Mom and Grandma visit

My dear mother and grandmother (aka Grandma Great) came to visit us for 9 days. My grandma is 84 and doesn't travel very far these days, so I was thrilled that she would come all this way to see us. I am so proud of her and impressed with her motivation and drive at her age. We enjoyed them so much! My girls were in heaven with all the attention.
4 generations of beautiful wahines after church
Grandma Great and Eve doing their exercises together

We got a baby sitter and went out to a nice dinner at the Hyatt one night. The grounds are so gorgeous!
(yes, I have pink hair. And my grandma thinks it's cool.)
A moment of meditation at Glass Beach.
My sweet mom helped me start a couple quilting projects that have been waiting in the wings for a while. I have this huge space in our new house for my sewing and violin teaching. I love it!
We started a "Turning Twenty" quilt and I just got the top all put together today. I LOVE the fabrics. This is a really easy quilt and so much fun.
Close up of my fabrics

Veda's Big Bash

Our little Veda turned 5 this month. We had a big birthday party for her and it was a total success. She wanted an "under the sea" party and we had so much fun theming it out from start to end. We were lucky to have Torrey and Mark here with us to celebrate. They were a huge help in pulling this thing off.

Art by Travis



Pin the tooth on the shark - another Travis original

Are these cupcakes cute or what?

about 15 super cute keiki joined us



Happy Birthday Veda Bella. We love you so much and we are so proud of the person you are becoming.

The Silver State

My rad brother, Taylor, is in a band called The Silver State. Their debut album titled "Cut and Run" was released this week. You can download it from Itunes now!

This is a video of the song "Faith You Changed Your Name". My brother is the tall, handsome guitar player wearing the long sleeved grey shirt. I'm so proud of him! I honestly love this song. I've been singing it all day long. Their band is going on tour next month for 4 weeks across the continental US. To see tour dates and cities, go to yamrecordings.com and you will see their link first thing. Way to go Tay!

kayak adventure

We had a great visit with Torrey (Travis's sister) and her husband Mark a couple weeks ago. They came out 3 days after our move and were such good sports about helping us out and interrupting the play to work (oh, and sleeping on the floor!). My girls are in love with them both and we all miss them. We really did squeeze in as much fun as could possibly be had in the short time they were here.

We took our two man kayak and borrowed one from a friend and rowed up the Wailua river where we parked the kayaks and hiked to a waterfall. Everything - from the trip up the river, to the hike, to enjoying the waterfall was all so awesome! This was my first experience swimming in a waterfall and it was COLD but so much fun. We did this trip on a Sunday, when commercial companies don't take tours of the river, so we were the only ones there. (Besides the chickens and roosters stalking Torrey).



Torrey's experienced smooth strokes rocked Eve right to sleep.


you gotta do what you gotta do!

Sorry to those of you who were affected by the spam virus comment on my last post. I have enabled my word verification setting on my comments, so you will have one more step to comment, but hopefully it will prevent this from happening again!

Easter

The girls were so psyched for Easter this year so it was really fun. Veda goes to a very religious preschool so they had learned the meaning behind Easter and I was amazed at how well she had absorbed the information and understood it. I think maybe she understands it better than me.

Travis had to go to work Easter morning, so we set alarms and woke the girls up early so that we could have our Easter morning before Travis had to leave. The Easter bunny set up a pretty sweet hunt and it was so much fun watching them find their treasures with such excitement. After being sufficiently sugared up, we got all dolled up and went to church. After church we went to an "Easter Party" at a friends house where they made sure to clarify that this celebration was more of the Pagan Spring celebration - NOT an event in which to celebrate Jesus Christ. I left with a pit in my stomach and a guilt for being part of such a celebration, when to me Easter IS a Christian holiday in which we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was a sticky situation. Now I know for next year...

I'm back!

Thanks to you loyal viewers that have stuck with me through the good times, and bad. Here's the scoop. We moved into another rental house in Lawai because our lease was up at the other house and this house is much better suited for us. Travis and I have our own bedroom again!! This home is on the market as well and we would eventually love to purchase this home. We are waiting for a while to see what the market will do and see if prices come down a little more. Things move very slowly here, so it took us 2 weeks to get internet and cable but we are all set up now.

I think I will just go back and start where I left off. -Back at the old house Veda found a little friend she named Aiden. She loves reptiles and will grab anything she can no matter how fast. She caught this little anole one morning and it stuck with us for about a week! Usually she will find a little gecko or something, hold it for 5 minutes and as soon as it can, it will wiggle free and it is never seen again. This little guy surprised us all. When she wasn't holding him in her hand, it was content to hang on her shirt. She would put it on her night stand at night, and it would still be there in the morning. We all got attached to him. I won't go on about his untimely anguishing drawn-out death that left most of us in tears, or the sweet funeral we had for him, or how Veda buried him with a card that said things like "I love you Aiden" "friends forever", and "Surprise, it's a party!"




I am dedicating myself to posting once a day until I am caught up. Watch - I'll surprise all of you doubters. Aloha!

stay tuned

This is Carey again, posting on behalf of my favorite seester...via dictation. Here it goes:

Internet connection is scheduled for Monday and I will be posting again shortly thereafter. Travis' sister and her husband just left here after vacationing for a week. See the link "Torrey" below for pictures of their stay with us.

I feel out of touch with the world! I have no TV and no internet access...and haven't for 2 1/2 weeks! Monday can't come soon enough.

Until then,

Aloha and Mahalo!

Long time, no blog

Hi guys, Kaycee asked me to post a few words to explain her posting lag.

The Parker family is great! However, they've just moved into a new home and they don't have internet access quite yet. Besides that, they are super busy with family in town as well as planning Veda's 5th birthday party this Saturday. She wanted me to tell all of you hi and let you know that she'll be back to tell us about her most recent adventures as soon as she unpacks that computer. :)

(I was giving her a hard time today and telling her that I'm sick of seeing that darn monkey for the 3rd week in a row....)

Carey