Busy days

The last month has been fairly eventful for us. Ezra is potty trained now, which has made the diaper bill quite a bit less.

The summer has been a pretty decently warm one, and we will all be excited when it cools down and we can play outside more.

The kids have been continuing to grow in leaps and bounds.

It's amazing how quickly they get big.

Both of the kids love looking at books, which we obviously encourage.

Susan was able to get Emma to leave some pony tails in a couple of weeks ago. She was so cute with them.

The remains of our garden are basically a very large melon patch. We've got quite a few watermelons growing and a decent amount of cantaloupe. The cantaloupe are harder to tell when they're ripe, so we've only really had 1 good melon off of it.


The kids are always entertaining. They got so excited today when we went for a simple ride in the car to the store.

Maui!

So over the week of the 4th, we were able to make a trip to Maui. Shawn's parents were gracious enough to watch the kids for the week. We really appreciated it. It was the first time since Ezra was born that we've been without at least one kid around for more than 24 hours.

It was nice to get out of the heat for a bit (and not to mention the dust storm), and also nice to just relax for a week. We did end up doing quite a bit, exploring Lahaina (the town that we stayed near), watching the fireworks on the 4th, and seeing some of the other sights.

We got some really good fresh mangoes and apple bananas from a nearby farmers' market.

We also found a really awesome pizza place up north of Lahaina. It's called Pizza Paradiso, and we both highly recommend it. The food was generally good, though the better food was to be found more at the little places than the places that try to show themselves to be "upscale" places for tourists who focus more on their advertising than their food.


The weather was pretty cooperative for us. It would rain a little bit every day, but then there would always be rainbows. There was only one day where it rained most of the day.
We did get to do some snorkeling, but there was a big swell which didn't allow us to go as much as we had originally planned. It makes for great surfing, but not so much snorkeling.


We ended up going on two of the mornings to two different bays: Kapalua, and Honolua. Kapalua was smaller, but we were the only people there pretty much (probably because it was raining on us on our way up there).

We saw a few Moorish Idols and quite a few Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (reef triggerfish)

We also saw some unicornfish, and a zebra moray eel.


The second bay was about the only one that was protected enough from the swells for us to go to later in the week.

Honolua bay was really cool, though you had to swim quite a way out to the reef.

The trail from the parking area to the bay was awesome too. That area of the island is quite lush.

There were quite a bit more fish in this area, since it is a larger bay and part of a reserve. We saw quite a few fish as we swam along out to the main reef area. As we swam along, we both thought we saw someone else snorkeling toward us, but as we got closer we realized that it was a sea turtle. We were both pretty excited to be able to see one.

A while later, Susan saw something moving in the rocks at the bottom, and realized that it was a second turtle. We both were happy too see a second turtle as well.


The sunsets were great to watch on the days where it wasn't too cloudy in the evening.



We really enjoyed the beauty of Maui. There are a lot of flowering plants growing everywhere. Some of our favorites were the big hibiscus growing all over as hedges, and the plumerias.


The scent from the plumerias is amazing. We're trying to see if we have a place in the yard for one of these, as you can apparently grow them in Phoenix.

We went to the Old Lahaina Luau one evening. It was great.


The food was great and the dancing was amazing.

Our last day we went inland a bit to the Iao Valley state park and walked around a bit. The canyon that it is situated in is amazing.

We also drove up to the Kula Botanical gardens. It was interesting to see how drastically the climate changed as we started to drive up the side of the volcano. The gardens were kind of separated from everything else, and nice and peaceful.

The views were amazing.


The gardens themselves were great too. There were a lot of beautiful flowers and various other plants.



Though it was nice to get away, and the kids had a great time with their grandparents, it was also really nice to come home again.


When we got home, we found a very large, ripe watermelon waiting for us in the garden. We had left it, since the last one hadn't been quite ready a week before we left. The watermelon was almost as big as Emma and definitely weighed more (which would put it somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pounds).


It tastes good, though I'm sure we'll be tired of watermelon by the time we're done with it. Cutting the melon was interesting, since the largest knife we have didn't look like it would even be close to adequate. It worked out okay though, because as soon as the knife pierced the rind, the whole melon split in half from its own weight with a loud popping sound.

Happy Birthday, and Bring on the Heat!

It hasn't been on purpose that the posts only come about once a month, but that's kind of how it's been going.

We were able to spend quite a bit of time outside the last part of May. The cooler weather was really nice. The kids really enjoyed playing outside so much. Emma is pretty adventurous, and not afraid to get her hands dirty when we would go outside.


She tried to pick some of the lemons off the lemon tree a couple of times, picked a green tomato and shoved it in her mouth, and we even caught her gnawing on a big rock.

Ezra has liked to help as well. He points out the flowers, and tells us what they are.

He'll sit and play with the various rocks and leaves that he finds, putting them in a bucket and carrying them around.

Our garden has been pretty fruitful. We've had more zucchini, a ton of tomatoes, and have picked the first of our two big watermelons.

We gave away some of the tomatoes, and have been eating them, but there's a lot.


The watermelon plant has taken over a good part of the yard. We'll see how the melons are when we cut open the first one this weekend.

Emma has started climbing everything in sight. We've found her up on the table a few times. It definitely keeps us on our toes. She has also figured out how to open doors, which has changed the dynamic of things around the house a bit more. She's working on figuring out the difference between "up" and "down". Sometimes she'll come up to you and say, "Down!" when she wants you to pick her up.
Susan has tried to put bows in Emma's hair, but they never last long. She just pulls them out.

The longest we've ever been able to have anything in her hair was this last weekend while she was watching a movie.

She was pretty focused though.

Emma loves to to play with just about anything she can get her hands on.

She has even tried to put clothes on that she has found on the floor or in the laundry.


Ezra turned 3 last week. We were able to have a party for him on Saturday. Kelly and Cameron came over and we had cake and opened presents. Ezra was excited. He talked about his cake for about 2 weeks before his birthday.


He smiled so big when we let him open presents.


Ezra is getting so big. It's amazing to see how much he understands and learns. He's a little stubborn at times, but we love him to death.

He really liked a train set that he got, and we set up a big track for him.

Emma liked it too, so it has since moved to his room.

Easter & Gardening

Time has a tendency to slip away really quickly.

The last month or so has been fairly involved. The weather at least has been fairly nice, though it is starting to heat up quite a bit.


Easter was fun with the kids. Ezra was old enough to figure out the whole searching for eggs bit.


Emma liked the new toys, though I think next year will be a bit more exciting for her.


Our garden that we planted in early March has done very well. It's been nice to see stuff grow, and the kids have enjoyed helping out with it.


We've even been able to harvest a decent amount. We've had lettuce, snow peas, cilantro, chives, and squash so far.

The zucchini got away from us a bit. There was another one about this same size that we picked and ate earlier in the week. Hopefully the melons do as well this summer.

The tomato plants have done very well, and we should have a bunch of tomatoes here soon.


It looks like we'll even have lemons this year off of our tree.

The flowers have done decently well too. The poppies didn't seem to mind the freeze we had in January, and have just been blooming away for a couple of months now.


The oleanders have started blooming as well. The red are the most stunning.

Unfortunately, the orchid tree didn't take the cold quite a well. It didn't bloom this year, and in fact we ended up cutting the top quite a bit back. I think the freeze was a bit much for it. It is coming back from the roots fairly well though, so we'll see how it goes.


This last weekend was finally going to be a relaxed one where we just cleaned up a bit after everything. But instead, we ended up buying a new couch. In order to fit it, we ended up moving furniture pretty much all over the house, but we really like it.

The kids keep us on our toes and try our patience at times (they're kids, that's what they do best, right?), but it's all worth it to have them smiling and laughing. They've both gotten so big very quickly it seems.