Pounders and Sour Cream

Hi everyone, we've been having some technical difficulties for about a week now with blogger. For some reason it took the pics down from my last post and then wouldn't let me post a picture for about a week. Last week I took Brandon and Brock boogie boarding, they thought they had the waves mastered at Hukilau and wanted something a little bigger so we went down to Pounders beach. They soon learned that Pounders beach is aptly named, you can see here in the picture that Brandon is watching Brock get pounded. I headed out to show them how to deal with bigger stronger waves and this is what happened to me.

See that nice red line across my neck? That is where the blue bubble, a break off of a portuguese man-of-war (a type of Jelly Fish), got me. It went around my neck, and onto my shoulder and back. I had just caught this wave, and the next thing I know my neck, shoulder and back are stinging and I swear I am on fire. I guess that is the price you pay for playing in the ocean sometimes.


Last night Kasey made nachos and Ady loved them. Or maybe I should say she loved the sour cream. In our family we don't really worry too much about double dipping, but quadruple and even quintuple dipping well that's another thing. We tried to get Ady to use the sour cream on the plate but all she wanted to do was dip the chip in the container, lick off the chip and repeat process several times. She made such a mess but we thought it was so funny that we just laughed and snapped these pics. When she was done she had sour cream all over her, some on us, a bit on the couch and none left in the container.

Congrats to Sam and Rat

Brandon, Leslie's (Kasey's sister) husband, and his brother flew in on Monday. Leslie and Brandon will be living here while she is stationed at Schofield Barracks. So I took Brandon over to the base so he could get a house and this is the sign I saw while there. "74 days since last FATAL accident." This caught me a bit off guard. I've seen signs about safety and how long since last accident at various warehouses or factories but I've never seen one that tracks time between fatal accidents. I guess in the military they don't count normal regular accidents, just the fatal ones.

Adyson has this thing for climbing into her walker and sometimes she doesn't do quite right, generally the results are rather comical. This one was pretty funny, she was stuck and screaming for me to get her out but I had to take the picture first. Adyson has figured out that she can push her walker right up under the TV, climb up on it and standing on top of the it can reach the TV. I just hooked up the TV about two weeks ago so that Kasey could watch the olympics but I think I'm gonna unplug it cause Ady is always turning it on.
My sister Rachel and her husband Sam just announced that they are pregnant and we are super excited for them and know that they will learn so much as parents. I thought that I'd share a few things that I have learned from Ady. Playing rough, like spinning or bouncing or whatever with the baby is kinda like shaking up a soda can and opening it. The only two difference is that you don't control when it get's opened and puke being sprayed all over you is way worse than soda. Also it is amazing how far and much puke can be projected. We call it power-puking. Once when we were at the Fort Lauderdale airport Ady was about a month old and Kasey had just fed her then handed her off to me to burp and hold. Well I noticed that Ady's mouth opened wide and her eyes got big like they do right before puking so I quickly held her away from me thinking that she would just puke on the floor. Nope. This solid stream came out straight for my face and neck. The worst part of it was that in the carry on diaper bag we had back a half dozen changes of clothes for Adyson but none for me. Ady taught us then and there always make sure everyone has a full set of clothes at all times.
Don't get me wrong, puking is not the only thing we have learned about from Adyson. We now know that poop comes in many forms and colors. Not just the various shades of brown but also greens, oranges black and even purple. I never knew you could poop purple. Also when it comes to being thrifty be careful with diapers. Yes, sometimes you can say "well it's not all the way full, we can wait a while and save a little money on diapers." But, be aware that an empty diaper can be filled real quickly and spill out, so a half full diaper can fill even faster and spill out way more. Once again an extra set of clothes for everyone is recommended. Another thing about diapers is that we have learned that sand has no nutritional value and poops out just as it was, all you get is a diaper full of sand.
In all seriousness having a baby is really exciting and a major educational experience for all involved and we are really excited for Rat and Sam.

Here's a couple of pics of Ady. This first one is at the Pearl Harbor/Bowfin Submarine. They have these exhibits outside that you can touch, climb on and play with. Ady loved this one. It's the main chamber for the submarine and Ady was flipping switches, spinning dials and pushing buttons.

I thought this pic was really cute. My mom took this while she was here. If you don't know us well you might get an idea looking at this pic that we play a lot of card/board games. I guess we play so much that now Ady thinks that she should be playing also.

Do not get fooled by this cute face. Today Ady learned how to take the top off of her sippy cup. If making messes was an olympic event, Adyson would sweep all the medals. Actually there are probably several events she could win. Climbing on to the couch, then climing off the couch, back on the couch, repeat a dozen times. Maybe that one can replace the spots that baseball/softball are vacating. Or how about turning off the gas on the stove when dad is cooking. Maybe Ady's favorite: hiding various items in drawers, cupboards and under beds. We still haven't found my library card or SCUBA card. Fortunately grandma found her chapstick and lotion.

Trip to the Zoo

Recently Ady has shown a big interest in animals. Whenever she see's a cat, dog, fish or even a toad she squeals and points at it. So we decided to go to the zoo while Grandma and Grandpa Van Tassell were here. Ady had a blast. She loved finding the animals and pointing at them. She even tried to bark at the african dogs, if you didn't know dogs are her favorite animal. She was quite bored by the reptiles who just laid there and the sleeping lions. But the elephants, giraffes, monkeys, orangutans, tiger, zebra, cheetahs, chimpanzees, hippos, and especially the petting zoo was almost more fun than this girl could handle. Sorry this is another really long blog, I just couldn't decide which photo you didn't want to see. Knowing that you'd probably feel deprived if you didn't get to see how much fun Adyson was, I decided to give you the full unabridged version.



As you can see here Ady loved finding the animals and pointing at them to make sure that we found them also. She would go running up the path to when she spotted an animal and with the giraffes she even made an attempt to climb the fence to get a closer look.




The petting zoo was quite possibly Ady's favorite part of the zoo. She loved petting the Llama, the goats, the pigs, the sheep and looking at all the other animals like the Japanese Koi. She wasn't sure about the goats at first but it didn't take long and she was petting, climbing, poking, pulling ears and we had to take her out because we were feeling sorry for the goats.


We managed to be at the Hippo exhibit while they were feeding the hippos and Ady got quite the surprise. An apple landed right next to the glass where she had attached her face and all of the sudden she had a very close look at the inside of a hippopotamus' mouth. After jumping backwards she quickly got over her surprise and went right back to her spot. She loved it but I feel a little bit sorry for whoever has to clean all of those hand and face prints of hers off of the glass.




Here are a few more images of us at the Zoo. Notice how Ady is smashing her face against the glass at the Chimpanzee exhibit. Due to Ady trying to climb into giraffe exhibits and getting so excited when she would find another animal that she would take off running she ended up spending quite a bit of the day on my shoulders. Yes, that is a picture of Ady dancing. She would get so excited that she'd literally break out dancing(which basically consists of waving her arms up and down while turning in a circle and making weird squealing noises). And the final pic is when the Cheetah walked away from the window and ady started balling. She cried until it came back a couple of minutes later.

Maui and her signs

I thought I would share some of the crazy signs we saw on Maui. I have to apologize, I didn't get a pic of what might have been the funniest sign. On the way up to Haleakala there was a sign that said no left turn. The crazy thing was that on the left was a sheer cliff. Any idiot who thought they should turn left and drive off of a couple hundred foot cliff probably can't read anyway. We found this one while taking a walk through the middle of a rain forest. I never knew trees could hear. The problem is that you see this sign and then bust up laughing. Totally unquiet.

This sign might be my favorite. Most places that have warning signs usually say something like "this activity may or could cause death or injury". Not this sign, note the wording, "has caused death and injury". Now that's a solid warning. Check out the next sign.

This signs a bit hard to read. On the right hand side of the sign you can see two white pieces of paper. Actually they are actual parts of the sign, they are copies of newspaper stories from the last couple of years about people dying right there. Isn't that crazy! They don't just tell you it might be dangerous, they tell you how the last guy died.

This one totally baffled me. Papaya is a fruit. Why do they need a crossing for baby fruit?


I suppose there are reasons for all the signs telling people about the imminent danger they are in. Look at these yahoos and how little respect they give the posted signs. In the first one the sign says clearly points out that going past the sign near the blowhole is dangerous and look at those two. Then in the second one Kasey is using the moment as a a teaching tool for Ady to show point out what not to do.

Look Ady is already on her way to becoming a hardened criminal.

Trip to Maui

Hey everybody, we are back from our trip to Maui and we had a great time. We went to Iao Valley, took the drive to Hana, watched the sunrise at Haleakala, went snorkeling and much more. I am gonna have to do a few posts to catch up on all we did in 4 days. I will post a few pics here and then more on each individual place we went on the Hawaii blog. This first pic is of us in Lahaina at the massive 5 acre banyan tree! That's right 5 acres. This tree takes up the whole park. I was teaching Ady how to climb the tree. She tried it out on a few smaller parts.


While we were in Lahaina we stopped on along the edge of the wharf and watched the sunset. Ady liked sticking her head through the slats and watching the water more than the sunset. Then we were walking along and all of the sudden Ady stopped bent over and tried to do a somersault! It was so funny, right there in the middle of the sidewalk.


We got up at 3:30 in the morning our last day to drive to the top of Haleakala crater to watch the sunrise. It was so pretty. We went from sea level to 10,023 feet and were above the clouds. Haleakala is an old volcano on the east side of Maui. Very cool. The problem is that it was so cold. The temperature was just a little above 40 degrees and the wind was blowing.

We took some small hikes and on the hikes saw an abundance of plants and flowers that were absolutely beautiful. This is just on of the many many flowers we saw. This is a red ginger.


These are just two of the couple dozen waterfalls we saw. The one with Kasey in it is over 400 feet high. Kasey wasn't even wearing her swimsuit but waded right out into the water. She said "this is the biggest waterfall I've ever seen and I'm getting in." It started raining right about then and we all got soaked anyway.



We took a chartered snorkeling trip and although we felt it wasn't as good as Key West snorkeling we had a good time. We saw half a dozen turtles, colorful fish, a small reef shark and beautiful coral.


This is us at Iao Valley State Park. The tall mountain by itself is called the Needle and erosion has separated it from the rest of the mountain. It was really pretty and peaceful.




Here are the final pictures of our trip. These were all taken on our drive to Hana and the Ohe'o Gulch. The one of the arch is when we stopped at Wainapanapa State Park. All in all we had a great time and saw some amazing sights. If you made it through this far in today's post wonderful and if you want to see more give me a day or two and I will be posting a blog about each individual activity with more photos and more info. Later.