Catching up is hard to do :)

Hey everyone! I'm sorry I've been a bad blogger ~ lots of craziness the last few weeks in the Willey household! Let's see, we jetted home in September for a few weeks to spend time with our family & friends, since we're not going to make it home for Christmas :( Darn plane tickets & Pacific Ocean! We had a fabulous time (thanks Mom & Dad, you're the best for putting up with us!) visiting family & friends ~ we ended up sending out a mass email last minute to meet up with everyone one night during our visit, and had a ball hanging out at Eureka Lake with everyone who came. Next time we'll plan it more in advance so everyone can hopefully come! :) Noah had a ball riding Papa's tractor as much as possible, swinging in his new swing, throwing sticks in the creek, and doing all his favorite farm things :)

We then headed to AZ for our dear friend Roza's wedding, where I was a bridesmaid & Noah was the ring bearer. Pictures of that to come, I promise! Noah did pretty well, except for restlessness during the wedding which thankfully everyone (hopefully!) thought was cute :) About halfway through, he was like "my pillow! I want my pillow! I the ring bear!" It's hard to control your laughter when you're in a beautiful wedding :) Anyways, we had a great time and the wedding was absolutely beautiful. I have lots of pics from this summer/fall to add, so I promise I'll be back on here in the next few days! Lots of love and hope to hear from everyone soon!

xo,
Jen

What a difference a year makes!

Hey everyone! I was looking at pictures today to upload for a new blog entry, and got carried away going down memory lane :) So I thought, why not blog about that? We file our pictures by date, and these pictures are almost exactly one year apart, all in the month of August! In 2007, Bubby was almost one, in 2008, he was almost two, and this past month our lil' man is pushing three! Where does the time go?! Anyways, more to come soon, I have a summer's worth of fun to blog about :) Love you all!

Jen
xo

2007, 10 months old ~ right about the time the now infamous curls began ;) See how red his hair was?!




2008, 22 months old being so silly with Daddy ~ they pulled a trick on me and purposely dressed in majorly un-matching outfits ;)

eating a yummy homemade popsicle at Nana & Papa's farm

Making cookies, Noah style

Hey everyone! I'm so sorry we've been MIA for the past few weeks, we had some company from over the ocean over! :) Bryan's parents were here for about a week, and then my friends Jen & Erin flew in from FL last week ~ Hawaii was the only state these seasoned travelers haven't been to, so we were more than happy to oblige them ;) Now we're getting back in the swing of things and feeling lonely for home ~ anyone else want to come visit our lil' beach house? Anyone? :)

I've got some major catching up to do as far as this blog goes, so here's a little sample of what we've been up to these past weeks. I found these great *homemade* hehe chocolate chip cookie dough mixes in the commissary, so needless to say when I went shopping, Noah immediately saw these and started chanting "cookie! cookie! cooooooookie!" What's a mom to do but drop everything else she's got going and rev up the old KitchenAid mixer. Thanks Aunt Ruthie, Sarah and Lynn for that if you're reading this ~ we love it! :)

So we grabbed all the ingredients necessary for this production: one egg, a bag of mix, and a stick of butter. So complicated ;)


My teacher brain immediately thought "oh, learning opportunity here!" so in came the kitchen chair for lil' man to stand on. First order of business ~ adding the ingredients to the bowl. In their entirety. I said "we have to put in the egg" so he put in the egg :) I think I expect too much from a 2 year old :)


Next step ~ watch the mixer go 'round and 'round and 'round, with a confused and awestruck look on your face:


Pay absolutely NO attention to the mess behind him please :) So now what would any good blue-blooded all American boy do once the dough was mixed up into a "mess" as he called it? Why, snatch a bite of course! (or two, or three...I'm not really sure, I turned around for a second to get a spatula)


Oh my word, I literally could NOT get him to stop once he discovered that long-upstanding childhood tradition of cookie dough! It was game on! Mom vs. surprisingly strong toddler! Anyways, next step: spray the cookie sheet with Pam. And the counter, and the stove, and a chubby lil' hand...


Then watch as Mom spoons the dough onto the VERY greasy cookie sheet (hey, it's his cookies, he can make it how he wants, right?) and check 'em out before we put them into the very hot oven.


Then make some very silly faces at yourself in the oven while the cookies take forever to bake:


Finally, be prepared to be amazed at our somewhat goofy looking cookies (our theory is too much Pam? Or maybe he's just taking after his momma in the cooking department? Hmmm...) Once we've blown about a thousand puffs on them because they're too hot, we sit down to a surprisingly very tasty afternoon snack. And that's chocolate chip cookies, Noah Scott style ;)


Hope you all have a wonderful week and hope to hear from you soon!

Love,
Jen

From Goodwill to goodie!

So I'm still trying to put the finishing touches on our new Hawaiian home, and with a slew of visitors heading our way in the next few weeks my OCD-ness (as my husband calls it) is kicking into overdrive. This means details people! :) I'm sure our visitors won't care or maybe even not notice whether the chairs outside are black or espresso, but apparently it matters somewhere in my brain. ;)

Anyways, I found this little lantern a few weeks ago at the Goodwill ~ can I just say the pickings here are much, much slimmer than at home so a good find is a great find here! It reminded me of West Elm accents, which is my new favorite inspiration by the way. It seems the older I get ~oh my gosh, I sound so old! :( ~ my decorating tastes are changing. Remember my shabby-chic phase Mom? :) Anyways, I'm into contemporary-traditional now (I think!) But anyways, this lantern was cute, but not complete.


Pay no attention to the lil' buddha belly behind the scenes, or the fact that my shot was blurry because a certain K-9 was running around my feet, chasing down crumbs from the lil' buddha belly. Ahem. So when I got it home, I decided to yank out the orangy plexi-glass sides, which was no easy feat with all the little metal tabs holding it in. Grr. Anyways, one butter knife later and 16 little metal tabs later, here she is on an end table in our living room:


Ahh, a cheap, simple, and extremely easy makeover that cost a total of $2. The lantern was marked $4, but I snagged it 1/2 off and a 10% military discount. Hey, every penny counts, right? :) And I didn't need to paint it because black is an accent I've been using in picture frames and such. Now we enjoy her flickering glory at night while we watch our favorite flicks. One more "detail" marked off my never-ending, self-induced OCD list. Hope you all had a great 4th of July and hope to hear from you soon! :)

Love,
Jen

We're baaaack!

Hey everyone! Remember us, Bryan, Jen, Noah and Kiki? Can you hear us waaaaay over here across the Pacific Ocean? :) I can't believe it's been two months since my last post, shame on me! :( My friend Sara gently reminded me the other day about my lack of love for the blog when she sent me a post on Facebook that read "update your blog woman!" :) And then this morning I was talking to my friend Jessica from home and she asked "are you taking a bunch of pictures of your adventures?" "Umm....not so much" was my very sad reply. :( So it's naptime, the computer's fired up from a webcam chat with Nana and Papa earlier, and the camera's downloading all 5 pictures I've taken in the last two months to share. Haha...

Let's see...what's happened since oh, April when I was last on here :) May 10th (Mother's Day!) Noah and I bravely boarded a 767 at Honolulu Airport by ourselves and headed home for a three week visit! We took the red eye, as any good mother would plan because that means your child will sleep the whole flight, right? W.R.O.N.G. Apparently it means that you and your curly headed son will be the ONLY people awake on the plane, besides the pilot that is. Including a couple stewardesses! I brought the DVD player, the toys, the snacks, you name it I had it. In fact, the poor tourists in the row behind us got quite the shock when Thomas the Train smacked one of them in the face. Whoops.

Anyways, we completely and utterly enjoyed our trip home. Noah was so darn cute when we finally (15 hours later) arrived in good ol' Peoria, IL ~ he recently added a penguin suitcase to his harem of cute things and was successfully strolling through the airport like the stud that he is when all the sudden....Nana was there! He immediately dropped the suitcase like a hot potato and bam! it was over from there ;) Momma was old news, and Nana & Papa were hot tamales ;) Ah, it was a relaxing vacation, in the green countryside of Secor ~ okay, better move on I'm getting choked up :( We saw tons of family and friends, and got reaquainted with our first baby Kiki, who was livin' it up on the farm! I didn't realize just how much I missed that mutt until I saw her big brown eyes :) Speaking of, after much deliberation and paperwork and more deliberation, she successfully passed the veterinarians' requirements for admittance into Hawaii, I successfully overnighted her payment and notarized paperwork to Hawaii, and she successfully made the loooong trek back to Hawaii. Darn Hawaii. :) Poor Kiki, she was in her kennel for a total of 19 hours by the time it was said and done! And both times our plane landed, you could hear her going absolutely nuts. People around me, who by that time knew just how worried I was for her, laughed and said see, she's fine! I think she was hoarse for about three days after that ;) Anyways, the bad news is now that she's here, the poor thing is allergic to Hawaii. How can that be, you say? Well, she was itching like crazy, so my first thought was fleas. Dirty, nasty, here year round because it's too warm to kill them off fleas. UGH. You know how clean I am so that meant immediate action was required ~ bombs went off, bedding went in the trash, etc. Except she didn't have fleas. So another trip to the vet later, we find out that apparently dogs who are brought here from the mainland are typically allergic to the volcanic dirt, the humidity, etc. So we're armed with Benadryl and antibiotics and we'll see. Poor lil' thing :(

Anyways, enough for today ~ that's the update in the Willey Family. I'll leave you with some pictures of Kiki's first trip to the beach ~ needless to say, she wasn't a huge fan :) I solemnly promise to update this blog more frequently ~ in fact, I have an exciting, however cruel development in my scavenger hunt from Tori! Stayed tuned!

xoxo

FINALLY! Koko Crater!

Aloha everyone! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's....me! Climbing Koko Crater! :) I FINALLY am reporting in on my climb up Koko Crater last weekend! :) I know, nothing like keeping you hangin' huh? I am proud to say....I...made...it! All in one piece too, and that's nothin' to snooze at! ;)

My friend Sara (the one I've been working out with) and I headed up there at about noon last Saturday, with our trusty cameras and water bottles in hand. When we finally found the path leading up to the crater, we took a deep breath, thought this ain't so bad, and headed up. Here we are, safe and sound and NOT sweaty at the bottom:

Here we go, right up this flight of stairs:

Here's a shot of the view about 1/4 of the way up:

and here's the oh-so-scary bridge over a ravine about halfway up that Tori did warn me about ~ but until you see it for yourself, you can't appreciate the scariness of it :) Thank goodness it's only about 30ish feet long ~ only VERY old railroad ties separate you from dangerous peril ;) Sara and I did kindof a crabwalk/hop up it ~ it was hilarious to see how other people wrangled their way up it. This was also where we stopped to take a loooong break ;)

So after MUCH huffing and puffing and almost going back down, we finally, repeat finally (and very sweatily!) hit the top!!! Go us! :)

Holy moly, I thought my thighs were going to give out, they were shaking so bad.
Here's some views from the top:

on the other side of this little piece of land is Makapuu, where my last two clues were, remember? And I thought that climb was high...see the difference? :) Here's another view:

Now, if you remember, Tori's last clue ended by saying "to the left of the top step by 3 rocks is what you seek." Now do you think that once I could catch my breath and looked for my long-awaited clue I could find it? Ohhhh no :) So I get out my handy-dandy trusty Sprint phone (customer service stinks, but the phone service rocks!) and call my sissy. Do you think she answered? Ooohhh no. Grrr. Eight tries later, I caught her. Phone was on vibrate. I was on the verge of a breakdown ;) Just kidding, but since this was by far the hardest hike to a clue, I was absolutely bound and determined I wasn't going down empty-handed. (Actually more like I'm not coming up here again! Haha!) So Tori directs us around the corner from the top, as in not where we're really supposed to go, and under some more rail-road ties. Around the bend from an old concrete lookout and to a plateau on the edge of a cliff we went. That's right folks, another cliff. Do you think she's trying to send me a message? Hmm...haha ;) Here's a picture of us with all the jungle of railroad ties and concrete lookout behind us, as we ventured off the beaten path.

Anyways, when we got to this cliff we were supposed to look for a painted poem. For a moment, I thought she actually painted my clue on this cliff! But it was somebody else's poem from a few years ago. Anyways, she had me read it to her to make sure that I was actually at the top and didn't send Sara up there to get it! Oh, the nerve! :) Anyways, once she was satisfied that I was indeed up on top of the crater, she said look under a big pile of cloth and it should be there. Guess what?! It was! She should've majored in clue-hiding instead of finance ;) My fifth double-bagged clue was safe and sound, just waiting for me. And it was sooo fun to have Sara there to share my excited, jumping up and down with glee, clue-finding moment with me. Now I have a witness! :) Here I am, in all my sweaty, clue-finding glory ~ see the green painted poem, on a plateau, on the cliff?

I won't make you sit in suspense any longer :) Here's what it said:

Congrats darling sis!
I'm so proud of you
this is hard enough
for anyone to do!

It must have been tough
it muse have been long,
I have a present for you
to keep you moving along.

Keep shedding your weight
keep showing your beauty,
or you won't enjoy this gift
because you didn't do your duty.

Sadly enough, your gift isn't here
Lanakai Beach ~ I'm very sincere.

That's where it is,
months and months of motivation.
And there lies directions
to one final destination.

What can I say? My sissy rocks! I am SO beyond motivated, and to date have lost 8 pounds, enjoy working out, and continue having fun incorporating my healthy choices into my everyday lifestyle. I love you sissy and promise not to let you down! :) Now I'm off to Tori's friends' house (who lives by the beach) to find my next clue...wonder what my gift is?! You never know...only one way to find out! Stay tuned to my adventures! :)

Love,
Jen (the explorer) Haha!

Easter fun!

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful and blessed Easter! Ours was very fun :) We got to talk to our families Easter morning, it's so funny how we're just getting up and ready for church and everyone at home was settling in for a relaxing afternoon after a belly full of ham :) The day would've been much more bittersweet if we didn't have the friends we do here! We have met some awesome people and are so thankful to have them as part of our military "ohana" (which if you've ever seen Lilo and Stitch you know means family ;)

Anyways, Bubby slept in until about 9 a.m. (he had a very busy social calendar this weekend ;) so we dyed eggs on the fly while he was eating breakfast. I think we were more excited about it than he was! He kindof tossed one egg into a color and then went back to his granola bar and banana ;)

Remember how I previously said that I was working on being thrifty and creative? Here's Bubby's very thrifted Easter basket ~ I even used his stuffed animal basket instead of buying another one :) It was complete with not one, not two, but THREE Little People getups from Jenny's garage sale! They are like brand new and now Noah gets to enjoy them for oh, a fraction of the cost ;) He also scored a box set of Curious George episodes, building blocks, wooden train set and an Easter Bunny Pez.

After we were done with eggs, we headed to Lanakila Baptist Church Sunday morning for service. Want to hear a funny story? The couple we bought Bryan's new car from (more on that later) invited us to go! So we got new friends, a new car, AND possibly a church out of the deal! ;) We've tried it out a few times now and we just seem to fit in ~ well, so far at least! :) There's several young military families just like us there, and they welcomed us with very open arms. That was greatly appreciated!

After church, we headed over to Jenny & Matt's house so that Bubby could do an egg hunt with his buddies Adam and Alex, who just turned 3! :) They had quite a good time, finding some real eggs as well as some plastic ones full of money! Ooohhh...here's Bubby pointing out eggs to Daddy...

And here's our handsome lil' man, looking so grown up! :(

Then we headed over to our friends Sara, Manuel, London and Logan's house. The kiddos had a great time hunting eggs and chowin' down some awesome ham! Manuel let me in on some of his cooking secrets ;) Sara even made Noah his own cute lil' Easter Basket, complete with Chocolate Bunny! :) Here's the kiddos at the "kid table" during dinner...

All in all, it was an awesome day to celebrate our Lord's resurrection with some wonderful friends!