Travel Season

For these next couple months, the Palm house is series of comings and goings. As discussed in my last few posts, Brian's mom and step-dad arrived here on January 8th, and are presently on an island cruise that will come to an end tomorrow morning. They will stay with us one more night before ending their Hawaiian vacation and heading back to Michigan on January 29th. Then, on the 31st, two major events occur. First, Brian will be leaving for a deployment to Guam, which will last until February 11th. Second, my brother Kurt and his wife Kelly will be flying in from Montana for a month long Hawaiian vacation. They will stay with us until February 6th, and then they will be heading down to Waikiki Beach for a week. On February 8th, my parents will be arriving at the Palm house for a 12 day visit. On February 11th, Brian will hopefully return from deployment, and then on February 13th my brother and sister-in-law will be leaving Oahu and will head over to Maui for the remaining two weeks of their vacation. Our friends, the Smith family, who live in Portland, will be landing on the island on February 16th to start their two week vacation. My parents will head back to Montana on February 20th, and then I will be heading back to Montana on February 21st for my first (hopefully) annual girls' trip. I will be in Montana until February 28th, at which time I will return home to Hawaii. And yes, for all inquiring minds, Brian WILL be at home, alone, with the kids for a week. Let's hope he makes it. On March 1st the Smith family will head back to the Oregon, and sometime around March 8th Brian is supposed to head out for his annual guys' ski trip for a week or so, which is still in the planning stages. Who knew that January, February, and March would be so full of travel?

So, our lives are presently filled with lots of planning, lots of driving, lots of excitement, lots of cleaning, lots of shopping, lots of touring, slightly more cooking, but definitely lots of fun. You better start thinking about when you want to come visit us because, as you can see, we book up fast!

We had a quiet week last week, just sort of hanging out, taking it easy. I bought a nice double jogging stroller last month, so we've been taking long walks nearly every day, enjoying the nice weather. Yesterday one of Brian's co-workers had a house-warming party at his new home, which is just a couple minutes from our house, so that was a fun way to get out of the house. The party was catered with local food, and I think it was the best local food I've tried yet. The kids had a great time playing with the the hosts' baby bunny and staring at the their fish tank (where Charley was excited to see "Nemo"). And thanks to all the running around that the kids did, Charley slept in until 7:00 a.m. or so, and Zander slept until a whoppin' 7:45 (which is a nice change from his most recent usual wake-up time of 6:00 a.m.). I guess that's about it, nothing too exciting.

The only other thing to report is that Zander, for the first time ever, put two separate words together to form a complete thought yesterday (except for "thank you" which is obviously more of a phrase than a sentence). Now, I must admit, my Mom told me that I was probably going to scar Zander for life by publicly announcing and memorializing this event on this blog, but I decided to take my chances. Down the road he will probably tell me that I scarred him for life in one way or another anyway, so why not this, right? I mean, if this isn't what the blog is for, then what IS it for? So anyway, to set this stage for this event, I must divulge that yesterday Zander had the worst case of diaper rash that he has ever had, thanks to a bad case of the runs. We tried to stay on top of things, but we pretty much couldn't keep up fast enough. It got to the point where Zander was crying out in pain if he moved wrong, and would scream bloody murder every time we even began to lay him down to change his diaper. At one point, just after I had just changed him, Zander crawled in my lap, stood up and stared in my face and said, "Hurts, booty." Okay, so his first sentence involved his butt as the subject, yes we use the word "booty" in our house (much to Brian's dismay), and his subject and verb weren't quite in the right order, but still, it was two words put together to communicate a complete thought. How exciting. I DID, however, take my Mom's other advice today and am having Zander run around the yard in the nude to hopefully allow his little toosh a drying-out break. Needless to say, I think he's enjoying his new found freedom (except for those fresh mosquito bites I just spotted). Poor guy.