Happy Birthday Dad & cutest niece ever

Yesterday was my Dad's birthday! Happy birthday! He is such an amazing father, husband, worker, and just person overall. I am so glad that he is my Dad. Here are two pictures of him. One is on Christmas when he opened Brooke & Rob's present which was a shirt that said squirrels are great target practice and on the back were pictures of him holding up the squirrels he has killed in our yard. (They have been trying to get in our attic so now he shoots them.) The second picture is of him in Hawaii on the beach with Breanna.

This is a video of Breanna singing happy birthday to my dad, and I think it is the most adorable thing ever!
http://brooke-douglas.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-birthday-grampy.html

Mosquitoes

I have been back in Hawaii for a little over a week now and one of the first nights I was here a mosquito decided to give me some company since I was sad that Todd wasn't here with me. However, the mosquito was not a very friendly guest. She (I know she was a female since she sucked my blood) sucked my blood on my hand, my leg in a couple places, my arm and my chin.

The night before my first day of classes, I was asleep and woke up to go to the bathroom around 1:45. I tried to go back to sleep, but my visitor insisted on buzzing by my ear. I kept hitting my head and slapping my pillows trying to kill her. I couldn't find her though and every time I attempted to go to sleep again she buzzed right by my ear. I was not able to sleep the remainder of the night and I was very sleepy with a whole day of classes ahead of me, but I survived.

The next night I woke up at 3:00 to go to the bathroom and as I was going back to sleep the SAME thing happened again!! There was no way I was going to lose two nights of sleep over this unwelcome guest, so I took drastic actions. I was already wearing pants, a long sleeve shirt, socks, and had the fan on to keep her away. The only thing I was worried about was my face. I already had a bite on the bottom of my chin and I have enough zits for my liking and didn't want it to look like I had any more. So I went into the kitchen and got a paper towel. I cut out holes for my mouth, nose, and eyes. (I now realize that I really didn't need eye holes because I was going to be sleeping, but it was 3:00 in the morning and I was super tired.) I got a ribbon and tied it around my head. I had a fantastic rest of the night and had a great next day since I was so rested. It was even better because that morning I spotted the mosquito in the bathtub and murdered it!!

Happy Anniversary!

Todd's and my 1 year wedding anniversary was yesterday the 18th. Unfortunately Todd was scheduled to work, however we were still able to spend from 3:00 pm on together. We went out and celebrated by going to Leatherby's and sharing this baby:It was delicious as it always is. Today we are sitting at the airport trying to make it to Denver to visit my family. Hopefully we will make it!

Pregnancy Picture

Here I am a week and a half ago at almost 21 weeks. I am over half way done!

The Great Flood of 2008

These are some of the pictures that Todd took as he walked around. We were lucky & blessed to live in a building that did not get flooded. I had never seen rain that hard for that long. News reports said that the rain was falling (more like pounding) at rates of 3 - 4 inches per hour. It seems that every time Todd's parents come to town we have some type of natural disaster. Last time it was for Erika's wedding and they brought an earthquake with them. This time floods. Who knows if they will be invited back while we are still here :) The great thing that happened was that our power stayed on the ENTIRE time which is crazy because Laie is normally the first for the power to fail. We were very thankful for that. Tonight at Todd's graduation celebration, postponed from yesterday, the power did go off for a couple of minutes but that was it. Todd walks tomorrow in the commencement ceremony & then I leave tomorrow night to San Francisco where I will meet up with Todd & his parents 12 hours later. School's out and I'm ready to relax with family!!

In case you were wondering....

...we will be having a little boy!!! I have already bought a huge lot of cute clothes on craigslist for cheap.

Sorry...

It has been forever again! I only have 3 more weeks of school (plus finals) and then we are out of here for Christmas break!! Todd will walk on December 13th for graduation, and his parents are coming out on the 7th for that. Then back to CA (and hopefully/most likely CO) we go. I have been busy with school and tests, and I have had to do white glove checks for the 32 apartments I am in charge of! It is kind of awkward going into other students' apartments and telling them if they are clean or not, but luckily all of them have done a good job cleaning so far.

Todd and I haven't been to the beach in months now. We are too busy to go during the week, and it seems like every Saturday (today included) we get cloudy, rainy weather that is definitely not fit for a beach day.

Today we went and got new tires for our car and went grocery shopping at Costco. There was also a party for our building today and we won lots of prizes, had good food, and I won musical chairs. I was pretty proud of that.

This week on Thursday I have an ultrasound so that we can hopefully find out if the baby is a boy or girl! We are pretty excited that we will find out. If you want to guess the baby's gender, weight, birth date, etc. then you can go to this website: http://www.expectnet.com/games/blackfamilybaby or click on the icon on the left and it will bring you right there.

If anyone would like to come visit Hawaii you should come! There are good sales on tickets right now, so take advantage of it!!

TOM's shoes

I am in what is called the business core this semester for school. We have to operate businesses for 6 weeks. My group is selling TOM's shoes. A lot of people haven't heard of them, but they sell shoes obviously, and for each pair that is bought a pair is donated to children in impoverished companies such as Argentina, South Africa, Ethiopia, and parts of the US hit by hurricanes and other natural disasters. You should check them out at www.tomsshoes.com. If you would like to purchase some (which EVERYONE should) make sure you use the promo code HAWAII when checking out. This will get you $5 off as well as track the sale to our business group. You also get free shipping!

Our baby is a genius

Last week at my second doctor's appointment the doctor tried to hear the baby's heartbeat for the second time. At 9 weeks we weren't able to hear it, so I went back at 12 weeks specifically for that. Well the doctor got her little doppler out and tried to hear it...and we couldn't. So I got an ultrasound! I was so exicted that I was able to get one and see the baby. It was amazing. The baby was kicking it's legs and we could see its heart beating out of its chest. At the beginning though the doctor kept saying "hmmmm....hmmmmm..." and I was like why the heck are you saying that!?!? It scared me, but then we were able to actually see the baby on the screen and not just some blurry object like she was seeing at first. So after the ultrasound she said I really want to hear the heartbeat so let's just try one more time. After about 30 seconds we were able to hear it! So I was really proud of the baby for hiding the first time so that we could get an ultrasound and actually see that there is something inside me. Here is a picture of it:
It is sucking its thumb in this picture (you can see it better if you click on it).

So clean

Todd and I have been disgusted by our tile ever since we moved into TVA. We had been talking about trying to get new tile for awhile, but we didn't really do anything about it until last week. Todd asked my friend and co-worker Emma if she would do something about it because I wouldn't (I just felt awkward). So she had our supervisor go over and look at it, and he said yup they should get new tile! Our tile was A) disgustingly dirty/probably 20 years old, B) there were gaps between the tiles so we had many ants as friends who would live in these cracks, and C) the caulking on the outside of the tiles had lots of holes and other crevices which equals even more ants.
Here are the before pictures:
Here are the after pictures:
It's so nice walking on the tile without it turning your feet black even though I had cleaned it three times in a row. It would just NEVER get clean before. We are so happy and excited that it's clean and shiny now!!

Todd's Uncle Kirk in Hawaii

Todd's Uncle was in Hawaii teaching a class for Learning Tree for a week. We were able to meet up with him 2 Thursdays ago and we headed to the Cheesecake Factory (thanks again Kirk!!). It was really nice being able to spend some time with him and catch up on everything that's happening with that side of Todd's family. We also learned all about Kirk's classes that he teaches and about the weddings and babies and other events that have been going on. It always is nice to have family in town, even if we are only able to catch up for a couple hours over dinner. We are grateful that Kirk wanted to meet up with us, and that he treated us to dinner. It was delicious!!

What we did when family was here:

When my whole family was out here we went to the beach a lot, and each night we rotated which couple would cook. We had some fantastic meals provided by everyone! It was a nice break to not have to cook every night. My parents stayed with us for 4 days as well and I loved it. Even with their annoying noise maker to help them sleep better (just kidding). I wish I could have skipped school the whole time everyone was out here! I will admit that I did skip some days, but not enough. We had some good times at Pounders, minus the blue bubble sting and injuries getting pounded into the sand.

We went and watched my cousin play football against UH on one Saturday. It was my first and probably last time ever seeing him play so I was excited that I had that opportunity. It was quite eventful with Weber State being ahead of UH for the entire first half. It rained some at the game so we kept running for cover. And my mom was sick so that wasn't too much fun for her.

Brooke and Breanna stayed with us for their last 4 or 5 days here, and it was so much fun. I think we were all worried how it would work out with Breanna in our small apartment without any separation, but we hung a sheet from the ceiling to make her own "room." She really warmed up to Todd and I and would point at our pictures when she woke up and she called us "Toddshell." She would laugh and scream and run to Todd when he would walk in the door and cry when he would leave for work. Brooke and I had fun hanging out especially during Breanna's nap time. We were able to watch some guilty pleasure shows (The Hills...) and girl movies. We also celebrated Brooke's birthday before they left by getting pizza and breadsticks from Pizza Hut and pie from Ted's.

There is a sale on Hawaiian Airlines tickets right now, so anyone who wants to come visit should!!

They are all gone now...

I had a whole post written out and it got erased :( So now I will start with pictures. Here are my grandparents and Dad with a statue.

My Dad & Breanna at the PCC. Todd and I got huge discounts from our friends that work there, so everyone was able to go to the villages, dinner buffet, and night show. Thanks to my parents for paying for everyone for the buffet! The pineapple especially was delicious...
Here are my parents and Breanna again at the PCC. Breanna got a pretty flower headband for her hair.
Here's my Dad and Breanna at the beach. We brought her to Pounders for her first time and she was not very excited to go into the waves that were pounding. By the end she loved going to the beach.
My parents playing DDR. My Dad was actually pretty good, and my Mom definitely improved :)
Here is Breanna pretending she was in jail and making a funny face.
Here we are eating chocolate haupia pie from Ted's. It was everyone's favorite. Here we are at Matsumoto's. Breanna, Brooke, & Rob came straight from the airport to meet us there. Breanna loved it.
I am so sad that everyone is gone!! I loved having my parents stay with us, and I loved having Brooke & Breanna stay with us too. I will post more later!!

Long night...

My parents, grandparents, and aunt and uncle got here last night, so Todd and I went over there after church was done. I had so much fun seeing everyone and it made me extremely excited for this week. A little too excited...I am having trouble sleeping because I just want to go over there right now (3 in the morning). We are going to go to the beach today and Matsumoto's, I hope, and it is my day to make the big meal for everyone. Alright, I am going to go back to rolling around trying to sleep...