3 years and counting...

Luke and I celebrated our 3rd Wedding Anniversary on July 5th!  We spent the 5th- the 9th on Maui to celebrate :)  We were able to have someone from my Ward watch Carlos for us while we were gone which was soooo awesome!  (Thank You SOO much Shandra!)  We stayed at the Sheraton Maui Resort while we were there and it was located on the West side of Maui.  We went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse for our Anniversary day dinner (and went to a hibachi grill a couple days later for a nicer anniversary dinner).  Here's a couple pics from Outback.

not sure why I made this face.
oh yeah, Luke was taking pics ha ha

much better :)

enjoying his coconut shrimp and ribs

I told him to look like he enjoyed his meal and this is what I got

steak and crab legs, yum yum!

 On the 7th we went to a restaurant called The Plantation House Restaurant and had the best breakfast of the entire trip! (plus they served breakfast until 3 PM!)  We had a gorgeous view from our table too as you can see from the following pics.

Can you tell he's excited about his breakfast?

that french toast was A-MAZ-ING!

YUM!

Luke didn't even leave a crumb on his plate

Me at the Plantation House Restaurant

 After eating we headed to Honolua Bay to do some snorkeling and got some amazing pics!  I'm so glad that I let Luke convince me to rent some gear (especially the floatie!) !!  It was the first time I really enjoyed snorkeling and I didn't get tired nearly as fast thanks to the floatie.

Blue Striped Snapper

Long-Nosed Butterfly Fish!

Spot Butterfly Fish

 

Saddleback Wrasse

Saddleback Wrasse

cool sea urchin

Trumpet Fish

Spot Butterfly Fish

 

This fish was HUGE!  I swear it was as big as me!!  and it swam so fast that this was the best shot Luke could get of it!

Can you see the big fish in this one?

Goat Fish

 That night we had dinner at Teppan-Yaki Dan's (a hibachi grill place located in our hotel)  It was good, but I still favor Benihana's over this place for sure.  We sat next to a Mother and daughter from Canada who were really nice.  Our chef was entertaining though so at least that was a definite plus!

the onion volcano!  this is what flame looks like on the underwater setting lol

and this is the normal setting 

On the 8th we tried to snorkel at the beach by our hotel and the water was way too murky.  Didn't help that there was a high surf advisory too I suppose.  This was the best pic we got of any fish that day.

me telling Luke to look at the fish

Since we didn't have much luck at Black Rock (the beach by our hotel) We decided to try Napili Bay.  The surf was too strong to snorkel, but Luke insisted on body surfing the waves instead.  I went out in the water for a little bit until I didn't feel safe anymore (didn't take long) and then I came back in and just took pics of the scenery and Luke being crazy.

Luke is body surfing at Napili Bay

tide bringing him in

that black dot is a paddle boarder

just waiting for the perfect wave

Luke and another paddle boarder

they were much bigger in person
and kept getting bigger too! 

We returned to Oahu on the 9th, but I made sure to take some pics of our room and the view from our balcony before checking out of the hotel. :)

that bump on the bed is sleeping beauty

our shower came with a built in clothes line too!

french doors leading to the bedroom from the bathroom

 
And that's all I got!  I'm so glad we got to go on this little vacation and have couple time!  Carlos had a great time at my friends house and they didn't want to give him back!  But we convinced them that he had to come home with us. :)

Ward Camp!

From June 13-17 Carlos and I went up to Bellows AB and attended our Ward Camp.  Luke joined us on the last day/night.  We had a fantastic time!!  I wish I had taken more pics, but that's ok.  We spent the first day setting up camp and then went down to the beach for a couple hours before dinner.  I bought us a new tent this year since our old one was just a 3 person tent and that would not fit a pack'n'play plus all our stuff and my air mattress so the upgrade was much needed.  I LOVE our new tent!  We got the Coleman Instant Tent and let me just say that it is by far the coolest tent I've ever seen (or owned for that matter).  It literally took less than 5 min to set up!  So if you are in the market for a new tent I highly recommend it! :)

Anyway here's how our week went:  We would get up at about 6 AM (thanks to it being bright outside by then and that's what would wake up Carlos) and then we would pretty much spend the rest of the day at the beach.  Carlos only took one 2 hour nap on the beach one day and all the other days I was lucky if he took a 30 min nap.  Luckily he at least he slept really well at night.  Carlos went to bed at about 8 PM every night and woke up with the sun at about 6 AM (It was LOADS of fun getting him to sleep in longer than that after that week...but we're back to getting up around 8 AM now which is a much more pleasant time for me than 6 AM). Every night we had a big group dinner and let me tell you, the food was AMAZING!  After dinner we would then have time to prepare kids for bed and then there was a devotional around the campfire.  I usually went to bed right after the devotional because I knew Carlos would show no mercy come 6 AM ha ha.  The second to last night I stayed up a little longer and played some games with a couple people.  I learned a new game called "Pirate Dice" from Pirates of the Caribbean.  It was super fun!  I might have to invest in a game myself :)  The last night we did skits which was fun.  Each auxiliary group had a skit (Relief Society, Primary, YM, YW, Priest Quorum, etc) and they were all so fun to watch and be a part of!  We got rained on really hard that last night though so it put a damper in the Movie Under The Stars for the little kids, but they still tried to watch it every time the rain let up for a few minutes.  Friday was just breaking camp day pretty much.  I'm really glad that I decided to go.  I had so much help with Carlos and I knew that he was having a good time with all the attention he was getting from the older kids.  Everyone just thought I was such a trooper, but I knew that there would be a helping hand just a few feet away so I didn't feel any kind of stress at all which was soo  nice!  Carlos even tried to keep me on my toes by having an eruption in his diaper while he was in his stroller so I got to enjoy cleaning that up and all I could do was laugh.  I'm surprised I didn't freak out to be honest.  And people stepped in and helped me clean his stroller while I cleaned him up.

Going to Camp made me realize just how lucky I am to have been in this Ward.  I will miss every one soo soo much!  It will be so hard to say good-bye to everyone :(  but the time has come for us to move on to a new chapter in our life.  I just hope I continue to get lucky and have another awesome Ward where ever we end up!

Here's some pics from the week.  Enjoy!

Goodbye Bessie! You were a good truck.

We sold Luke's baby (affectionately known by me as "Bessie" or "Beast") on August 2nd.  I posted the ad for it on the 1st and honestly didn't think it would sell so quickly.  The ad hadn't even been on the site for 24 hours yet!  Luke was sad to see it go, but it has been a reliable "friend" to him for almost 10 years so I think it was time for us to part ways.  Plus the fact that we would have had to pay for it to be shipped since the Military is only going to pay for one POV to be shipped and that will be the car (which we are shipping in a week!!)

We still don't know where we are moving to officially since Luke hasn't accepted a job yet.  As of right now our options are Augusta, GA or he takes a year long deployment to Afghanistan while Carlos and I live close to family (I'm gonna say that that will probably be St. George or some where in southern Utah).  If he doesn't take either of those jobs then we will most likely end up in Albuquerque for Luke to go back to school.  He has a phone interview today with the GA job and I'm secretly (well not so secretly anymore) hoping that he gets that job.  But if he feels that the Afghanistan one is better then I will support him in his choice and will be glad that I can be closer to family during his absence.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we wait for the time to make one of the biggest decisions of our life to date.  Mostly pray for my sanity because I will be losing it by the end of the month after all the out-processing and moving is over with.  Our last day on Oahu is Sept 12th.    It will be bittersweet to leave.  I will miss all the wonderful people in my Ward and all the friends I have made out here!  But on the positive side we will be able to spend more time with family once we are back on the mainland.

Anyway, I will post more updates from July soon.  I need to go to bed now as it's midnight which is waaayy past my bedtime.  Love you all!

~Nicole

Things that make my heart stop

Deer in headlights lol

cheese!

he thought he was so tricky
I thought I was gonna have a heart attack

If I thought climbing the baby gates were bad, he sure has proven me wrong!  I feel bad for having to take this toy away, but better to be safe than sorry right?  At least Luke got some good pics of him before I took it away. :)

Carlos-isims

Carlos' personality has really come out in the last month or so.  He is learning new things everyday and loves to share them with us.  His new words that he has learned and loves to say are ball, shoes, juice, jump, and hi just to name a few.  He also says what sounds like complete sentences like "where'd it go?" and "I got it!" and "what's that?".  He has also FINALLY decided that he can call me mama now and it is so cute when he comes up to me and says,"Hi, mama!" and waves at me.  He melts my heart :)  I love watching him explore and show me things that he has found.  He is babbling with lots of different sounds now so we can tell he wants to talk more and express himself.  He is into dancing and loves music (thank you Pandora Radio!  The Toddler station is so great :) ) and loves to try to jump (he says "jump" while trying to jump too which is sooo cute) and has gotten both feet off the ground a couple of times :)

Jumping and Dancing from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.

He's still my little guy.  At his doc appointment in April he weighed 17lbs 10oz and was 28in tall.  I swear their scale isn't right because every time we weigh him at home he's at least 18.5lbs.  Either way he's still just tiny.  He is wearing 9 month onesies and shorts now, but the 9 month pants and footie jammies are still too long on him as you can see in the jumping video above (but 6 month ones are too short, poor kid).  Someday he'll wear clothes that go with his age, right? ha ha.  We love him no matter how big he is though :) He may be small, but he is full of energy!  Now all we need is for him to not be so picky about food.  We are trying to get him to eat more table foods and less baby food, and he's not really into that plan.  We weaned him just recently so he's been having some anxiety from that I think.  I'm so glad that we found out he can drink from a straw (by accident) or else I would still be nursing him and he wouldn't be drinking anything during the day.  Best purchase I've made for him in the last month was getting some straw sippy cups that's for sure! :):) He loves his big boy cups (and so do we)!  And it was just what we needed to get him to drink cow's milk too (we figured it was because the straw ones don't require you to tip your head back to drink like the other cups did.  He never wanted to tip his head back on his own, just chew on the spout ha ha.)  Now he loves drinking anything we put in a cup for him:)

That's all I have for now.  We are going to be going camping for a week at Bellows for Ward Camp from the 13th through the 17th. Carlos and I are going up a couple days before Luke so I will be by myself for a couple days with the boy.  That will be an adventure for sure ha ha.  I hope he sleeps well while we are camping since he has a hard time sleeping in a new place.  And being weaned recently doesn't help either I'm sure.  Wish us luck!

Beach babies

We love that the weather has been getting nicer the closer it gets to summer!  Carlos loves being outside, but he hates the sand and ocean ha ha.  Luckily Ko'Olina has grass so we can be at the beach and he can still run around without being upset (too much).  We took him just the 3 of us in the beginning of may and he refused to go in the sand or water for longer than oh say...5 seconds..ha ha.  I got some pics of him playing with his sand toys in the grass (my goofy kid).

The last week of may we went to Ko'Olina again with our friends the McMillan's and made him be in the sand and go into the ocean for a bit longer.  He spent most of the 2 hours we were there on the blanket though ha ha.  Luckily our friends have a one year old (Holden) too so they got to play with each other and share snacks :)

yay for big boy cups :)

sharing snacks with Holden

they decided to dump out the snacks making it easier to eat them too I guess ha ha

our beached whale ha ha

Wendy and Jake

fighting over the bowl turned into a cute pic

snuggle bug:)

We went to Bellows for Memorial Day (with the McMillan's) and Luke took Carlos into the water and freaked him out (the tide was really strong compared to Ko'Olina and Carlos did not like it one little bit).  We spent alot of time on the blanket under the beach umbrella :)  I didn't get any pics of us that day though, sorry.

I will really miss being able to go to the beach when ever we want so we are going to try to go as often as we can before we move in a couple of months. :)

Haircut number 3

I think this last haircut has been the most successful at getting an even haircut without a huge meltdown.  He sure looks handsome in his new summer do! :)  You can also see all the new teeth he's gotten recently.  Just 8 more and he will have all his baby teeth! 

You can't even tell that he's been sick for over a week in these pics. (oh yeah, we were hit with a cold from hell again.  This time the whole fam was sick for almost 3 weeks...ugh).  Thank goodness we are all better now!  Being sick blows.

Busted!

We keep having to rearrange the "barriers" in the living room because he keeps figuring out how to defeat them (aka climb up on top of the boxes and scare his mother).  In the process of doing some rearranging he discovered just how fun it is to pull out all the DVDs and CDs he can reach and then stand on them.  So much for alphabetizing them huh? ha ha.  It's a good thing he's cute though!  We have been able to box them off again though because he thought it would be fun to try to pull the DVD rack on top of him and that didn't sit well with me (don't worry, he was never successful in knocking it down).  Here's hoping the barrier lasts until we move.  We will be purchasing a better entertainment system so we can lock those kinds of things away and eliminating the desire for him to knock the rack down on himself.

my dare devil

Carlos has figured out how to scale the safety gates that we have and I'm not too thrilled about it.  The packaging said that they are climb proof.  They so lied!  That or my baby is just too dang smart for his own good lol.  We have since raised them up so they are high enough for him to not climb but not too high for him to crawl under either.  We'll see how long that lasts...ha.

P.S. it didn't last long.  He has gotten just tall enough to climb up onto the gates now and they are up off the ground. Smarty pants.

Carlos' first Easter

I got a couple pics of him with his Easter basket.  He went for the ball that was in there instantly ha ha.  I think he's gonna love playing sports when he's older :)

the basket :)

he grabbed the bouncy ball right away

and then proceeded to get the other stuff out