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Sunday, September 10, 2017

All Smiles

September has turned into dental month for our family.  Poppy and Evie had their first trip to the dentist and tolerated it quite well.  The dentist was amazed at how different they were yet how they had the exact same teeth - tight and crowded.  Ugh!  They still look good but we were told we have to start flossing them now.  Poppy has most of her teeth and Evie is just popping out her first molar.  

Esme and Chan have their check ups coming next week and we're hoping their visit goes just as well.  Esme hasn't lost any teeth in awhile and she still has a few wiggly ones in her mouth.  
Esme's toothless smile

Happy Chan

Pops loves her food!

Evie's smile says a lot about her personality.  

We hardly ever get both to smile at the same time.  This might just count :)

Chan wrote his first birthday card to a friend at school!

Labor Day shenanigans at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park with mommy and the big kids.  Babies were sick :(

Devastation trail exercises.  

Thurston lava tube.  

Chan was so excited to end the day with getting this cat suit, complete with ears, paws, and a tail.  

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Back To School

We've successfully transitioned back to school for the entire family!  Esme started 1st grade this year and she's so happy to be back into the school routine.  Summer was fun but she was a tad bit under-stimulated.  Our big accomplishment for the summer though was learning to ride her bike without training wheels!  This is huge for Esme since she's a very cautious kid and she was asking us to teach her.  She was so ready and it was great!  Now we can finally upgrade her bike to a big kid one :)  Oh and the other summer milestone was getting stitches.  Esme fell on the playground at Summer Fun and had to get 5 stitches to her chin :(  She was actually a trooper though and toughed it out like a champ thankfully!

Chan started his last year at Keikiland in Mrs Sky's class.  He enjoyed the summer program at Keikiland but he also loves his routine and learning so he was glad for the school year to start again.  Over the summer we enrolled him in Kumon for reading cause he was begging to learn.  I think watching Esme was a huge motivator.  Anyways, it's amazing how much progress he's shown lately and now he's reading beginner books to us at night.  We recently added on the math lessons too since he's been showing a growing interest in numbers too.  He also stopped going to gymnastics and started soccer.  We've been waiting for this day for the past year cause he's got so much energy!  We got off to a slow start though since he was recovering from a stomach bug during his first game.  He puked up his spam musubi right before it started.  Ugh!  But anyways, he's happy to have his own activities and even happier that daddy's the coach.

As for Poppy and Eve they're growing and moving right along.  We've already lectured them that they're going to have to do the same activities when they grow up cause mommy and daddy can't take much more variation from the routine.  Ha ha!  The girls follow each other around the room and keep each other busy daily.  Their cribs are right next to each other and they play games in the morning and say hi to each other over the railings.  It's super cute.  This twin adventure is getting more and more fun all the time :)

Cousin Camp with Nana.  The kids all had the last week of summer off and so Nana had a house-ful of them!

Summer evenings at the yacht club

Cousin Fun

Five stitches to the chin

Chan got all caught up on his shots at his 4 year well child check.  Esme felt so bad for him that she carried him into the craft store afterwards. 


Esme's sparkly choice of school shoes for the year. 

1st day of school

When all his sisters get pigtails, sometimes Chan wants some too.  He's become known as Mr Sproutman at school these days.  

Thank goodness for the playroom.  Now that the twins are mobile they (along with their bigger siblings) tear this place up on the weekends!

Ms Fancy-Pants!

Baby #1 and baby #2.  The necklace on the onesie has their number order.  

Keeping the kids contained.  

Esme and Chan goofing around in the back of the van. 

Soccer season has begun.  They started out in one chair and then see below.  

They ended up in 2 chairs.
 

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Ko Olina 2017

We had another fantastic family vacation at Ko Olina on Oahu earlier this month.  Five of our families flew from the Big Island and the Lyman's flew in from Austin, TX for this very special every other year event that we all look forward to, kids and adults alike!

Our whole family (minus Uncle David who was still in TX)

We had tons of fun!

As if our group's not already large enough we even had some extra guests this year - Uncle Chan, Jo, cousin Zoe, and Mema!

These kids were so excited for the plane ride.

Evie had on her best plane behavior ;)

Mommy's little helpers in the airport.  

As soon as we got to Ko Olina the kids hit the beach.  They're pretending to be baby seals here.  

Pops wanted to walk all over the sand.  

Evie kept wanting to feel and play with the sand.  

Matching Rufflebutts are too cute!

They loved the water fountains.  And Evie discovered it was even more funny if she leaned over it or sat on it.  Ha ha!

Visiting Grandpa Kim's grave at Punchbowl.  

The kids got their upgraded shirts :)  Cousins number 1-11 in order of appearance.  We laughed that there's a lot less teeth this time since cousins 1-7 are losing them left and right.  

Esme is always eager to push the stroller.

Little lady bugs on the beach.

Enjoying the welcoming ceremony.  

Cousin time after making smores down by the pool.  

Just relaxing in the stroller.

And a visit from Kariel the mermaid.  She even gets in the pool and swims with the kids!

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

15 Months

Happy 15 months to the babes!  We had their physicals yesterday and they're right on target.  Evie's had a consistent growth curve in the 50th percentiles for both height and weight.  She's now 30.5" tall ad 21#.  Poppy is also continuing on her same growth curves that put her in the 25th percentile for height and 50th for weight still.  She was 29 3/4" tall and 20.4#.  Both of their heads are in the 75th percentile.  It's amazing how close they've always been when it comes to their stats.  

Poppy still loves shoes and clothing.  She takes every opportunity to put whatever she can on herself and then grunts for help otherwise.  Her talking is minimal but she's showing signs of improvement.  She loves to give wet, slobbery open mouthed kisses and when you say "Poppy nigh-nigh" she'll put her head down on your shoulder.  She's got a cute squishy faced smile and reminds us more and more of baby Esme everyday.  They look so much alike as babies too.

Eve has finally found her feet and is using them for walking!  We have freedom all around now!  Our hands are free and she's able to go where she wants.  She's still a "cling-on" as Nana likes to call her though.  Eve can be playing fine by herself or near Poppy but as soon as you make eye contact with her she starts grunting and makes her way towards you to either be close to her or to pick her up.   She's always been like that, even in infancy.  She's talking more and more, above and beyond for her age for sure.  She can point to lots of her body parts and loves to stick her finger in other people's eyes when she wants to show you that too.  Ha ha!

Esme has been doing the County Parks & Rec program Summer Fun since school got out.  It's going well but funny thing, she's tired out from playing so much.  There's organized activities and crafts all day long but at the end of the day she's just beat.  We're thinking next year we might find a summer program that also has an educational component built in also just to mix it up for her.  She's also been perfecting her swimming with lessons at UH-Hilo and private ones with Aunty Peggy.  She's always been a timid swimmer so we want to make sure she's confident in the water before we stop.   Biggest news for Esme right now is that she just learned to ride her bike without training wheels!  She amazed all of us being the cautious little girl that she is.  She was just super motivated and really wanting to learn and she just took off one day.  Woohoo!  And she keeps losing teeth left and right!  Her top two are almost out but so far she's already lost the bottom front four.  We'll be sure to take a picture when the top ones are gone :)

Chan is LOVING being in the bigger kids class at Keikiland.  This summer they're studying endangered animals and everyday he comes home telling me about the new things he's learning.  We also enrolled him in Kumon for reading and he's thrilled about that also.  I think he's been watching all the things Esme has been doing over the years and he just wants to hurry up and do them too.  We started him back in swimming this summer and it was a rough start but he's doing so well now.  He was actually swimming on his own around 2 years old but something happened and he got scared of the water and refused to continue lessons back then.  So we just laid off for awhile and then the twins came along so we really laid off since we weren't near the water all that often anyways.  But now that he's 4 we figured it was time to start again.  He cried the first few days of UH-Hilo swim camp but by the end he was loving it, looking forward to it every day and swimming on his own.  He'll continue private lessons with Esme now and he'll probably stay in that for awhile.

So as you can see life is busy but all in all it's awesome.  Ama and Yeh-Yeh came for a visit to help daddy while I was away for a work conference last week.  They also got to check in on their new house that they bought.  We're all super excited for them to move here this fall so we can make many more family memories together!

Chan's summer haircut

Synchronized milk drinking by Poppy and Eve

Aren't they so cute together?!?!  Going to swim lessons at UH.  Chan only wanted to wear his wetsuit like the instructors did.  

Putting all Chan's energy to good work.  The babes have really enjoyed riding in the wagon compared to the stroller when we go on our daily walks now.  

Oh Evie!  We're not sure where she gets that mop on the top of her head.  Ha ha!

Happy Father's Day Allen!!!  We've made a tradition of going to the smoothie shop in Onomea and taking this same family pic each year.  This is year 3 and we even got all kids to look at the camera!

Mommy got to go on a field trip with Chan to Volcano National Park.

Just hanging at the pool.

This was mommy's solo attempt to take a picture of the girls in their matching dresses that they got for their birthday.  Now that Evie's walking she can wear dresses so it's a big deal.  Anyways, obviously my picture didn't work out cause they kept moving away!

Esme continues to be our little fashionista :)  She loves her gladiator shoes, dangly earrings, off the shoulder and racerback tops, and the latest is this blonde hair extension hairband.  She cracks me up sometimes!  She also got a summer haircut.  I figured it'd be easier since her hair is so thick and with all the swimming and playtime this summer.  She usually wears them in cute pigtails now until it grows out long enough for a ponytail.