Checking in from Kauai, Hawaii!

Since we are on vacation right now I would love to post some awesome photos of our trip. Unfortunately we just discovered that my dear husband omitted to pack the cord to download the photos from my camera. So for now I will post a few from my point & shoot...you may already have seen these on Facebook.

We've done trips to numerous beaches, including Secret Beach, Tunnels Beach, Poipu & Lydgate Park, Shipwreck Beach and some I am sure I don't remember the names to. A few days of rain didn't keep us from exploring the island from North to South end. We saw a water spewing blowhole, affectionately known as "Spouting Horn". We've driven up to the famous Waimea Canyon, only to see not much of anything....It was waaaay too foggy and rainy but still worth it. In between we managed to squeeze in the local farmer's market to buy some exotic and tasty local fruits, a competitive round of mini-golf at the fantastic Kauai Mini Golf course, three shopping trips to Costco, two to Wal-Mart and numerous trips to Safeway, (which is luckily just across the street!)

Wednesday we swap people in our condo. My sister Lyne & her boyfriend Brian will be heading home and Adam with his friend Brandon will be taking their spots. My sister-in-law Michelle is also joining us for a week. Nothing like a full condo/car every day....

Heading out to Hawaii

Sunday we are going to leave for Kauai for a much deserved family vacation. So I thought I would get a head start on my blog post for this week. I've been stressing about packing, getting everything done last minute and not forgetting a thing...I think I've hit the point where I realized something's gotta give...not sure what it'll be yet...

Sunday Morning last week we met Verena & Chris at the Rusty Wagon for breakfast. This is Gracie's favorite food there, the kids pancake face...

On Tuesday I headed into Lynden to shop at the Second Chance Thrift store. I ran into Julie & Alissa, who are usually there on Tuesday mornings as well...I even found some smoking deals. It just happened to be Hawaiian theme and very appropriate for us. I snatched up a rash guard for Grace that I had been putting off buying since they run over $25 on the Internet.

Thursday Grace had her final swim lesson for the Eel program at the Bellingham YMCA. At first I wasn't sure if she would complete the program but about 3 to 4 lessons into it she got the hang of things. She is now way more confident in the water and I feel better about her swimming in Hawaii. For their last lesson they played a lot of games and even got to sit in the kayak and ride around the big pool.

Gracie & I spent some time on Friday making valentine's for her classmates & teacher since we won't be there for the party they will be having in Kindergarten. So we punched, glued, wrote, and taped them together. I think they turned out pretty cute. Hope they will like them as well...

Now it's time to start packing for Hawaii...no time to get excited yet. My to do list is waaaaay too long...

One More Week To Go...

till we leave for beautiful, sunny, sandy beaches in Hawaii. Yeah! I hope to keep blogging from there, but don't hate me if I slack off a bit...

Well, since the accident last week I've been driving our truck. Hate that thing, it's a pain to park, a pain to get into, guzzles gas like camel in the desert and I hate loading groceries and Grace in it.

On Tuesday we had appointments at the Dentist for our whole family. We are happy to report that there were no cavities for any of us....Wow! Grace had a blast, I think she especially loved wearing the cool sunglasses.

I have been trying to eat more of these...on the advice of my *due any day now* hairdresser Glenda. She ate them to stop these pesky leg cramps that most pregnant women suffer from during the second half of their pregnancy. I love the way they look, smell and I am a humongous fan of banana bread, especially with chocolate chips in it. However, I despise bananas. The texture makes me want to gag, they coat your teeth with this yucky stuff and it just feels gross. Does anyone have any other suggestions for leg cramps, anything but eating raw bananas??? Please???

The other morning I woke up and sitting at the breakfast table looked up and saw this out of our window. I quickly grabbed my camera and shot off a few pic's. What a gorgeous view...

On Friday I had a helper during my quick stop at the local grocery store. She offered to write out my shopping list all by herself and then even read it back to my in the store. She is getting so good at all this. It's scary how fast she is absorbing how to read and put letter sounds together to form new words. Tonight when I put her to bed she read almost a whole chapter of one of her Backyardigan story books all by herself.

On Saturday Martin took Gracie with him on some jobs and to pick up some gifts for a birthday party she was invited to. That left me most of the day to putz around my scrapbook studio cleaning up and toward late afternoon even putting together some pages. It felt so good to be creating something for me again. Over the last few months I've just been working on Christmas gifts and cards and I felt very drained, creatively. I cleaned off my desk and got to work. Hopefully this will allow me to work on my Project 365 while I am in Hawaii...

We are on Fiji Time

Grace & I are at Bulaccino, a Fijian chain coffee shop in Nadi. They have affordable internet and we decided to take advantage of some time to post about our trip so far. I attempted to upload some photos I have taken, but did not have much success in reading my card at this internet spot. Watch for more posts and hopefully photos of our exploits.

So here we are in Fiji on our second day. It's been an interesting ride starting with a 2.5 hour plane ride from Seattle to Los Angeles, then a 4 hour layover. We did not know that the LAX airport was under construction and the selection of food, etc was extremely limited. We ended up with some chicken teriyaki which could at best be called so so. Good thing the folks at Air Pacific served dinner as well as a nice breakfast on the 9.5 hour flight to Nadi, Fiji. I can only say good things about this airline. Everything was perfect, from the in-seat TV with audio, video and even game selections. You can play your seat mate at Tic Tac Toe and believe me Grace took advantage of this and whooped our butts a few times.

We arrived in Fiji at 4:30 AM on Thursday, two days after departing Bellingham on Tuesday morning. It was a little strange to hire a taxi to take us to our hotel in the dark. We didn't get to see any of the countryside as we were whisked away to the Radisson. The hotel is on Denarau Island which is a total tourist area, but it's a very nice hotel with a wonderful pool supposedly the nicest on the island. We took a little nap and after freshening up we headed into town to explore. It's very hot & humid here and we walked around town from one end to the other. Having read in the in flight magazine that the local restaurant "TaTa's" was supposed to be a very good place for lunch we stopped in there. it was quite the experience let me tell you. We ordered a variety of curries. Adam had chicken, Martin had shrimp and I ordered a Lamb dish requesting it to be mild as we were all not accustomed to curry. Wow, what an adventure. My mouth burned pretty bad and needless to say most of my meal stayed behind there. Martin & Adam seemed to suffer through it and mostly enjoyed their lunch.

We had stopped at a grocery store and attempted to pick up some snacks. However we're dismayed to find that prices for anything healthy were astronomical. Yogurt, fresh fruit and such were really expensive and we left just purchasing a pack of bottled water. After some more explorations we visited a local coffee shop since my caffeine withdrawal headache was getting to be too much. One of the employees directed us to a locally owned shop for a truly local experience. We participated in some local rites and a kava ceremony. It was quite interesting to talk to some locals from a nearby village in the mountains. It looks like we may head back there today to purchase some local art stuff. Everything they sell is handmade in the village and profits go towards education for the village children, or so they tell us around here. LOL

Then we headed back to the hotel for some swimming in the fabulous pools.

We had dinner at a local spot around the marina in the complex where our hotel is. It was quite good, martin & I shared a seafood platter, and Adam went all exotic with a Hawaiian Pizza.

We hit the hay around 9:30 PM since we are all tired and jet lag wasn't quite overcome.

Today we hit Nadi again for breakfast at Bulaccino here...next on our agenda massages by locals at the spa here in town. It's amazing how cheap things are, like a 1.5 hour massage for $60 Fijian, which is about $40 US, I think...

Anyway, our 30 minutes are almost up so I better finish off this post. Its beautiful here and we are definitely thinking about a return visit. The most striking thing about Fiji is how friendly and helpful the locals are.

This is Melanie & Gracie sigining out.

Viva Las Vegas Baby!

I guess it's about time I blogged about our trip to Lost Wages. It's been a month already and wow, lot's of things been happening.
Most of us in the house have been sick for the past month on and off. Martin got sick right after we returned from Vegas. We arrived home to a blizzard and landed in Bellingham airport with a total whiteout. It was strange to see this at the end of January, and the whole town was turned into a winter wonderland.
Vegas was definitely a last minute decision as we had originally planned to spend that weekend on the "Rowe Boat" out in the San Juans. When we heard that the forecast called for cold weather that weekend with snow int he mix we just thought that we'd be better off somewhere else. Since the place we wanted to go to in Oregon was booked that weekend Troy suggested flying out of Bellingham with Allegiant Air straight to Vegas. The price was right at $88 each way so we looked into a hotel and booked. I even investigated a little and reserved us a limo from and to the airport. It was quite an experience...
We stayed at the Mandalay Bay and I must say the place was very nice. Our room was connected to Troy & Aubrey's and there was a TV in the bathroom and even a phone in the toilet room. We immediately made plans for dinner and Troy's choice of restaurant was vetoed by the girls. We picked a different one and boy did we pick! It was a wonderful choice at the top of THE Hotel, a section of the Mandalay Bay and the view was spectacular, including sitting right across from Stone Cold Steve Austin the wrestler. Dinner was fantastic but so was the bill at the end. We even decided to forgo a wine and dessert as we just couldn't justify spending that much.
The second day we went for a walk down the strip. Here's the boys on the bridge crossing the strip at the New York, New York.
The idea was to head to the Paris for some crepes for breakfast. We obviously didn't' realize how much of a walk this really was. The last time I was in Vegas was back in the late nineties and the Mandalay Bay was just being built, the Paris not even thought about....

Anyway, we did make it to the Paris hotel and walked the little cobblestone streets to the cafe where we ordered up our crepes. Not my favorite I must say, and definitely nothing like the chocolate croissants or "Pain au chocolat" in Paris. The weather was nice maybe a little breezy but we enjoyed the walk and soon headed back towards our hotel. We had talked about going to a show and of course in true Man/Woman style no one could make a decision. So Aubrey & I headed for the box office at the New York, New York and proceeded to make reservations for the night. Well, by the time we had our ducks in a row of course all that was left for seats was waaaaay up in the rafters, not even the nosebleed section. We again made an executive decision and booked the tickets for Sunday night instead, forgoing the hypnotist we had talked about seeing. So with some rather pricey tickets for Cirque de Soleil's "Zumanity" we headed off home to the Mandalay. Troy had made some calls to his contacts in Vegas and managed to get us some awesome third row tickets on the floor to see the amazing Brad Paisley up close and personal. He just happened to be performing a the Mandalay that night. Martin & I had already enjoyed his show in Vancouver a while ago, but it was so good that we decided to do it again. And man, was it great. The talented Rodney Atkins opened for him after a great performance of Chuck Wicks the guy who sings "Stealing Cinderella" (great song and awesome performer, you'll see more of this guy!).

Brad of course rocked the house with his awesome guitar playing and performed all his hits including, Ticks, Letter to Me, Celebrity (a must see video with Jason Alexander), The Fishing Song, You Are the World, Everything (a personal favorite!) and a new one that hasn't been released yet called I'm Still a Guy. During the show they had a slide show going on the screens and couldn't help themselves with poking a little fun at the Monte Carlo fire that happened the day before.

So Sunday we headed over to The Hotel for a nice breakfast. Then we spent the day enjoying the spa, doing some bargain hunting, playing some card or slots and Martin took in some poker with the big boys. He almost won big, got a great hand and was beat by an incredible hand, twice...what are the odds of that? Not very big, we were told.

Sunday afternoon we got ready for the show with a haircut for the boys, a little shopping for the girls... Aubrey had Troy buy her a beautiful sparkly ring and I shopped for a little black dress to wear that night with my Anne Taylor heels that I had snagged up the day before for $20, they were marked down from $200. Yeah! So looking a snazzy and pretty we headed to the Shanghai Lily for dinner that night.

After dinner we took a cab to the New York, New York to get there in plenty of time to have some dessert and of course to help us ladies with our heels. It would've been hell to walk all that way.
The show was phenomenal, I haven't laughed that hard for a long time. It was an adult show so it was a bit risque but tasteful and with the audience participation you never knew what you were gonna get. There was a midget who did acrobatics on the silk ties hanging from the ceiling, synchronized swimming by two very flexible Asian ladies, hot dancing men, a clown couple for some comedic relief and all in all I think we all enjoyed the show immensely. I would even go back and see it again, if there wasn't so much else to do and see in Vegas. I think we've already picked out a different show for our next trip...

I'm Baaaaaaack...

It's been forever, (well since June!) that I've updated this sucker, so here I am. Tons of stuff has happened since we've moved into our (mostly!) completed new house right after July 4th weekend.

Where do I start? I flew out East to visit my BFF Megan in Maryland and attend CKC Valley Forge with her and some other gal pals, Martin went on his boys fishing trip in August, I started working at my favorite scrapbook store of all time Treasury of Memories in Bellingham, I went to Phoenix in September, we just returned from Thanksgiving in Canada at my folks and it's already the middle of October...where did time go?

Here is a photo of Megan and her wonderful Mom Darlene in Millville at the cutest little shopping spot. I found some great everyday items there that I can't live without now.

On the weekend we decided to brave the weather and got some awesome seats to "Sunday In The Country" a concert with many famous country stars of which we caught the following: Phil Vasser, Terri Clark, Sara Evans and Trace Adkins. We had loads of fun, even texted in to have our message displayed on the big screens up on stage. How kewl is that? ;)

Here is a shot of the famous cowgirl Gracie at the NW WA Fair on the 14th of August. Isn't she a cutie?

The day after the fair we got a very short notice invite from our cousin Mark down south in Olympia. So we hopped into the car and made the 4 hour drive to visit with him and the twins. Grace had a blast playing in the pool and didn't want to get out at all...

The next big adventure in our lives was the trip to Creative Escape 2007 in Phoenix. If you remember, last year I was the lucky winner of the FREE admission to this year's event, plus I got to take my new best friend Megan that I coincidentally met at CE 2006. Seems like the big guy upstairs meant well for us and we were destined to meet there. Thank you! We had a wonderful time and were so glad to meet up with old and new friends, learn lot's of fun new techniques (we've already managed to use three of the card folding techniques I learned a the store!), squeeze in some spa & pool time and even some shopping. We found a really great Halloween costume for Gracie in Phoenix of all places, but no photos of that till we get to wear it trick or treating. I also have to shout out a big, no HUGE Thank you to Megan's Mom Darlene. She spent a lot of her vacation time watching Grace so that Megan & I could attend the cool classes and events. We couldn't have done it without her.

When we got back we had already made plans for the weekend after our return home. Martin had arranged for us to borrow a friends boat to take a trip to the islands. This was only the second time for me on a boat and a first for Grace. She is such a natural, she just loves the water and the outdoors. Even though part of the weekend was beautiful and sunny we did ride out some weather and we had a tough time getting Grace to come inside. She was cold and wet but still having a blast. What a girl!

At the end of the month our cousin Mark visited baring gifts. He brought us a piano courtesy of Uncle Joe. At first I wasn't so sure, but seeing Grace have so much fun, it's a no-brainer. She'll be taking lessons sometime soon. Check it out:

So then just this past weekend we took the plunge and drove up to see my folks for CDN Thanksgiving. We has so much fun seeing the kids together, last time the cousins were there Grace was still pretty small and this time they really interacted. Check out Jayson reading to Gracie...

I think that brings us up to date, at least partially. LOL I promise to be better in the future but life just get's so busy sometimes...

First Flight Behind Me...

On Friday I completed what's known in the industry as my "OE" or On-board Experience. There were seven of us on board, including the senior flight attendant, and two already OE'd gal's from our class. So the 5 of us who were "new" got to rotate through most of the stations to get some hands-on experience. It wasn't as smooth as everyone would have liked, but we got it done. On the way out, from Bellingham to Orange County Airport in California, we had 51 passengers on our airplane, which holds a full capacity of 150. For the return trip we only transported 23 people north, but we made them all feel pampered and taken care of. Some of the small issues we had to battle were frozen water trucks, (hence no potable H2O on the first leg of our flight!), a broken wing light (which caused us to have to delay take-off till first light!), so we were running a wee bit late. LOL All the meals, breakfasts on the outbound and lunch on the return flight, were catered by Haggen, a great grocery chain here in the area. All comments from the passengers regarding the meals were positive and everyone seemed to enjoy the flights.
I am on call tomorrow and will fly to Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.

Over the weekend Martin & I flew San Juan Airlines to Orcas Island for a Birthday Getaway weekend with some friends. We stayed at Rosario Resort on the island, a wonderful historic mansion, where we had a wonderful dinner and cocktails followed by a lively game of poker. The weather co-operated with us on Saturday and we had a wonderful view on the flight out, whereas coming home we experienced a bit of turbulence. We plan on doing this kind of thing more often, as we enjoyed our time away from cell phones and responsibilities. Grace stayed home with her Auntie Chelle, but we missed each other during the time we spent apart.