A Taste of Paradise

I regret to announce we are home from our trip to paradise, aka Hawaii. I was seriously tempted to just stay on the island, but then I remembered that my girls are back on the m.l. (main land). So we may have to just ship out as a family sometime and see what we can do. The island of Kauaii is beautiful; scenic and breathtaking. We could have spent days admiring each site, though we usually only had a few hours. We came home refreshed and a little rejuvenated. I feel I can brave the several inches of snow that promptly welcomed us on our porch.
The girls did great with their grandparents. I am told it took a team of six helpful family members to get through sacrament meeting...(No fair! We only have the two of us, and Maddie's temper alone outnumbers us!) My favorite story so far was hearing about how the girls took cans of tuna fish and transported them inside Atticus's "house." This proved to us that obviously, the girls were surrounded by all of their favorite things: Atticus, tuna fish, and grandparents! There may be other stories, probably under the radar....but we were provided with other statistics: most tantrums Maddie has had in one day--three! That's it? I don't think she showed her true personality on her vacation. In any case, we missed the girls a bunch and were glad to see them again. Thanks a million, Brent and Syl!
So here is a little taste of our week. I don't think it's a good idea to do a play by play, as we filled up our entire memory card on our camera. However, this is much more than my journal gets, so enjoy! I am mostly trying to document this for our Elder Davis in Bulgaria; he didn't even know we were going back to Hawaii until a couple of weeks ago! We just didn't know how to tell him, so when we all dropped little hints about the next vacation to Hawaii, apparently, he thought we were joking! So this one's for you, Elder. I hope you can live it vicariously through this lovely post.




This is the house we stayed in. It was huge! It had a small backyard and then--nothing but ocean, pictured below. It was a beautiful, private beach with black sand and a dock in the distance.


The first day on the island was a Sunday. After church, we found a little beach to take a stroll. Apparently, this is a WAY dangerous beach with a high surf and signs all over. Regardless, we saw a whole bunch of people surfing there.



Ryan and Heather practicing capoeira (a Brazilian marshall art) on the beach. To the naked eye, it just looked like cartwheels, but take a trip to Brazil and you will spend the rest of your life trying to imitate it.

This was the sunset from the beach outside the house.



Jocelyn and I took a romantic walk down the dock. We thought it would be funny if she fell in...


This Blue Dolphin Charter was one of my all-time favorites of the trip. Somehow, Ryan, Jocelyn and I ended up on the front of the boat where we were told we would get "a little wet." A few waves later and, as you can see, we were soaking! How did my white shirt like that? The rest of the family, and the rest of the boat, were sitting only a few feet away and stayed quite dry. As Jocelyn said, "They may be laughing at us, but really they want to BE us!" I must have looked like a drowned rat because some random lady offered me a towel an hour after this picture was taken!


On this cruise, we saw dolphins swimming in the waves, sea turtles, and a Humpback Whale breaching. I took many pictures of it, but unfortunately, they all turned out like this, as these sea animals are much quicker than my camera. Actually, in this picture you can see the turtle's head coming out of the water. I still don't know how my dad saw the whale spouting in the distance, but we did not put it past the person who spots bald eagles while driving down the freeway at 60 mph.





This was a site called the spouting horn. It was amazing the way the water came up and shot up into the air. It was just like Old Faithful!


Come to find out, the island of Kauai has "the Grand Canyon of Hawaii." Who knew? It was amazing!


Jocelyn and Heather pretend to like each other....


Jocelyn has been trying to be a member of the Polynesian Club at her school for the entire school year. Unfortunately, she has not yet made it in; she thinks it's because she's a white girl. So here we are, having started our own bench, rocking out to Usher's "Yeah, yeah yeah!"




My dad's all-time high of the trip and/or his whole life: the bird sanctuary. We had about a hundred little birds follow us all over the place, including peacocks, roosters, and doves. They even ate out of our hands.






A lot of the island is inaccessable by highway. The only way to enjoy the full effect is via hiking or helicopter. We chose the less-active route and helicoptered through what is called 'the wettest spot on earth'! They weren't kidding! It was so fun to learn about the history of the island from the pilot as he gave us a tour of the island. We drove through a rainstorm, and that was scary, but in the end it was totally worth it!


I got to sit next to the captain! I guess that made me the co-pilot! A funny thing about this guy was that he's the only helicopter pilot on the island that drives barefoot. It was crazy!



View from the sky. We got to see a few of the spots where 'Jurassic Park' was filmed. Remember the part with the waterfall? We totally saw that. I loved the helicopter ride and wished we had brought the video camera. We have tons more pictures from this, but I am getting tired of uploading pictures.

The very last day on our vacation, we went snorkeling and then to this lighthouse. I can't wait to get the pictures up we took from our water camera. We literally swam with the sea turtles! They were so friendly! I can't believe how close one got to me; I thought it was Ryan or my dad at first. That has got to be my favorite memory of this vacation. That and not realizing that slowly the tide was carrying us farther and farther from the shore....and having to swim full force to get back!

From the lighthouse we saw about 30 dolphins swimming! We, well my dad, saw another whale. He was the only one who saw it, and funny, the only one NOT looking through binnoculars. I loved the view from the lighthouse and the waves crashing up against the rocks. I could have stayed there all day. What a fabulous trip. I wish I were there right now.

My husband is Superman

Ok so, with us running around in circles trying to get ready for Hawaii, we did not have the time or the budget to think about Valentines Day. Especially with me being the budget Nazi and telling Ryan he was not allowed to spend any money, because pretty much Hawaii is our big gift...Which put Ryan in a pickle because we both knew I would be disappointed if we didn't do anything! You can't win with women. Anyway, so here's a little picture of how my day went yesterday. I woke up with the worst headache ever, only to have both girls teething and refuse to take ONE nap (good luck with this one, Syl). When Ryan was done with work, he let me take one giant nap, and here's what I woke up to.





Ryan had cleaned the house, put the kids to bed, made dinner (scrambled eggs and pancakes), set the relief society straight about a mix-up, and the best part of all: MADE me a dozen roses from paper! Can you believe it? Little did I know, Ryan has been learning oragami from the internet for the past few days. I was shocked! I love these roses. They are beautiful and look real, and the best part is they will never die. I am thankful every day for such a thoughtful husband.

The Countdown Begins...

As if we haven't mentioned it enough lately, we are ready for a vacation. Is it that obvious? Well, only a couple of days and counting until we leave for the tropical island of Hawaii! We (and the Davis clan) will be driving to Vegas Friday, staying with my grandparents for the night, and then hopping on an afternoon flight to Kauai. That is the island on the far left. Of yet, I personally have not heard a whole lot about this island, except the house that we are staying in is an excellent spot for whale watching, as it is whale season. It is also surfing season this time of year, which makes the boys in the family happy, but with my unfortunate fear of sharks, we will see. I have been looking on the internet for other highlights; hopefully we can hit the snorkeling adventure and swimming with the dolphins! Oh and the shopping. At any rate, I can't believe it's almost time to pack!
Here is where the girls will be staying.....


A cozy getaway smack dab in the middle of Utah, it's Mount Pleasant! We will miss our girls a ton, but are so grateful to their Barlow grandparents for agreeing to twin sit! We know they could not be in better hands.


Mount Pleasant is also home to the lovely prize winning champion weiner dog, Atticus Enrique Vermont. But as many of you know, to our little London, he is simply, "cookie"! :0) I laughed so hard the first time I heard her call him that! Surprisingly, Atticus is quite the twin sitter himself. He keeps the girls entertained for hours with his gymnastics.

Perched in a Yellow Room

It seems like just yesterday L & M were sitting in their bouncy chair, happy and content to just look around the room. Those days have changed, as they now use the chair for just about every purpose you could imagine, most of them dangerous. Catapulting, bouncing, and the ever-popular wrestling. My favorite use of the chair is Londie's perch. It seems she enjoys staying on top of the neighborhood business. When someone comes outside, she knocks on the window and says, "Hi!" and when they go back inside, she says "Bu-bye! See-ya!" She stays in her perch for what I classify as long stretches, even if it's just to watch the little neighbor girls play jump rope. She has been known to bring her coloring book and crayons to the perch, and, who can forget, her new baby.

A Trip to Forget

Ryan left last Monday for training in Amarillo, TX, and did not get home until yesterday! I had to hold the fort down for 12 grueling days, that's right, killing spiders and fixing techno problems, warding off predators, jumping at every little creak in the night, the usual. Being the man of the house is a big job, and we are so glad to have him back. I had hoped upon Ryan's coming home from Amarillo, we could both immediately forget the events of the past couple of weeks. Now, that's not entirely true, but we did have a rough stretch. A little recap:

A special thanks to my parents for helping me hold my vomiting children over the toilet for a span of 12 hours on Sunday.
To Brent and Syl for helping with messes associated with the other end of my children on Monday.
To my neighbors, the Leckingtons, for keeping an eye on my house when we abruptly left town.
To the doctor in Amarillo who "treated" Ryan's fractured rib, and told him he didn't believe him it was a basketball injury. He thought it was some guys, and I quote 'roughing him up.' (Ryan didn't have the guts to tell him it was his wife...)
To my sister Alice, who cleaned my house and watched my girls when I was hit with a violent stomach episode.
To the anonymous person who took out our trash on trash day.

That about sums it up. I knew that Ryan coming home called for a sugar coma of celebration, so I made his favorite cake and decorated it with Valentines candy and got some cherry coke to go with it. After the events of the past couple of weeks, WE DESERVE IT!! Talk about perfect timing for a vacation!
The redeeming part of the whole trip was that Ryan came home with a whole bunch of free stuff from Deseret Book, oh and some armadillo stuffed animals for the girls. Which animals are just about as ugly as the last two weeks, ha! :0)

Twins for the Twins

When we saw twin baby dolls at Target, we knew we were in for trouble. I kept telling L & M that twins are a lot of work, but they didn't believe me. In fact, they reminded me that THEY really aren't a lot of work. Hmmmmmm....Well, anyhow, with Ryan gone I cracked and let our little mother hens bring home another set of twins. They have been taking very good care of their babies, feeding them bottles and rocking them to sleep. As you can see, they put their own socks on them as makeshift leg warmers so their legs don't get cold. Maddie always loves to put herself to bed with the baby, which usually involves finding some type of blanket, here is a vest, and lying down, often on the kitchen floor. As far as names go, it looks like the girls have gone with 'baby' and, 'baby.' Which was what their names were for several weeks in the womb, Baby A and Baby B. I am glad someone around here has enough energy for twins!

Such Devoted Sisters!

Surviving a couple of weeks alone with twins takes a lot of work, not to mention is stressful. It may have been obvious I really needed a break; lucky for me, it came in the form of Sister Night! Talk about laughing therapy! As you can see, we kept ourselves busy doing every self-improvement kit imaginable, from facials to foot spas to waxing to painting toenails. Throw in a pizza and treats and you've got yourself a pretty jam packed night! We only woke the girls up a couple of times...:0) It was pretty hard to function the next day on less than 5 hours of sleep, but totally worth it. I hope we can do it more often. Sister Night was definitely was a preview of what to expect in Hawaii! The husbands can't complain, because hey, didn't we come away looking more fabulous than ever?!
L-R Leslie, Jocelyn, Allison, Heather