Three

My little Amai turned three this month!!

December baby.

 

one years old.

Two

Three

Some  interesting facts about Amai at this age:

1. Can write her name, and loves to draw.

2. Is a night owl like her mom and dad, and is a great sleeper.

3. Still has her Kiki but is working on giving it up. Nope I didnt get rid of it yet:(

4. Thinks she is four and is tall as most four year olds.

5. Likes to push, scratch and hit. (something Im not very proud of )

6. Loves to sing in funny tones because she knows it makes me and Kadin laugh.

7. A social butterfly.

8. Loves anything and everything that sparkles.

9. Cant watch TV for no more than 15 minutes-too busy

10. Can use the bathroom (both #1 & #2) independently-yes wiping too!

11. Picks out her clothes and loves to wear dresses only.

12. Love beyonce-”single ladies”, and Rihanna “umbrella”

13. Loves to talk about when she was a baby “mamma when me was a baby I…”.

14. Loves anything princess-what three year old girl doesnt right?

We had a little party for her on the weekend and she loved it. Irene, her talented aunty made some Tutu’s for the girls of the party as a gift to her. The girls loved them!

They made  wands and charms with beads. Everyone was into making the wants, but not the charms. I set up the craft area in Amai’s room which worked out great.

The best part of the night for her was cake and presents!

 

She was a little confused…okay a lot confused, when she found out she wasnt opening EVERYTHING up under the tree too. A few tantrums and some explainations about Christmas and birthdays sort of cleared it up. Next year we might do this birthday way after christmas. Too much presents and parties in one month.

Rain

It has been raining like crazy here…yes we do get rain!

The scene out side my window the last week.

 This means no pool, park, or beach. The kids and I have been escaping the rain by going to the mall, which is not a good thing. It means more whining from the oldest about purchasing transformers and just spending more money in general. I hate it. I am ready for the rain to stop and the sun to shine again.

The good thing about the malls this time of year is all the fun Christmas things to do. Train rides. Today we went to pearl ridge to ride the little train and eat dinner.

Amai surprised Kadin and I at dinner and wrote her whole name with NO HELP! This girl amazes me…

Can you see it guys...A M A i

As I was helping Kadin with his name she whips this out and shows us like she has done it everyday. I was so excited for her I wanted to take a picture. She was not into it, but allowed me to snap one without her. She turns three in two days.

After getting home late I had to put Christmas gifts together for Amai’s class and her teachers. I had been contemplating this gift giving thing for their classes for months now and just have been procrastinating. I was going to make wooden ornaments but was too late to ship them on time. Then going to make dough ornaments but scratched that idea after thinking about all the work. In the end I bought jingle bell necklaces from Longs and stuck a tag on it. Not handmade, but was able to make something for the teachers that I had been planning on.

for Amai's teachers.

I made them wristlets with D-rings at the end. I also included at 2009 pocket calender. These will match their bags (Oh the bags!) that Kathleen will give them.

Next up Amai’s birthday cupcakes + goodie bags, and Kadins class. Is it ever going to end??? Thank god I took a mini vacation this week to compete all this. I have until Wednesday to complete the bags. I have two more to go. Hopefully I can finish Tuesday during the day.

Look what I missed!

My old friends from SMA got together Sunday and had drinks without me! Such a bummer I wasn’t there…and look how great they look. Honestly these girls look no different from what I remembered them 15 years ago. Unreal. We had so much fun together in high-school. My house was always the sleep over place because I had no curfew. I remember sleeping on my giant water bed with all these girls crawling in at 4 in the morning. We always had so much fun together, sneaking in to charbenue’s pool in the dead of winter swimming at 2am in the freezing cold, riding in Laura’s grandmas big black caddy blasting blonde, and hanging out at Jack’s house. Such fun times. Facebook has brought us back in contact together and we are planning for another reunion when I visit next summer! Cant wait;) Meanwhile its more chatting on facebook…

Wednesday night I had to work. This means the day before I start prepping Kadin and Amai that Ojichan will be watching them and I wont be here at night. Hill works till 11 so this means from six to eleven Ojichan watches the kids. Not that bad. I feel I don’t miss out on much other than the night time routine, which I don’t mind not being around for once in a while. Kadin loves his grandpa but for some reason he will fight going over there.  Ojichan has got to be the nicest grandpa out there. He is patient, kind and always teaching them something. But Kadin is always been a mommas boy and never ever wants me to go anywhere without him.  Sometimes and most times its a full on cry when I leave. They take turns. One day Amai will cry and the next time Kadin will cry. I hate it. Lately I have been giving them something to look forward to the next day when I’m home. So this week I asked Kadin what he wanted to do after school on Thursday. He said “Hiking” and his friend Abby chimed in and said “to the lighthouse!” Okay, so there it is, we were going to Makapu’u lighthouse the next day mommy is off.  I slept till 1 after working and took the kids + my neighbors four hiking. Everyone was so good, no fighting, no whining and most everyone walked the two mile hike.

Amai needed help from time to time getting a shoulder ride from me and a piggyback from Malorie:

Kadin did so well holding his backpack with snacks and sweating like crazy. His hair is so long now and I’m not sure what to do with it. But when he sweats it looks as if he jumped in the pool.

This is such a great hike for everyone. The road is paved something unheard of here and its full of views all the way up to the top. There is a lighthouse, at the very tip of of the point.

and a great view of Makapu’u beach. This beach is strictly for body surfers and boogie boarders. The beach where Hill almost drowned when he was in highschool, but isnt it gorgeous!

We started our hike about 5 or earlier and ended back at the car at around sunset. The kids had fun and I had a little exercise. The perfect end to our day. The kids were all sleeping by eight, which means more time to sew!

I could not resist…

Hope I dont get in trouble for this, but I wanted to post about our evening at the beach. I just couldnt resist posting the pictures, but how could I not? Look at those booties running on the beach!! And we were the only ones there at this point.

It was getting time to go, and the sun was setting. The kids were so cold no one wanted to take showers. I then offered after much whiiiiiining from the boys to jump and rinse in the beach, sure enough they were all for it. Next thing you know we had four naked kids running around screaming and having a ball. Us adults sat there and took as many pictures as we could. Kathleen was thinking “blackmail” I was just trying to get the best bootie shots! Oh there was MORE but I better not. Maybe just one more…

Tonights beach fun included playing in huge holes:

watching a jellyfish (the stinging ones!) eat a pretzel:

snacking (what these girls LOVE):

:

 & hanging out with good friends:

The water was warm, the temperature was 80 and we stayed till after dark. The perks of living in Hawaii.

Halloween Madness!

Halloween was full of activities for us this year. Fun things, but we were busy! Kadin and Amai have been talking about Halloween since it ended last year. My kids love candy way too much, and a holiday that revolves around candy is like Christmas to them. It was extra busy with activities that involved making goodie bags for 45 different kids and some staff at the school. I decided to make the cookies and was up till two putting them together for them to take the next day.

They turned out okay, but a little too much work maybe.

Then there was the pumpkin carving. Kadin decided on a face, but wanted NOTHING to do with digging out the seeds or even taking the top off. The Mcdaniel’s were crazy about taking the top off and getting down and dirty removing all the seeds. Amai did some scooping of seeds with a spoon like a lady.  Kadin just wanted to plant his, and was running in and out of the house getting more seeds to plant. Who knew where? Probably in our neighbors flower pots? At least he posed for some pictures with his pumpkin mommy did.

Amai’s pumpkin was a tiny little guy and boy was that thing a pain to cut. I could barely carve a face, but she seemed to be happy with it. She calls it her baby one.

Kadin had fallen at school and that is why he has a band-aide on his chin. We noticed later that his pumpkin had the same accident at the farm. Poor guys.

Then was the big finale- Halloween night! Amai dressed up in her “pwincess ballaweena” and I bought Kadin a bat costume at oldnavy for 10 bucks. Cant beat that! Thank god he loved it!



 

We headed over to the fun fest with some friends and had tons of fun. It was a good distraction from trick or treating but they did not forget. After some pony rides, jumping, and face painting we headed out for candy….

we only went to about 15 houses this year maybe less. They were exhausted from the fun fest at the school which was great! We hid more that half, threw away all the lollipops and let them keep some. Amai was happy with that:)

Tutu tutorial!

No I do not have an one line tutorial, but I love on-line tutorials… don’t you? I could look all day and learn how to make just about anything. With Halloween coming up I had to look up costume ideas. My daughter is going to be a “pwincess ballaweeena” and I had to make her a tutu. No idea how of course until I sat down and googled it! Two ladies had tutorials and I followed the funny one. SUPER EASY! Took me about an hour total.

the only sewing involved with this is when you connect the elastic. Then all you do is cut and tie in knots. That was the fun part because I could just sit and watch T.V. I could not believe that is all I had to do.

How easy is that? I might add ribbon and other things to it to make it look cuter, but I kind of like it this way. Amai seems happy with it. Now only Kadin to do and I only work one day next week so i think I could get his done early too. Yes a week before Halloween is VERY early for me.

Halloween is coming…

I did a very scary thing at my house today. I watched my two neighbor kids and thought it would be fun to make cookies! It was fun for the kids but for me it was full of clean ups. Three to be exact!

 

I wanted to get them in the Halloween spirit and two I wanted to practice making cookies as little favors for Kadin’s and Amai’s preschool class next Friday. I looked up some recipes on-line for a good sugar cookie frosting and tested it out.
The recipe for the frosting was :

4 cups of powdered sugar

1/2 cup of Shortening-I used butter.

1 tsp of vanilla extract

5 tbs of milk

+ you add your tints of coloring to make your colors. I made purple, orange and white.

I let the kids make the colors for the frosting. OMG they had so much fun making the three colors. The counted each drop as the directions said and did such a great job of making the colors.

My plan was to make the cookie shapes before and just let the kids decorate them, while I practiced on the side. Didnt happen that way. I was busy at home on a project and didn’t make the cookies while they were at school.  I then thought of a brilliant idea of having them watch a movie while I sneak and bake the cookies. Amai who has a short attention span for TV, searched me out and caught me making the cookies in the kitchen. ” I help you mommy?” How could I say no right? I told her to be very quiet and quickly help me make these shapes before the other three see. Well all the pounding on the dough Amai was doing (I dont having a rolling pin) and the laughter brought in the other kids to see what was so fun. Next thing you know I had the little tables out and everyone was making their shapes!

The girls went nuts with the flour and was practically swimming in it. I had to bath them to before they did anything else other wise my carpet would of been tracked with flour. The boys were good at making shapes, took their time and thought out what they wanted to decorate. Anu thought of his sick mom at home and made her a cat full of colors.

 In the end we made about two dozen cookies. We gave some to their families and even some to Obachan and Ojichan. Oh and of course saved a few for daddy. After doing this I am not sure if I want to do these as favors. Not as easy as I thought to make such pretty little things. But then again if it does turn out really bad I could just say -the kids made them. Ha ha!

One down 14 more to go…

I have committed myself to make 15 bags for my dear neighbor for Christmas gifts she will give to her coworkers. I didn’t feel so confident about it, but thought maybe I can? I have made four bags now and am getting faster and learning more each time. Irene taught me a lot and so did the SEWMAMASEW blog. Most of the learning is coming from practice. Hill has been my little critic looking at all my seams and noting when something was off or questioned me about things. God love him, but geez don’t LOOK so close. No really I do like that he is critical because it does need to be right if Im getting paid for this. I guess it would be like having Irene at my house all the time because she is very neat when it comes to her sewing. Im not.

So here is one down and more to come. Don’t worry I wont post each and everyone! Just my favorites:) I have ordered so much fabric for this event and am so freakin excited to get the box(s)!!

For Cammy

I caught my friend and coworker Cammy doing her make up in the bathroom last week. She was using a beat up ol’ ziplock bag to store it in. I took one look at her and said “Cammy, what the heck is that?”. She responded “Girl this is my make up bag!” She picked it up and showed me the beat up brown powder tinted bag. I said okay let me make you one. No No she said “I like this because its water proof, and when its pau I just throw it away”. I then went on to explain that I have some laminated fabric

  

 I could use and could she please allow me to make her one. She finally gave in and let me practice. I followed some links from Irene’s blog about making this triangle make up bag. I had to enlarge it a bit which sort of backfired on me because I think now its a little TOO triangular. SEE…kind of looks like a tent!

 

Oh well. It serves the purpose of holding Cammy’s makeup and maybe she will even like it! I know Cammy is not such a girly girl so I had to keep it brown and thought I would add my cute little labels which also arent so great (after reading a few blogs I see fabric paper from walmart is not ideal, I have to get some plain twill tape) but looked cute in the corner of the bag.

Try not to laugh…

I’m not sure if I even want to commit to this blog thing, but I do want a way to journal. I would like to use this blog as a way to record events of my children and also show some crafty things along the way too.

Irene has inspired me to try and here it is.

My title is Amai lifeI. Since having Amai I have been inspired to learn to sew. Grandma used to inspire me to sew when I was little and it has always, I mean always been something I wanted to do. So since i just love my daughters name, how it sounds looks and what it means I decided to name it Amai . AMAI in Japanese means sweet. I discovered the name in high-school from a friend of my little sister lizzy. So years later meeting Hill (whom is Japanese) I brought it up to him and he loved it! So there it is.  Lets not forget Kadin too. Lets just hope he doesnt notice! Im just not creative enough to think of something. Any suggestions would be lovely!

13

Last week was filled with birthdays! I think five to six of my friends, and friends children had birthdays all in one week! Yes one week. The biggest birthday of all was Mal’s birthday. Not only did she turn 13, it was her golden birthday.

 

Kadin and Amai had a blast swimming past dark and playing with all the kids that came out. Best of all the menu was pizza cake and chips!

Kadin and Amai both just learned to swim this summer. I never thought my kids would swim till they were like 7 or something. Somehow by the grace of God they did learn and are little fish in the water. They are no way as seasoned as Abby and Keanu (touching the bottom of the deep end-NINE FEET!!!), but I am proud to say the can swim:)

Cubbies!

I had promised Kadin a bag for Cubbies last year. Of course with all my procrastinating, it took me a whole flippin year to make one. Since Amai started this year of course she needed one too.

 

Last night I was able to accomplish these because my kids were sleeping at seven thirty! Yes its true my kids slept before eight pm. If you know my kids and our family you do realize that this is unheard of. Since starting school they have been sleeping earlier but not no seven thirty! I Think I did a little dance around the house and then sat down for some sewing. You think that after only sleeping four hours I would of been wiped out at eight too. NOPE! I took out my fabric sat down at my machine and sewed away till one am. Of course not the whole time. I had to watch Grey’s and the finally of project runway (I worked Wednesday night so missed the episode-thank god for reruns!) which I must say was Awesome! I knew Leeanne had in the bag. My husband knew who the winner was because he read the paper, but I guessed it. I looked at those three different lines and thought Leeanne’s was the best! The colors the fabric it literally took my breath away! I always liked her from the beginning. Her little quiet nerdiness appealed to me. Too cute, oh and lets not forget-she is from PORTLAND OREGON!! Anyways wasn’t this a post about Cubbies & bags???

In the end the keiki finally have some totes for cubbies…personalized totes. I always wanted to do a fun applique bag for them and this was my chance. After reading my sister’s applique post I had to do it.

I wish now i would of done both of them in the red fabric, but wanted to use that cord fabric that I just bought. I think they did like them both. I am thankful that my kids always appreciate things that I or anyone else makes them. They are always saying “Oh you made it! Oh for me?…how?”.