Happy New Year!

Right after our hike up the mountain.
Hiking again. :)
After they retire from the military they're going to compete on "Sand Blasters"
Kelly and the two "sisters". (Kenzie likes to call Maggie her sister.)
Our "grown-ups" night out. The Luau got rained out so we went to Dukes in Waikiki and had just as much fun!

Happy New Year to all our family and friends! 2007 has flown by and been such a great year! Here are a few pictures from this past week. I'm feeling a little reflective and so very thankful today, so bear with me as I "babble" for a while! :)

Reb flew home Saturday and James, Kelly, and Maggie left this morning. We had such a FABULOUS time! I just can't even put into words how great it was to spend Christmas with our family. So many great memories were made at the beach, eating out, hiking, and playing games until midnight. You guys will probably tease me for being so sentimental but it was really fun for me to get to spend time with my brother, sisters, and niece. :) Thank you for coming!

Sunday at church we sang a song by The Katinas called "Thank You". It really sums up how I feel about 2007. Here are just a few of the lyrics: "Thank you Lord, just for loving me. Many times I do forget every need that you have met. Your love is so amazing, it changed me. Here I am with all I have, I raise my hands to worship you. I want to say thank you. For everything, for who you are."

During that song I started thinking about all the ways that God has blessed our family. God sacrificed His only Son for us and honestly that would have been more than enough, but He hasn't stopped there. God has given us our health, provided for every need and then some. We live in America-the land of freedom and opportunity, have great families and friends and are blessed beyond belief! So Thank you Lord for all of that. I pray that each of us can show our gratitude to God by living our life that glorifies Him!

God Bless your 2008!

They're Here!

James, Kelly, and Maggie arrived this morning! Yea! Maggie promptly went to sleep and took a 3 hour nap as soon as we got home from the airport! I guess traveling that distance wears a baby out! :) 

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from the airport and the others are from a parade that we were in last night. Our church, along with a few other churches, put together a 

Christmas parade. We were in one of the floats to represent family. It was really a lot of fun. 

(Sorry about the first two pictures I couldn't get them to rotate.)

Those are actually Mason's hands. :) 

It's Vacation!!

Mele Kalikimaka! We are officially on Christmas break! Yea! Aunt Reb arrived Sat. night and so far has spent her vacation going to church, staying home with a sick child (Mason had a fever Monday but was all better by Tuesday), and attending an all day 3rd grade Christmas party! Not much of a tropical vacation so far! But, we are going to try and go to the beach today. We've had so much rainy weather the past few weeks that I am just praying that it will be sunny while Reb, James, Kelly, and Maggie are here. Here are some pics from yesterday at school and of Mackenzie's program Friday night.

Reb and Mason at school yesterday.

Reb playing games with my 3rd grader.


Mackenzie's program
She was a "dancing girl" along with 4 others.
Her one line in the program was "Me, Why is this so? I cannot wrap me and put on a bow." (The theme of the program was "What God wants for Christmas is You!")

Jolie, Joy, and Mackenzie after the program.

There was dinner after the program and Mason was just "dying of starvation" while waiting for dinner to be served.

I'm sure I'll be posting many more pictures of our adventures over the next week. Stay tuned. :)

I've been saving this picture for when you guys in Nebraska got snow! Remember this picture?! You remember when you all came out to Hawaii for vacation, right?! Fun times, fun times! :) (I'll see if you can figure it out!)
Anyway, I won't talk about our weather this week because that would just be cruel! We have a busy week with two different Christmas programs and the kids' last day of swim lessons. And, we are getting super excited about Aunt Reb coming on Saturday!
We are also counting down the last few days of school before Christmas break. We start break on Wed., Dec. 19. The kids are of course looking forward to Christmas and we've only had one close call with hidden presents. :)
Well, that's it for now. I'll try and post some video of the kids' programs later.

Merry Christmas! Last time I posted it was Thanksgiving so I guess it's about time that I post. :)
I had to post Mason reading because I am just so proud of him. He has started reading chapter books! I don't know if it's because I'm a teacher or if every mom is like this, but I was a bit anxious about his resistance to reading more that easy picture books, but he's found a series called The Magic Treehouse that he just loves. Last week he checked out a book from the school library on Tuesday and was finished with it by Wednesday night. Being one who LOVES to read myself, I couldn't be more excited! :)
Kenzie is just starting to read. She can sound out letters and can put the letters together pretty good. She loves to write everybody's name down and is constantly spelling out words on cereal boxes, books and signs while we're driving.
Anyway, enough bragging about my children! :)
We are so excited that Reb will be here in just one more week and James, Kelly, and Maggie will arrive one week after that! We did a video chat with them last night and it just makes me even more anxious to finally see Maggie in person. She is such a cutie!!
Lastly, the video is of a group called "Go Fish"that the kids and I have started listening to. They do Christian kids music but it's not that annoying stuff like The Wiggles. (Sorry if you're a fan of The Wiggles, I guess we've outgrown that music at our house.) This song is of course about keeping Christ in Christmas. Have a great weekend!