Just Catching Up

In-flight Wi-Fi is awesome!  Mommy is on her way back from a conference in Washington DC and she actually has time to catch up on things like the blog!!!  It was hard to be away from the kids for 6 days but daddy had the help of all our family which we couldn't have done this without them.  While I was in DC and not in the conference I got to see some sights.  I even made it down to the Korean War Memorial where I looked up some info on my great Uncle Chan Jay aka Junior who was POW/MIA.  Our little guy Chan is actually named after his father, my great-grandfather.  The weather really cooperated and I got some great shots of the sunsets and full moon over the monuments.  

 

While I was gone daddy got a lot of quality time in with the kids.  He said they were acting out initially because I was gone but it got better.  These pics was taken before I left but this is probably what they did a lot of while I was gone :)  The kids love to ride on his back.  As you can see Esme's just chillin and reading a book and Chan's hanging out, just along for the ride.  Oh yeah, and he's in his underwear!  He's doing great still with the potty!  

The weekend before I left was busy filled with events around town.  There was a lot of face painting too.  Esme and Malia got painted at the Blue Zones kick off rally in Hilo and then Chan got his very own face painting at the HPA pumpkin patch on Sunday.  He was very serious when it was happening and told the high school student who was doing it that he wanted a monster.  See below for his monster face and pose.  Too cute!

 While we were at the pumpkin patch where there were rides and games, it turns out Chan had just as much fun playing on this container when I took him aside to go potty.  Go figure.

Esme also got her school pictures back.  I still need to send them out to family so if you normally get one, don't worry, they're coming!  I'm not sure what happened to her hair.  We put a clip in it when she left for school but apparently her teacher added the little pony tail.  And she also added the same pony tail to a few other girls too.  Haha!

 The kids are gearing up for Halloween.  Chan found one of Tosh's old costumes in our Halloween bin and hasn't taken it off since.  And Esme wore her Elsa dress from Disneyland for the Yacht Club Halloween party this past weekend.

Esme Goes To Disneyland

Phew, where to start???  It's already October and it feels like the end of the year will be here before we know it!  Our house is slowly coming along and we've given ourselves till the new year to get everything moved in completely.  It seems like there's just never enough time but I keep hearing that's gonna be the story of our lives from here on out.  Uh oh!  We still have house projects we want to complete but there's no rush at this point.  They'll happen when they happen.  We honestly spend a lot of our weekends and free time enjoying the kids and then we try to squeeze in house time when they're sleeping.  You can see why this'll take us awhile to complete :)

Esme and I had an awesome mother-daughter trip to Disneyland over fall break!  We met up with our WA friends, the Mitchell's, so Esme and Natalie had each other to experience this new adventure.  Esme was in awe of all the characters, especially the princesses.  I forgot just how much joy something as simple as that would bring her.  She enjoyed the rides and just doing whatever she wanted while we were there.  She also asked if daddy and Chan could come next time which was really cute.  We were at California Adventure and Disneyland for a total of 4 days which gave us a lot of leisure time to go at our own pace.  We also stayed right in the park at the Grand Californian so that also made life a lot easier when it came to taking naps, going back to rest, and just enjoying their awesome pool!  We had a few tired tantrumy moments but overall I think she did really good.  Pics below in a sort of random order.

Allen was amazing and potty trained Chan from start to finish while we were gone.  He did the cold turkey trick like we did with Esme and it worked with him for pee and poop.  With Esme it took a little longer for her to poop in the potty but pee was easy.  Allen also got Chan sleep trained to stay in his bed at night!  Way to go daddy!  We missed our boys a lot and were so excited to come home and see them.  Chan wouldn't let go of me at the airport.  The next day though it took the kids a little while to adjust to being siblings again.  They weren't used to having to share their parents we guessed and they kept trying to talk right over each other.  It was sort of funny until they started getting upset with each other.  Haha!  All is good now :)

This was a favorite ride for Mimi :)

Halloween at Disney!  Esme wanted to know how come we don't trick-or-treat in Hawaii.  She didn't understand why we got to do it early in CA.  

Esme LOVED the bunkbeds in our hotel room!

Pics with our Disney group and Mr Queen (that's what Chan calls him :)

She insisted on the "Elsa hair" for her Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique makeover.

Esme was soooooooooooo happy this afternoon!

After their makeovers they got to meet the princesses in the Royal Hall.

And then we went trick-or-treating at Mickey's Halloween Party.  They had to stop and pose in this scene we passed while in line.  

Esme wasn't so sure about Mickey Mouse.  She was fine with some characters and not so fine with others.  

She was totally into the princesses.  

Minnie Faces!

Sitting in a chair in Minnie Mouses house :)

Meeting one of the fairies in Pixie Hollow!  This was our last day which started off as pajama day for Esme.  

And then meeting Tinkerbell afterwards!

And don't forget Mary Poppins.  She watched the movie right before the trip so she had a frame of reference.