Happy Birthday's

mama and son, originally uploaded by ailona.

I know its this is late. but i wanted to at least put something up and tell you i love you. Even though you might not agree. you are more beautiful every day to me. Im glad we got to spend the day together. and thanks Grandma Helen for watching matthew while we went out to dinner.
I hope you enjoyed today and I look forward to many many more birthdays with you!

and HAPPY BIRTHDAY KALANI!



The Nutcracker Ballet
For christmas Helen took us all to see the Ballet. It was quite the experience. The seats were amazing and we the dancing was awesome. here are some photos together after the show.

Whats for Dinner

Tonight we thought we'd put our new Vita Mix blender to work and make dinner. Chicken Spinach Potato Soup! Made mostly from left over food from last week.
it was delicious!!
If your thinking that you haven't heard of this blender, your probably more familiar with it than you think. Its basically the same blender that Jamba Juice and Smoothie King use to make you smoothies. Theirs are just more automated. you can find out more HERE

Whats for Dinner, originally uploaded by ailona.

*No pot or pans were used in the making of this soup. just the vita mix blender :D

Christmas Day

Thought id share some photos from today for my family and friends back home. We really miss you guys. But We had an awesome day. Thanks Helen for all the yummie food and great presents. you really did great. And thanks to Tim and Kalani for sharing it with us. it really made it special for us.

Christmas eve♦

I rented a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 Lense and a flash for the week to take some photos of the family of the Christmas holiday. and also to take photos of Jon and Amy Walters new Baby boy Timothy. Congratulations to them btw. So i thought I'd post some photos i took today during our little get together.

He thinks he's the cats pajamas


HUH? matthew getting tired of dad taking pictures


Tim, Lei, Kalani and Helen Busy in the Kitchen





the final product by Kalani. YUM YUM

Merry Christmas

Joy to all, originally uploaded by ailona.

Hope every one has a safe and happy holiday!

more from the trip

wanted to add some video and a few more photos from the trip

I had to post atleast one photo of me to prove i was there :D
photo by timmy G


Peek a boo!

visiting the great grand parents

Went up to Dale, Tx just out side Austin to visit Matty's Great Grand parents just for a day. While Lei and Helen were busy inside making all kinda Christmas goodies. me and Matty played out side mostly. Matty loved playing in the dried crunchy leaves on the ground and even chewed on the stems of a few. Lei did come out to play a few times.  we all had a great time.

teeter totter, originally uploaded by ailona.

Picking our Christmas Tree

This is probably my favorite thing about being in the mainland. Being able to pick and cut down our own christmas tree.
we had a good ole time together. Helen made some yummie Hot Apple Cider and we bought some peanut brittle from one of the vendors at the farm and had a little picknik.

Matty photo update

The other day i was cleaning out my suit case and matty thought it was funny to climb into it. I told him i was gonna close it and send him to Grandma G in hawaii.. He just laughed.



We got a new cloths hamper that has wheels and a handle on it, so i sliped matty into and wheeled him around. he that it was so much fun. after i took him out he kept trying to climb back in.



Its been getting really cold lately so we stoped by REI last night and picked up a Beanie for him. He's doing okay with it. but he likes to pull it off and try to put it on himself which he has yet to master. but doesn't he look cute!
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Now that he's 1 he can sit forward. he was pretty excited


Rock'n and Roll'n off his tonka

Happy Birthday!

Well Matthew's Birthday isn't till tomorrow but due to scheduling conflicts with the Holly and Tim we had his birthday celebration today. We had alot of fun watching him react to all these new experiences, the main one being his first encounter with cake. It was alittle tough for Lei to let him taste it. But we figured What the heck its his 1st b-day. lets see what he'll do with it. But instead of making a birthday cake we figured we'd make it extra special with a Gormet style cup cake From Crave Cakes. The kids that Lei toutors let her try one earlier this week and she fell in love. Check the vid and watch matty go at it.



This ones for Grandma G. He loves his new tonka truck

I can feed myself!

Matthew is working on feeding himself. He's such an independent person he likes to have his own spoon when we feed him. so i usually wait till theres not so much food in the bowl and let him have at it. He's getting pretty good.

Matty's first Halloween!

Matthew had a good time going Trick or Treating with Mom and Dad tonight. He was super cute with is Cow costume Grandma Helen made for him custom! He even had a bell to go with it. He was a little shy at the door ways but everyone loved him. We didn't go to a lot of houses, just a few. Halloweens in this neighborhood aren't like the ones in Laie where the streets are full of kids and you know almost everyone that comes by. We probably only had about 15 or 20 kids come by tonight. But that's okay we still had fun and we will definitely have to do more next year! But thanks Grandma Helen for doing such a great job on the costume!

I accidentally recorded this in portrait mode. but it was to cute not to upload

Eating time

Its always fun feeding Matthew. He's always a little character. Sometimes he eats well, sometimes not so much. but he always keeps it interesting. So Lei took a little video of feeding time the other night. well its more on the long side. Its funny though because I always get mixed up on what im feeding him when its green. Is it Green Beans or Peas? i always forget. Anyways. Enjoy the video.

Matthew Loves Watermelon

Watermelon is Matthew's most favorite treat at the moment. He gets so excited and has a ball biting and sucking off the cubes we feed him. When we go to Wholefoods we grab a chunk from the samples and it keeps him busy.

Getting ready for Haloween

Matty's been getting in the spirit of halloween with this spider jammies. He had fun in the jammies playing with the baloons he got from the waitress at Luby's last week and he loves them.



Another thing he's been doing to get ready for haloween is walking, Hes getting better and better every day! check the vid

Buddys

Buddys, originally uploaded by ailona.

I know its been a little while but im working on getting more video together as requested by Grandma G.

Its getting a little hectic here as both me and Lei have been doing some Part time work until i get into school. Lei has been doing tutoring in the morning from 9-12 everyday and I've just started a job as a Field Tech from 12:30pm to whenever im done for a company called Smartech. We do warranty hardware repair for Dell, IBM etc. Its been a little crazy, especially driving around Houston.

But we are still alive.. barley

Exciting week / weekend

Well its been an exciting few weeks as Matthew has started to really get the hang of this walking thing. He's up to about 6 steps and getting braver by the day.

But now that he's walking, he's also starting to climb and getting into all sorts of trouble. Here he is climbing on to some boxes in the pantry and pulling things off the shelves.

But with all the extra moving around he gets tired alot quicker. Here he fell asleep under my desk the other day.


Another fun thing that happend on friday was that a school bus scraped our little green honda while it was parked on the street. There was a Trailer that was parked across the street and the bus tried to squeeze between the two and put some nice yellow scrapes in our fender.


Leilani's mom works for BP so we got to go to a company picnic at Gordon Ranch. We had a good time. they had BBQ, Hay rides, a Petting zoo, Snow cones, chili cook off and alot more.

Getting back to Normal

Well its been a week or so since the storm came and went. we got power later in the day of my last post. we are one of the lucky ones. From what the news says there are still about a Million people in the Houston area w/o power. But life is getting back to normal. Theres just been a lot of clean up. We did take a day after to relax and went to Brenham, TX which is about an hour away, Its where they make Bluebell Ice Cream. Although we didn't go to the actual factory we did enjoy some at one of the Favorite local Restaurant called Must be heaven to eat at. We had lunch then walked around, later we came back and had some ice cream. Enjoy the photos from our trip. More Matthew updates to come soon.

day 4

Day 4 and we are still without power at home. On the news they say the power company is working from west to east. Since we live on the west side we are hopeful the power would be on. but there are a few poles and lines down in our area so me, lei and matty have been staying at Tims parents house. Luckily for everyone without power houston got a cold front so last night was a cool 60 degrees and it shouldn't get over 85 today. If the power doesn't come back on today we may head to austin to stay at the Great grandparents house untill it does. forgot to bring my camera so no pictures yet. hopefully soon.

A OK

Just wanted to post to let everyone know we are ok. The rain come down and the floods came up but our little house stayed strong. the fencing around the house didn't fair aswell. and there are alot of downed tree branches. We've been without power at home since about 3am. they say they may not have power up to everyone for maybe 2 weeks. Im at my brother in laws parents home about 10 mins away and they have power. so hopefully we will get ours back soon. we've been having fun watching movies on the portable dvb player and playing board games. ill post again once we get power on at home and ill post some photos. we are praying for all the people that weren't as lucky as us.

A Storm is coming

Well it looks like Ike is coming right for us. So we spent the evening getting ready for the worst. Luckily the area we are in doesn't flood too bad so we hope to weather storm out at home. We just keep watching and praying Ike weakens or at least doesn't get too much stronger.
if it keeps on this path we will be on the right side which is not good.

Matthew getting ready for any storm that comes his way.
Oh to be a kid again. w/o a care in the world.