me Ke Aloha

I hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day! Six years ago today I met Darius which is another reason why I love this holiday. Little did each of us know what was in store for us today, and what a great day today was. Ben and Zach were in rare form this morning and were literally bouncing off the walls and each other. They slowed down just a little bit for a few bites of their breakfast before they were off again.

I made breakfast for Darius and Mom, and breakfast-in-bed for Joy so that she would feel extra loved. Joy was attracting geckos while she relaxed outside and I had fun taking pictures of the ones she pointed out to me.

After my parents got back from church we all enjoyed a delicious lunch courtesy of Darius. He grilled chicken and ribs and made some tasty rice with bits of fresh mango and pineapple. Afterwards we all got ready and headed out to an awesome little beach park nearby. I think it's my favorite out of all the beaches I've been to. The boys had a great time playing in the salt-and-pepper sand, and Ben loved playing in the water. He got knocked over by a couple of waves coming in and didn't mind a bit.

Probably the best part of the afternoon was watching whales from the beach. I was so excited! I've never seen them before in person and I lucked up and got to watch them play for probably a good 15 minutes or so. There may have been more, but I'm positive there were at least two, a mama whale and her calf. The calf jumped out of the water several times and at one point it's mama was giving it tail flapping lessons. It was so much fun to watch them both slap the water over and over again with their tails!

In the evening my dad grilled steaks and my mom made a very tasty salad. Salads can be very exciting to a group of Cordovans who often lack delicious fresh veggies to eat! I followed up after the meal with some almost-homemade cookies. Mom, Dad, Joy, and I played a few rounds of Yahtzee while Darius was kind enough to lay down with the boys until they fell asleep.

Today was just the kind of day that was perfect for Valentine's Day. I always say that it doesn't have to be about romance. In my opinion, the day is best spent by spending time with people you love and it's certainly a bonus to be able to spend it somewhere warm and beautiful.