February

It's February!  What happened to January?  I guess we are staying really busy with a 9 month old and Steve's work, school, homework, papers, prepping for presentations at upcoming conferences, planning island hopping trips, exploring more parts of the island, cleaning, doing callings, getting over sicknesses, etc, etc, etc.  A typical month for most people probably. :) 

To highlight a few things from this past month- Katelynn turned 9 months old!  And she's acting like it.  She's being a big girl- sitting up straight in her high chair, wanting to feed herself, not wanting to drink from a bottle, putting herself to sleep, getting toys out, pulling books off her bookshelf, playing quietly in her crib after waking up, being happy with people other than her parents, laughing, playing games like running away when we say "I'm gonna get you. . . ", squeezing my nose to hear me say hoooonk, and more things like those.  Two new things that she does that I love:  she cuddles and hugs and kisses her stuffed animals and her blankets.  She loves her monkey lovey and sleeps with it now.  She has even started making the aahhhh sound we make when she cuddles with something.  And she has started to dance to music.  Right now she still shakes her head, but she has also started waving her arms to the music.  It is so cute to see her press the buttons on her toys to start the music and then start shaking her head and waving her hands.  She is so stinkin cute!  She is such a good sleeper right now too, (knock on wood).  I think she is making up for all those months of horrible sleeping.  She puts herself to sleep (in fact she doesn't like us to rock her, which is a little sad), and sleeps from 8:30 to 2:30 when she wakes up to eat and then sleeps until 7:30 or 8:00.  She takes two good naps during the day too, although I'm not sure how long she sleeps because when she wakes up she just happily plays until I go check on her.  She's so happy when she wakes up, which makes me happy!

Another thing we've done this past month is go to the Punahou Carnival.  We had our friends over for a barbeque on our rooftop patio (we made yummy kabobs), and then we walked over.  This carnival is a fundraiser for the private school across the street from our apartment.  It is really big in Hawaii, because, well, it's the only carnival/rides/park on the island.  People come from all over the island and it is crowded!!  We still had a lot of fun playing games and buying malasadas!  I even won a hello kitty for Katelynn (poor girl was crying while I played because of the noise, but she gave hello kitty a big hug when I gave it to her).  

I also took down the snowflakes hanging from the ceiling and replaced them with some cute hearts I made.  Katelynn loves when I put up new things.  She notices right off (since I put them up during her nap) and stares at them and talks at them.  It's cute.  We also went to Brian's birthday party.  He turned one!  We hang out at Friday pay group sometimes and Katelynn and Brian always smile at each other in church, and talk to each other. We've also visited Hadley and Heather at their new house and played in their yard.  We also hang out with Benson and Lauri a lot- going shopping or just visiting.  And walks- lots of walks to Makiki park and playing in the grass. We also went to the Foster Botanical Gardens- I loved taking pictures of the flowers.  So pretty.

A few weeks ago we also went to the North Shore to see the big waves.  Katelynn loved crawling around on the sand (and only tried to eat it a couple times).  We saw huge waves, and some cool surfing.  We also stopped by the turtle beach and there were three turtles resting on the sand. It was cool!

We also tried a fun new restaurant.  It was Gyu-taku, Japanese style.  We sat around our own little grill, ordered veggies and meat and grilled it ourselves.  It was pretty yummy and we went during lunch hour so it was on the cheaper side. It was on the windward side of the island, and while we were there it was really rainy.  On our way home we stopped at the byodi-in temple with a good view of the mountain because there were lots and lots of waterfalls coming down.  It was really neat to see, I tried taking pictures, but they really didn't do the sight justice. :)