A new addition...

I'm Preggo!
It's official now. We found out while we were in California ( I was sick pretty much the entire two weeks) but we've been waiting to share the news until I was farther along. I'm now almost 8 weeks and my due date is around September 10th. I've been wanting (and trying) to get pregnant for a couple months and now it's perfect timing. Bannock and the baby will be exactly 2 1/2 years apart, which is what we wanted. I've been feeling pretty crummy most days, not too much vomiting but just nausea a lot of the time. Smells make me gag and I have extreme cravings. This is totally opposite my pregnancy with Bannock, where I had no symptoms whatsoever. I'm just happy to be joining the masses of all my other pregnant friends! I'm so excited to be a mommy again :)

Sean's Birthday and the Zoo

So Sean turned 26 on friday! He's now closer to 30 than he is to 20 - weird. We celebrated with a delicious breakfast of french toast, some time at the beach and then a little date courtesy of our friends Natalie and Mark who offered to watch Bannock. We went shopping for his birthday then out to dinner (the Cheesecake Factory in Waikiki is crazy on a friday night! So we had to settle for Old Spaghetti Factory, which was good. I forgot my camera that night but we did have fun!
We continued his birthday into saturday with a trip to the Zoo (and some more shopping). Bannock had a ball at the Zoo - he was able to practice his animal names which so far consist of "Peacock", "Giraffe", "Monkey", "Zeeba", "Hippo", "Gecko", "Fish", "Phent (elephant)" and we're working on some more. There was a bold peacock walking around the playground with about 30 kids and it couldn't have cared less. Bannock also learned how to say "cheese!" for the camera and was eating it up, the two pictures up there are the best I could capture with my crappy camera, but, suffice it to say, his faces and hand gestures were hilarious. It was so fun to watch Bannock absorb everything - yesterday he was telling me all about it, the "two phents" he saw along with the "beeg Hippo!" and "hippo beeg mouf!" I love seeing him grow and learn every day. Its so rewarding. I love being a mom!

Home for Christmas!

We surprised our parents and flew home for Christmas : ) They had no idea. Sean's dad was so in shock when he opened his door at 11 o'clock at night and Bannock was standing there. He was speechless even when Bannock walked right in and said "Pop pop!". It had been almost 4 months since they'd seen him. We surprised my parents the next night and even though they had just seen Bannock it didn't register that he could be in California. It was a fun surprise and a fun visit. We went to Folsom Zoo's first annual Christmas night at the zoo thing - they had lights everywhere and all the nocturnal animals were still awake (did anyone know the Folsom zoo had tigers?) At the end of the walk Santa and Mrs. Clause were there to take pictures. It was Bannock's first time and even though he would get excited and say "Santa!" any time he saw one, being up close and personal with him did not go over well! What is it with kids and Santa? We also got to go shooting with Sean's family, which was fun. It had been awhile since I had gone shooting. I'm pretty proud of the picture of Sean I took - you can actually see the bullet! Anyway, we had a great Christmas, it was so nice to be back and almost impossible to leave. As great as Hawaii is there is no place like home!

A visit from the folks

My parents came to visit the beginning of December and it was a lot of fun. They rented this cute little bungalow on the beach that we practically lived at with them. We went to the Billabong Pipemasters surf competition which was so fun (got a ton of free stuff!), went to Pearl Harbor and saw the Arizona memorial, ate delicious Thai food at Haleiwa Eats and then caught a cute Christmas parade through the town. We also got to pay our respects to Ron Artis' family - he's a great local artist who had passed away just two days before we went to Haleiwa where his home/studio is. We spent a lot of time on the beach, of course, and Bannock was thrilled that his Nahna and Pop pop were there to spoil him rotten! It was a great week : )