Family Pictures

Fun in the Sun

This is what you get when your friend is a professional photographer.... these pics are stunning! We are so lucky that Erin doesn't mind taking Ella's photo a hundred thousand times! Here are some pics from the last few days...

Bubbles and Bath

Beach Babe

At Ko Olina today with the girls...

Fun Website

Okay, I love this website..but I don't believe it!
www.poodwaddle.com/realage.swf

Biological age: 32
Real age: 18.9 ( though I don't drink on a regular basis or smoke so it's a little biased... but I'll definitely take it!)

Average Life Expectancy: 74
My life expectancy: 87.1

So next time someone asks, I'm 19!!!!!

Potty Success!

Ella peed in her potty this afternoon! We are so excited for her. Ron's golfing so Erin and I went to Toys R' Us for a little shopping after a long day and night of umbrella drinks yesterday. We just got home and I stuck Ella on her potty and within a few minutes she was peeing. She looked shocked and frightened at first and stopped herself, but of course I was clapping and singing "Yeah, Ella" so she finished peeing and had the biggest and proudest smile on her face. Whoo-hoo, our first potty success.

Well, an update from yesterday... our babysitter never got back to us so we took Ella to dinner with the group (our friends brought their little boy, Lucas, so there were two toddlers there). So much for date night. Luckily, Ella slept through her nap until 6pm so she was a peach for the whole night. We did have a message from the babysitter when we got home, a family emergency is sending her back stateside, so Ron will get the details on Monday (she's a co-worker). After all the fun umbrella drinks at the pool, the margaritas before dinner, and drinks at the restaurant, I was definitely in need of an earlier night anyway. I think a night out would have been the end of me. :) Ella and Erin are napping... I think that sounds like a good idea before dinner.

Fabulous!

Erin and I spent the day at the Hyatt Regency in Waikiki on a girls spa day. Ron and Ella dropped us off and we enjoyed the best body scrub EVER! My skin is like cocoa butter and I feel so smooth. It was a nice little pampering. We headed down to the pool and laid around drinking pina coladas and margaritas. We decided we could easily be rich and do this everyday.
After a bit of shopping, Ron and Ella picked us up to come home and get ready for a date night. It's now 5:30, we have dinner plans at 7 and haven't heard from the person who was supposed to babysit. Humm, maybe Ella will be joining us on our dinner date....

Whoo Hoo

I am so proud of myself for standing my ground. I didn't cuss (though I sure felt like it) and I kept my tone firm and even the whole time that Master chief and I were "discussing" my housing issue. I feel especially victorious as he called back today to say my application was approved after bringing the issue up at his meeting. Now we still have to go to Navy housing to get the form and then meet with the property group to see available properties... hey, I'm working on it. I was informed that it will cost us a $300 "transfer fee" to move houses... the same $300 that, in our lease, is the "transfer fee" for breaking our lease. I told the property people we would discuss it at our meeting next week. As our lease is up at the end of next month, we will put our notice in and sign a new lease for November 1. Therefore, technically not "breaking" our lease agreement. Not sure how it will pan out and I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but I am ready to battle. (Though, just between us, I will concede to put an extra $400-800/month in our pocket.)


What do you get when you bottle a housewife up in crappy military housing and then treat her like she's not smart enough to know the difference?

A Whole lot of "WELL IF YOU CAN'T GIVE ME A LOGICAL EXPLANATION, THEN I DEMAND TO SPEAK TO YOUR MASTER CHIEF."

(which, I will admit, I had no idea existed until while waiting for my appointment, I saw military guy demand to speak to the "master chief" - hee hee, I'm such a poser.)

I apologize for the rant, I feel I've won a major battle. I just hope they don't show us something so awful that we end up eating crow and asking if we can just stay where we are... oh boy that would suck! LOL

Busy

The girls dancing to Elvis from the "Honeymoon in Vegas" soundtrack...
Sorry it's been a while, it's been a crazy week. Erin was supposed to arrive yesterday but wasn't able to make her Seattle flight as the plane from Victoria was broken... so we are on our way to pick her up today.
I have been doing some purging this week and trying to get rid of so much stuff we don't need. I donated a lot of Ella's outgrown cloths, our old clothes and knick knacks... I have no idea how we ended up with so much stuff! So this week has been busy. The purge was a panic response to the possibility of us moving houses... We currently live in a neighborhood with renovated and non-renovated homes. As of October 1, non-renovated homes will have a rent reduction and by us moving out of our pretty-decent-for-military renovated house into a non-renovated I-can't-believe-I-live-here home, would put a whole lot of $$$ into our pocket. Of course talking ourselves into moving down the street to the "hood" didn't change the fact that the move was denied. "Apparently" the policy is that we are allowed to move from one neighborhood to another, but not WITHIN a neighborhood. Military = government = no sense. They couldn't give us any reason why, even after I demanded to talk to the Master Cheief of Navy Housing, and was told "it's just policy". So now we're going to go talk to the army housing people and see what they have available. Perhaps staying here is easiest but we at least have to try to get that extra money. :)

Some Sort of Update

I've been working on archiving my blog by saving it to file and updating the videos so they can be viewed easier. It's been a time-consuming project.
Ella's potty training is going steady. She sits on the potty a lot throughout the day, but we seem to miss the whole concept. She's usually already wet a diaper by the time we get her on her potty. Today while watching her potty video, sitting on her potty, Ella got so excited with the singing that she stood up to clap... and peed on the carpet! So we're close, just haven't peed IN the potty yet!
Here are some pics from this week. This is how Ella likes to wake up "La-la"...
...and with her new big-girl underwear...... and on her tricycle...