The Flood!

On the first day of Spring Break early in the morning, we woke up to pouring rain, well not just pouring it was raining BUCKETS! I took Dan to work at about 7am. Our street is known for flooding so I was relieved when I saw that it looked pretty clear. But BYUH was a mess. I've never driven in rain puddles that deep.  I was going to go to the gym but was afraid to drive any further so I  drove home went into my room to workout and a half hour later I get a phone call from neighbor asking if our house was flooding??! Sure enough we looked outside and the water was almost into our front door!. PANIC! Dan was stuck at work, so it was the kids and I. We ran to the room in our house that was ground level and sure enough water was coming in through the garage. So we had to hurry move everything up to higher ground, luckily some sweet boys from the neighborhood came and helped with dressers and heavy items. I was seriously blow away by the generosity of the whole community. People I didn't even know where walking around seeing what they could do to help. Dinner was brought to us. Sand bags delivered. 

 Front of our house. We keep our slippers (flip flops) out on the front porch and sadly we lost a couple pair:( That was our only loss, thank heavens!)

 Our street, driveway, and front lawn.

 We were told two more storms were expected that same day and the water on our street was not draining due to clogged drains and  it was beginning to rain again. Three years ago our street had so much damage from a flood that everyone had a foot a water throughout the house, they lost their cars and had to move out for 6 months while the repairs were being done. So needless to say every one was in panic mode. The picture below is our Stake Presidency and others from the neighborhood in knee length water offering prayer. After the prayer it was quite powerful how the rain stopped and drains opened, the street was drained within the hour.

 BYUH was at our house one hour after the back room drained and had the wet carpet pulled out and cleaned up. They decided to put tile in the back bedroom that flooded. Probably a good idea!
So all in all it was kind of a  crazy exciting day.. But it ended up being not to big of a pain. Thankfully!! Oh yea I got on the news too! Laie families work together after rains flood their homes

Frogs and frogs and more frogs

 The boys were on a frog catching mission.. They caught 17 in all one day and then their mean mom made them go and let them go where they caught them:)

 This A and his friend in the neighborhood who looks alot like him! 

Can you tell who is who?

 T and B with their friend, they convinced me to let them bring their frogs home as pets..

 B's ran away up our storm pipe never to be heard from again.
So sad for me.. I don't care for them one bit! 

Grandma Colleen and Grandpa Rick..YIPPPEEEE!!

Have I ever told any of you how much I LOVE my in-laws?

 ( I probably have because I honestly do!)

My mother in law is a SAINT.. in all aspects of the word.

saint

   [seynt] a person of great holiness, virtue, or benevolence.

She is there for anyone and everyone.. and no, she's not excepting applications:) 

SHE has gone out of her way to come and help me with all my babies. 

  Grandpa is a saint for always making it possible for her to come.

My father in law surprised her with a trip  for her birthday to see the grand kids and

 the pouring rain of Hawaii. 

It has not rained this much since we moved here. 

 On her actual birthday we went to a Laua at the Polynesian Cultural Center in the pouring rain..

Notice we are all in sweatshirts with the leis.

                                             The BEST part of the meal! The pineapple drinks!

JENGA had to be played!

Pearl Harbor!

USS Bowfin submarine...

 man that thing is so small, but pretty amazing..

One of the workers on the Bowfin was pushing and pulling (yes literally pushing) T and B into photo poses.

 If they look a little frightened its because they were!

SO of course I had to push and pull B and Grandpa into the correct photo poses as well!

LIL "B" thoroughly enjoying his headphone submarine tour!
Not sure what hes listening to on his headphones, mine was not this exciting!

"A" ready to fire!

USS Arizona tour. Love this pic!

AWWW

Grandpa giving a history lesson, and "A" is actually listening.

USS Missouri Battleship

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! 

We sure had a fun visit! We miss you already!

Gavin

                                                                     
                                                                                  Laie Boyz






         He is my friend,
         he came to hawaii to visit.

        he got sick

We went to the PCC.

      We went to the beach,
            we ate food.


  Shannon and my mom and jalynn were loud

     Shannon kept doing a creepy laugh.
         It was loud and annoying!
          They thought it was funny..

      We went snorkling,
         boogie boarding
           and surfing
          it was fun.


We slept in a tent in our garage.
My mom kissed Gavin,
it was creepy.
Gavin is scarred for life.
Cool story Brah..


A post by Addison

Grandpa Poopoo and Grandma Nancy's visit

We had so much fun with Grandpa Poopoo (long story) and Grandma Nancy!

Went surfing with them, 

then hung out at the pool at their condo.

We can't wait for them to come again!

Some of my projects..

I have been working on a couple projects over the past few months.. The picture below is an extension of our living room. It was taken when we first moved in. I thought I had more recent "before" pictures but all of my pictures were deleted:( Luckily I had this one on the blog and did some serious cut and paste work. Not the clearest picture but you can kind of figure out how it looked.

The following two pictures are "afters"..

I painted the built in cream and the walls a light greyish taupe color.. I like color! I added the pillows on the window seat and some window ties..

The eating area is pictured below. I really wanted something to distract away from the cinder block walls. 

So I painted my curtains.

 Yes I know, who in the world paints their curtains? Actually lots of people do.

At least that's what they tell me on pinterest, where I found the idea. 

They were orginally black so I why not add a couple stripes. 

I wish I could say I did it because I couldn't find any black and white striped curtains, 

but that would be a lie..

I am just cheap!

I redid the light below. 

It was the most hideous light I had ever seen! 

Dirty brass was the color of this baby with glass panels that had waves running across each panel. 

I wish I had before pictures!! 

I am quite happy with my red hanging lamp. 

SO excited! The whole redo cost me 3.49$. The cost of spray paint!

 I  couldn't stop with the lamp I had to do the kitchen table below. 

I took pictures as I was doing it but guess what? 

They are lost as well:(

When I say I redid it, I really mean it, I sanded the oak top,sanded it till it was raw wood,

then re-stained it and then lacquered! 

It was a BIG pain!

Lots of mess ups! In the end I really liked it, would I do it again? Probably!!

 The chairs and base of the table were primed and painted black. 

Which I LOVE because the chairs were different styles and colors, so it kind of brings it all together.

In the picture below I painted the hanging lamp shade. Yes PAINTED...

( I know I have issues)

 It was white so I stenciled and painted.

 Don't look to closely...hehe

 Below is B and T's bunk bed, which needed a little pick me up... 

Primer and paint was needed!

 D thinks maybe I have a little too much time on my hands.. 

shh don't tell him, but he may be right!

 I finally have a before picture!!  

Below is B and A's room.

 Taadaa!

The after.. 

Not much of a difference, but I dyed the bed skirts,

added the head boards

 and guess what? 

You guessed it, primed and painted the bed side table and the dressers.:) 

and painted one wall. 

Man, I am sick of paint!!

Christmas in Hawaii ( I am terrible at this blogging thing)

For our ward Christmas party we had an actual roasted pig, pictured above ( I will not post the picture of Dan sticking out his tongue  mock licking the pig because you may loose your appetite)..

 Brierton was given the ear to eat without knowing what it was,  he gobbled it down and said it was pretty good! 

We had three different types of meat at the dinner and a little bit of dessert.. 

I actually can't remember if any sides were served, but lets be honest the meat was the best part! The Chicken was the winner hands down! 

CHRISTMAS EVE DINNER

 For Christmas Eve we decided to go out.. and the fancy restaurant we went to was ...

The BYUH cafeteria buffet...The food was so so. The seller was that you could  drink all the chocolate milk you wanted. That in and of itself was the reason we ate there. The kids had cereal (which we don't have any more due the 5$ a gallon milk price) So they were happy.

We wished that we would have brought a board game to play while the food digested then we could drink more milk, maybe next year:)

After dinner we walked over to see the lights on campus.. There  were two problems  with our plan. 

#1 It wasn't dark

#2 It started to pour rain.

You can't tell but Brierton is soaking wet from our Christmas Eve walk home in the rain.

All in all Christmas in Hawaii was quiet and nice, but we missed our extended family, A LOT!