Fire Fighters to the rescue!

We belong to a club called Keiki Would Go (Keiki means children in Hawaiian). We basically do something kid friendly once a month around the island. May's activity was a tour of the fire house that opened last year.

Here's Austin and another little girl tumbling down a hill while we were "learning." :-)

Sitting on the end of the ladder.

Our group on the front of the fire truck.

Brian's Work of Art....

Brian and our friend worked hard to build this bar. They got done with the majority of it by Christmas Day. All that it needed was the trim work. Well, after more than 5 months of it sitting there unfinished, Brian finally finished it. There are some things he would change, but overall, he's really happy with it. I think it's awesome...they didn't have any formal plans to build from; just a few sketches of what Brian wanted. I'm sure over the years, things will be added (like some trimwork to the front of it, etc). Right now, we are pretty happy with it! Especially Brian!

Getting Ready for the MLB

Austin's plastic tee ball set was getting a little nasty and broken. Plus, the balls were missing and he was really wanting to hit real balls with a real bat. So, we were at Wal-Mart and found a "big boy tee ball set" that he just LOVES. He actually has his own tee ball bat now and the best part about the tee is that the ball is on a string so we don't have to shag balls anymore! (he's a great hitter, so they were always far away!)

Here are a few pictures from the first day he played with it! The only thing is that we have to keep the bat in our room so he doesn't get to just take it outside anytime he wants...he and the other boys outside sometimes hit each other...can you imagine the damage a metal bat could do!?!?

Getting a pitch from Daddy....

Brian's teaching him to hit both right and left...

The New Playground

Schofield Barracks is building new houses to replace some very old, very horrible housing areas. The new housing areas have their own rec centers and they recently completed a brand new playground as well! Austin loves the "boat playground." We just wish they would build a playground like this next to where we live!!!

That's not even all of it.....there's more on the side, but it didn't fit in the picture. Pretty cool, huh!

Water Play

Our neighbors have two little boys: Jet and Taite. Jet is 2 and Taite is 4 (they just had birthdays at the end of May). Anyway, Austin loves to play with them and we have had a great time playing in the backyard with them as well as celebrating their birthdays with them at the water park. Here are a couple of pictures of Austin having fun. I don't really have permission to post pictures of Jet and Taite, so a back of Taite's head and a little bit of Jet will have to do! :-)

In the back yard playing with the sprinkler....

Squirting people at the water park.....

Sitting at the picnic table at the water park smiling for the camera...

Our little boy is growing up....

Austin started a chore chart the other day. The things he has to do everyday are: get dressed, no hitting, pick up toys, take care of pets, and clear the table. He has done very well so far and loves to put on the sticker magnets for each chore, each day.

The first chore of the day is to get dressed. We decided he needed to really start to do this or try to do this by himself. He is so independent in so many ways, but definitely not in this area! He wants to be dressed by mom or dad and isn't happy when he has to try by himself. On Wednesday, when we started this chore chart, he didn't get a sticker for getting dressed since he refused to try by himself. I think the lack of sticker for that chore on that day has bothered him....he has tried the rest of the week and is so proud when he gets done. He also tries to put a sticker on that day since it's the only spot without one!

Today, he put his shirt on and told Daddy that he did it. Brian said, "You the man!"

Austin's reply was, "Yep! I'm the MAN-BOY!"

Our Own Super Hero

Austin got this Spider Man costume for Christmas from my Aunt and Uncle. He loves to put it on when he sees it hanging in his closet. The only problem is that it's usually a tad too warm to leave it on for any length of time. I can usually only get a few pictures snapped, then he's stripping it off again. Here's a recent one....

A New Do....

Our little boy before his haircut....

And our Big Kid after his haircut...
He's not too happy in this picture. The stylist put some really goopy stuff in his hair to spike it up and after sleeping on the way home, he decided that he didn't like how the goop felt. So, he's basically pouting because I wanted a picture before we washed the stuff out of his hair. I'll get some more pictures tomorrow and post them so you can see how we'll probably style it on a day to day basis.

A Spur of the Moment Purchase....

Isn't it funny how those spur of the moment purchases are always the most expensive???

Brian and I have been playing with the different options that we have when we leave here with our vehicles. He's been thinking of selling the Jeep, but we weren't going to do that until right before we left if that is what he had decided to do.

For two days, Brian had a class down at Fort Shafter. On Thursday, he called me up. This is how our conversation went:

Brian: What do you think of the Honda CR-V?

Me: I don't know...don't know what it looks like. (as I go get on the computer to look it up)

Brian: Blah blah blah (telling me about the car as I'm looking it up)

Me: It looks nice...pretty cool features (blah blah blah...as I look at what it looks like)

Me: You already bought it, didn't you?

Brian: No

Me: Are you at work?

Brian: Not exactly....

Me: WHERE ARE YOU?

Brian: That doesn't matter.

Me: You're at the dealership, aren't you!

Brian: No....

Me: Well, where are you then?

Brian: Yeah, I'm at the dealership...

We talk a little more about it and I ask him what he was thinking of doing, etc. Like I said, our orginal plan was to, at the very least, sell the Jeep. However, that wasn't even decided on and it was supposed to be right before we left if it was decided on! :-) So, I can already tell he likes the car. We decide for me to come have a look since there's no way I'm letting him buy a car I haven't even seen!

Funny thing is, I basically had a feeling he was already sold on it. So, before I left, I took a box and took as much stuff out of our car as I could while getting Austin in his carseat etc. That way, there was less to cart home once we had this new car I hadn't seen yet!

So, after 7 hours of Brian sitting at the dealership (he had been there since 12:30 and we got home at 7:30), we pulled up in our driveway with a 2007 Honda CR-V. And the Jeep. Can you guess which car we are missing??? Yeah, the one we would have paid off next year. Such is life. By the way... I really like my new car! :-)

A few odd shots....

Still catching up.....

We went to the beach one Sunday Evening. Our neighbors used to live down in Ko'Olina and would go to the beach for the sunset almost every night. Now that they are living up at Wheeler by us, they don't get to do that as often. One night, they had plans to go down there and invited us to meet them there if we wanted. Here's the sunset from that day...

On April 19th, we had an FRG (Family Readiness Group) activity at the Bowling Alley. The FRG paid for the bowling and we had a lot of families come out and take advantage of that. I got a silly shot of Austin and Daddy eating and wanted to share...

This is a shot of a pretty cool rainbow. Not sure how well it will turn out on the computer, but it was GORGEOUS in real life. (Plus, the colors on my monitor are STILL wonky, so I can't tell how well the colors are on this computer!) Anyway, gotta love the Rainbow State!

Catching Up....

So, I've been bad about updating the blog lately! I'm posting these pictures from earlier in April when Brian and I went on a Whale Watching Cruise. Austin stayed at home with his best babysitter, Cait.

It was a gorgeous day for a boat ride, so we were pretty lucky. I'm not sure if we expected to see a lot of whale activity, but we got some pretty good shots. As we turned around to go back to the pier, they were selling the pictures from our trip....AND the ones from the day before. Let's just say that the people who went the day before got QUITE a show! They had whales jumping all the way out of the water, spinner dolphins...basically the works when it comes to Whale Watching! However, we were very happy with what we saw since we did see more than some people do! :-)

The whales we were following were a younger one, the mom and a male escort (that's the phrase the expert used). The Father of the babies don't usually provide safety I guess, so other males help out.

Anyway, here's a couple of shots of the "baby's" tail.

One of the pectoral fins of one of the whales....

A partial breech....a full breech is when the whale jumps completely out of the water and does a belly flop back into the water. This one seemed a little half-hearted compared to that, but still VERY cool to see in person.

The splash after the partial breech

Playground Fun

Along with the brand new houses that are being built on Schofield, they are also building some new playgrounds. This one just opened up about a week ago and we call it the "boat playground." It has a cute plastic boat on the front of it that the kids can play in.

Austin and I met his friend, Katherine, and her mom and little brother at the boat playground for a playdate. I took a few pictures, but not a whole lot since neither of the 3 year olds ended up being in a great mood. You can't really tell by the pictures, but they were pretty grumpy! And since I don't have permission from Katherine's Mommy to post her picture on here, I am leaving those out for now.

Yes, this is still at the playground....since the kids were just sitting around being grumpy, we told them to go run in the sprinklers that were running. They had a lot of fun doing that. Now, Austin always says he wants to go to the boat playground and play in the water. Not sure if he knows that the water isn't actually part of the playground!