Blogging from Hawaii

Yes, we are in Hawaii for Christmas, and yes, I realize I am one of the luckiest people ever to be in Hawaii for Christmas. We are staying in Laie, Oahu and are seriously like one mile from the temple, BYU-Hawaii, and the Polynesian Cultural Center. We are staying one the beach and are having a blast to say the least.

Mostly we have spent most of our time here shopping for Christmas, playing games, and playing on the beach. The water is really warm (not for you Amy, you probably wouldn't swim), and so the kids have loved playing in it, and I even went body boarding. I felt VERY brave. Although I didn't go body boarding yesterday, after seeing Greg (6'4" 290 lbs) get tossed about 8 times under the waves, I figured it wasn't worth risking the life of my unborn child to catch a couple of HUGE waves. I 'll wait for the wussy waves to come back.

I really enjoyed our Christmas eve, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. It was so much fun! I had never been there before, but they do a REALLY good job at helping you see how the Polynesian people live. They are so fun and friendly! We learned to Hula dance, even Scott and Stacey learned. I have a really cute picture but I have to get to a scanner!

We also went to church on Sunday to a ward down here, and it really had such a neat feeling there. I just feels like one big family. I could see how people fall in love with it down here and want to stay, although something kindof freaks me out about living on an island (Is that weird?).

While I have been down here I realized that Greg should've been born Hawaiian. Greg loves the feeling of the people here. He seriously would fit in so well here, and here are the reasons why (from what I've observed here):

1. Hawaiian's are laid back and they wear casual, comfy clothes most of the time.
2. They are big on family, family get togethers, and those get togethers having lots of food.
3. Many Hawaiian's are big guys, so you can find lots of huge bball shorts here.
4. They are always joking and laughing, and are very friendly.

I'll post pics later, but I thought I'd update ya'll on our trip so far!

Breakfast with Santa

The City of Lewisville has a Christmas celebration called Breakfast with Santa. It is this cute festival with booths, rides, petting zoos, ice sculptures, local Christmas performances, etc. It also has Breakfast and Santa, but not at the same place. Santa is over across the street, not anywhere near the breakfast tent, which I thought was kindof deceiving to name their celebration Breakfast with Santa! Santa was only there half the day also, and people would start lining up about an hour before Santa got there, so needless to say, our kids didn't see Santa.

Our kids did get to go in some of the bounce houses, and of course, the pony ride. Some of you might think that this is an easy process, getting your child onto the pony ride. But not for Scott Romney. Because he is probably one of the biggest three year olds anyone has ever seen, he had to get weighed to ride the pony. He had to weigh under 65 pounds, and he luckily weighed in at ONLY 55 pounds (remember he is three)! Here he is proudly riding his horse!

REALLY having a boy!

Due to the confusion that has occurred from my previous blog, I realized that I had forgotten to post on my blog that I actually am having a baby boy (Due March 5th, which for me means around March 20th). You can tell from the size of my stomach when you see me!

I like the name Daniel Isaiah Romney (so we can call him little Danny Romney, its so CUTE!), but Greg likes Daniel, but not Isaiah for a middle name (he thinks it sounds to biblical). So we'll see what his name ends up being!

I am really excited to be having a boy and have been feeling great for the last couple of months. I am a little overwhelmed at the idea of having 3 kids under the age of four, but I know I will be glad they are close in age when they are older. So that's the scoop . . .

Thanksgiving & Such, Only a Week Late

Yeah, I am posting our Thanksgiving pictures and it is only Dec. 2. The blogging world should be proud (I'm sure I didn't impress Ryan and Jessica though). We went to California for Thanksgiving and it really was a very nice relaxing trip. Usually on a trip with kids, I usually come home more tired than when I left, but I really relaxed this trip. It was alot of fun. Here are some Thanksgiving pics.

We stayed at Greg's parents for Thanksgiving, but we actually had dinner at the Sherrills' (close family friends, Jessica's dad Mike and his wife Jeanie) house. The dinner was amazing made by Jeanie, Meridith, and Karen (I didn't help at all, I'll tell you why later). And Jessica made 6 wonderful pies (I gained almost 5 pounds over Thanksgiving!). We enjoyed some activities and walks outside due to the nice California weather. One of the things we did outside was ride on Jeanie's go-cart. Scott loved it. It was everything Thanksgiving is supposed to be.

Here's the reason I didn't help with Thanksgiving, because we spent the night before Thanksgiving (Our Anniversary) in San Fransisco. Thanks Karen and Jeff for watching our kids, we had a fun time staying in a hotel that overlooked the Bay, going to Cheesecake factory for a yummy dinner, walking around Pier 39 and going to Ghiridelhi Chocolate Factory for Hot Chocolate. We went with our friends Steve and Kelly (Greg grew up with Steve). It was a great night!!! It's been 6 great years!

The kids has alot of fun with their cousins. Scott loved holding his cousin Pheonix (Pheonix is seriously the happiest baby in the world). Stacey and Paige have a love hate relationship and seem to always want to play with the same toy at the exact same time. Scott has a lot of fun with his cousin Jane, and I liked playing in the Turkey Bowl with Emma and Gabe!

Okay, last thing I promise, this blog is getting long. The other SUPER fun thing we did was go to Scaramento with Karen after all the other families left. We went to this train museum with all these huge trains, it was so much fun! After that we had a nice dinner at a local hole in the wall, Marie Calenders! Thanks everyone for a fun Thanksgiving!

Having a Boy!

Hey everyone, Thanksgiving photos are coming, we are just still in California, so I will post about it when we go home in case anything really exciting happens in the next two days that I just HAVE to post about.

I thought I'd share my typical "boy" moment. Scott found a caterpillar in the back yard and brought it in, he was letting it crawl on his arm. Here's how the conversation went, "Mom, look I found a caterpillar outside."

Me, "Oh, wow that's neat!"

Scott, "He wants to live inside with us."

Me, "Caterpillars can't live inside they have to live outside."

Scott, "Why? (I'm sure you are surprised by this question, Ryan)"

Me, "Because all their food is outside, they don't have anything to eat inside."

Scott, "No, he needs to live inside with us, because he is a nice caterpillar and I will share my food with him."

It was just a typical, what you think of when you will have a boy moment. You know, like they will always get dirty, like bug and sports and boy things like that. The ending to the story is that the caterpillar did go live back outside.

South Carolina

About a week ago we went to Myrtle Beach California with my parents and my younger sister Kaylee. We had alot of fun. We went to Sumtner which was where my mom lived when she was in Junior High and High School. It was neat to see where she grew up. I'd never been to that part of the country before.

We flew into North Carolina and went and visited the Duke University campus, it was really pretty with lots of trees and really cool looking older buildings. We visited a beautiful garden in the middle of campus.

Another fun thing we did was go to Ripley's Aquarium(Pics Above). We got to pet sting rays and touch these other weird crustacean things. I don't remember what it was called. But it was a really fun place, the kids loved it. Scott is giving the diver in the tank five in one of the pictures and Stacey is doing excactly what I've told them to do by putting her fingers in her mouth after petting the sting rays.

These pics were taken at Fort Moultrie. It is a fort that is at Charleston, which was a really cool town to see. It had tons of huge houses right on the bay which were huge (one was 24,000 sq. feet, puchased for 200,000 back on the 1700 or 1800's), because they were all owned by rich shipping merchants back in the day. We also ate at a yummy seafood restuarant and some yummy crab. Scott was the one who really wanted to go to the crab restaurant and have crab ( I think he learned to like crab when we went crabbing in Oregon). Needless to say Greg, who is a seafood hater, is not too thrilled for Scott's new found love of seafood, and didn't really enjoy the crab restaurant.

We also spent alot of time swimming at the hotel pools and the beach. I don't have any pics of these (I'd always forget my camera). We had alot of fun!

Halloween!

Ok, so here's my kids in there costumes! It's early in the morning and I'm feeling sick, so this probably won't have any interesting commentary, feel free to look at the pics and move on.

We went to a trunk or treat on the saturday night before Halloween, and then of course trick-or-treating on Halloween with a bunch of our friends.

Stacey was a fuzzy chick and looked hilariously cute when she ran in her costume, and Scott was a dragon. I am just glad to have kids so Halloween is fun again! Next year maybe I will get more into the spirit and dress up too!

Spooky Spokane

Okay, okay so Spokane wasn't really that spooky, I'm just trying to get into the Halloween spirit. Here are some things we really on our trip:

Is there a kid on the planet who doesn't like Chuck E. Cheese?

We drove down from Spokane to visit my Uncle Denny and his family. Denny and Rebecca took us to Chuck E. Cheese and Scott thought he was in heaven because Denny got 200 tokens! He just couldn't believe that eveytime he kept coming back to the table we would give him MORE tokens! Greg and my cousins, Tyler and Zac, figured out how to win like 100 tickets at a time from this one machine if they played it right. Scott ended up getting a pretty cool toy (relative to Chuck E. Cheese toys), when I was younger the biggest thing I could buy with my tickets was the parachute guys with a death wish (have you seen what their parachutes do?).

We had alot of fun seeing Denny and his family!

Park Fun

We all went to the duck park one day with half of the Daines and half of the Romneys. We had alot of fun, although the duck pond was somewhat stressful because you had to worry about your kids getting too close to the ledge. I swear I took more pictures of this activity but this was the only one I had!

Game Night

I know Ryan and Jessica had somthing really cute planned for this blog, but I just know I can't live up to their blogging expertise (I couldn't even figure out how to delete a picture, so I tried to make it really small so you wouldn't notice it. I really struggle with this blogging thing sometimes), so I'm just going to give you the highlights of game night.

1. The food - of course! I claimed that I was completely stuffed to the brim at dinner. But it's funny how yummy desserts are put in front of me and my stomach can grow 3 sizes (kindof like the grinch's heart that Christmas day).

2. The game where the punishment for losing is spelling you name in the air with your butt. Needless to say I tried VERY hard not to lose at this game. I'm not a shy person, but one of the LAST things I want is 8 people staring at my butt while I am attempting to shake it. Luckily I did not lose and we quit after Grant lost.

3. Grant writing his name in the air with his butt. He did it in Ryan's face, you had to be there!

4. Pirates' Dice (Otherwise known as liar's dice) - Why is pirates' dice so fun? You'll have to play for yourself to see why! (I like this cool pirates cups and dice with skull and crossbones, it makes me feel like a real pirate)

Thanks guys for the fun night!

We did alot of other fun things in Spokane like going to the Children's musuem and eating lots of yummy food that we didn't have to cook!

To the Daines and Romneys, thanks for letting us come!

We're Baaaack!!!

Sorry, about the long lapses in blogs, we have been out of town on and off lately. Here are a couple photos of our trip to San Antonio when we went to see Ryan and Jessica (who came to see us after their cruise), and the Sherrills (Matt, Janelle, Caroline & Talmage) who live in San Antonio.

This is the kids in the car. Stacey fell asleep so we took a picture of her (I couldn't figure out how to rotate it)and Scott wanted us to take a picture of him asleep. You can tell he is in a deep sleep . . .

Here are some pictures of the things we did in San Antonio. One of them is at the Alamo, and the other pictures are on a boat. The boat is in a river at a cool place in San Antonio called the River Walk. It's this man-made river with hotels and restaurant all around it. It's fun to let the kids walk around and see the ducks andride the little tour boat. We had lots of fun and no one fell in the water.

We also went to Spokane for a week after that, but Jessica taught me about blogging and she said that she only posts about once a day otherwise people won't read your other blogs, just your top one. So you will just have to sit on the edge of your seats until tomorrow or the next day until I post a blog about our Spokane trip. I know it will be hard, but I will try to make it worth the wait.

P.S. Can you rotate pictures in this blogging program?

Ode to BYU!!!

This picture was taken last year in Las Vegas at the Mountain West Tournament. I posted this picture to help you understand just how big of a fan of BYU my husband is (even though he only went there for a year and didn't graduate from there!)! The reason I posted this picture right now is that Greg is currently in New Mexico for the BYU game there. Two weeks ago we drove to Tulsa, OK for the BYU game there (which was really, really sad). So even though we don't live in Utah, he has been to 3 BYU games this season.

I'd just like you BYU graduates (especially that live in Utah) to really take a close look at yourselves, and ask "How many BYU games have I attended this year?" If it's less than three, don't you think you should really make some changes in your life, and really focus on supporting your school. You can call Greg if you need any moral support. It's just something to think about.

Also, since Greg was out of town we had TV dinners for dinner. The kids thought they were in heaven, mostly because there were star sprinkles to go on their pudding. They didn't even like the pudding, maybe I should start putting star sprinkles on other things (veggies) . . . Audrey, it's something to think about.