Bounce U!

Our friend "Little Scott", who says he's not little, he's big (but not as big as Dad Scott our girls remind me) had his 4th birthday party at Bounce U last night.  Great party Scott!

For those of you who are not lucky enough to have one of these bouncy places near your house, here's what it is.  There are two giant rooms filled with giant inflatable bouncy things like slides, climbing areas with a slides at the end, bouncy rooms, obstacle courses, etc.  Bounce U (or another place near us with an equally silly name, Pump It Up) is a very popular place for birthday parties and it even has my favorite thing - OPEN BOUNCE!  

Open bounce kids can jump in the mornings for an hour and a half and then be totally worn out for nap time. The best part is that Heidi is still under two and gets to bounce with her sisters for free - and I get to bounce with her!  I have to admit it.  I think I love bouncing as much as the girls do.

Heidi has no fear and LOOOOOOVES the giant slide.  Molly does not love it and won't go near it.  Scott's parents were nice enough to finally catch this on video for me since I am always dropping her down the slide.  I do it as often as Heidi wants to (which is for an hour straight) because one of these days the management will realize I'm dropping a BABY down the slide and will make me stop.  

I'm having trouble loading the video, but in the meantime, check out this photo.  This is probably why Heidi loves bouncing.  This was taken 11 days before Heidi was born and 4 days before her friend Taten was born.  My friend Trisha and I decided to induce labor by jumping on a trampoline.  It didn't induce labor.  Rats.

 

Demo

Today was demolition day.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect and it turned out to be MUCH better than I expected.  

Here are the girls having breakfast in the new bathroom/kitchen combo room.  (Have you heard about these rooms?  ALL the big stars have them.)  They can almost see the TV too.  

The kitchen is now without counters.  I was really impressed that the demo team cleaned up so well.  I was expecting to be hauling out chunks they left all over the floor.  The kitchen is actually cleaner that it was this morning!  I do kind of miss that sink . . . and the dishwasher.

These frames are on the wall just behind the kitchen.  Nothing actually fell off but it was sure close.  I think I might leave it like this.  It's sort of appropriate for my life right now.  Not only is this going on but I'm the new YW President and New Beginnings is this week.  Pray for us.

The REAL Before Photo

This is our REAL "before" photo.  Last night we turned on what I called "The Fancy Dress Show" so that the girls would not complain about watching something called the Oscars and Scott and I packed up the kitchen as fast as I could.

This is the "pre-before" shot.  The girls are wearing some fancy dresses, watching the fancy dress show and eating peanut butter on the floor.  I'm still amazed everything got cleaned up!  It looks like a model home.

Before

I always wondered why "before" shots of kitchen remodels were so bad.  There's junk all over the counters, kids are in the photos, cabinets are open, etc.  I mean, come on!  Didn't the owners know their kitchen was going to be remodeled a few weeks ahead of time?  Couldn't they have taken a photo when the house was clean?  Or (and this really makes me laugh now) couldn't they have CLEANED UP before hand?  

These are my before shots.  Yes, I have known for a few weeks that the kitchen was being remodeled but I never really thought of taking photos when it looked good.  I am busy enough as it is.  There's NO WAY I'm actually going to clean up for a before photo.  (If Scott wants to though, he can do it.  He may care more about a clean before shot.)  Also, it's nice to see a really messy before shot so that the after shots can be even more dramatic.  Right?

Here's Heidi eating breakfast (Life cereal, the rest of Emily's oatmeal and some juice) in the before shot.  The poor kid is sitting on hard plastic.  Her seat pad wasn't dry yet.  It had to have an emergency washing due to a particularly violent case of the threes during dinner last night.  Notice the open cabinets and the FHE geography lesson on the island.  Won't the after shots look great?

Here's what the after shots will have in them.  I picked the floor first and I LOOOOOVE it!  It's not quite this orange in real life but it is this striped.  Each piece is a slightly different color and I can't wait to see how great it looks when it's installed.  The granite is sort of a whitish-gray with tiny red flecks and our slabs have a big dark vein in part of it.  The white tile is a white ceramic subway tile that will go on the back splash.  The blue in the middle is what will go on what's left of the kitchen walls.  

Everything is scheduled to be done by St. Patrick's day so here's hoping the luck of the Irish will rub off on us and it really will be done then.  In the meantime, we are moving all our meals to our play kitchen.  We're setting up in our bathroom (really) because that's the biggest space with a floor the kids can't ruin.  We're just going to pretend we live in Japan and eat around the coffee table and maybe even get to watch TV while we're eating - I'm loving that part already! This might be completely deluded, but I'm kind of looking forward to the adventure of not having a kitchen.  It might be fun. Then again . . . feel free to invite us over anytime!

PCC

We took the girls to the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu.  They thought the beautiful dancing girls were fun to watch but they did not feel that way about all of the performers.  This Samoan, who can crack a coconut in half with one smack of a a rock, was particularly scary to one of the girls.  Can you guess who did not want to be in this photo?

The funniest part of the day was when we wheeled up all the girls into one exhibit area and completely disrupted the tour.  The Chinese-language tour group must have thought that Easter Island was pretty dull because when we showed up they ALL (seriously, ALL) turned around and started taking pictures of the girls.  Molly must have still been freaked out by the Samoan because she wouldn't smile.  Some of the women in the tour tried to fix that by running over to her and feeding her macadamia nuts.  I am not exaggerating when I say that they spent at least five minutes taking photos of the girls. 

And when they were done taking pictures of just the girls, they then jumped in the photos too!  I need to get these kids modeling contracts in China.  

At the end of the day Scott and I took the girls to see the temple and tried to get a good photo of the three of them together.  Man, that's so hard!  One is smiling, one is "smiling" (I hope she realizes that's not what smiling looks like very soon.) and one is thinking of ways to escape once her sisters let go of her.

Aloha!

At first we just wanted to take a few photos of the girls on the beach before dinner. We bathed them, got them dressed and stuck them on the sand.  This calmness didn't last.  They were tired of sitting together so we thought it would be fun to have them put their legs in the water and splash in the little ripples coming on the beach.  Ha!  Emily and Savannah were quickly up to their shoulders in the surf, Heidi and Carolina were crawling around and tasting the sand while Molly was somehow getting more sand on her body then I knew was possible.  We had to give them another bath before they ate dinner but it was worth it.  The photos were much better when they could be in their natural states (dirty and wet) and the photo session was one of the highlights of the trip.  We even had other tourists come to take the girls' photos!  

Cousins, cousins, there were never such devoted cousins!

Savannah really went above and beyond the "put your feet into the water" spirit.

Here's Emily at the end of the photo session.  At this point she's already soaking wet but look how carefully she's holding her dress as to not get it more wet.  That's so Emily! 

This could quite possibly be my very favorite Molly photo ever.

This was an exciting shot.  Not only is Carolina looking at the camera but she looks super, super cute!  Finally!  I've captured it on film!

Heidi was NOT jazzed about being in the sand in her clothes until we stuck her in this hole.  Then she smiled, climbed out, went back in, climbed out, went back in . . .