Another wonderful Christmas in Maui! Merry Christmas to everyone. I am so lucky to have such wonderful family and friends in my life. Love you all

Last night was the annual Christmas Mai Tai party at Kahana Village. Every year around the holidays they invite the hula girls to dance and Jeff sings and plays the guitar. This year they invited the kids to come up and dance too. I quickly ran home and got the video camera. It was dark and the video quality is not very good, but here you go.

Last night I was in charge of BBQing. Ian and I went out together. I watched the steaks cook and he roamed around exploring in the bushes. This was the beautiful sunset we got to see.

As I was putting the kids to bed tonight, Emma asked to sleep with me. My gut reaction was that I really wanted to sleep alone tonight. I’ve had one of the kids in my bed every night since I got to Maui. Tonight they all had beds elsewhere and I thought I’d sleep alone. But then I thought about it a little more and I was happy that Emma wanted to sleep with me. Before I know it, I’m sure I will be wishing she still wanted to sleep with me. When I said “yes” she was over the moon.

I stayed up editing photos for a bit before I went to bed. When I got into bed I looked over at her and I had to get up and snap a photo of her.

Isn’t this adorable?

Our annual trip to Maui has begun! I wish I could remember exactly how many years we have been spending Christmas in Maui. I know for sure that the first year was before Scott and I were married. I think it was before we got engaged, so I am thinking that it was maybe 1994? If so, this is our 15th year (we didn’t come in 2004 when I was pregnant with Ian). I’m not sure how long it has been, but I know that it is a tradition that I hope we continue for a long time.

The kids were so excited to get here this year, especially Emma! She talked about it constantly for days and days.

Our flight over was uneventful, which is always good. However, once we got to Maui it wasn’t so easy. The road to our condo is a very small and windy two lane road. There was an accident a few miles into the drive. What should have been a 45 minute drive turned into 2 hours. We ended up getting to bed about 1:30am, which translated into 4:30am our time. Luckily my kids are very adaptable and did fine. Emma and Ian slept the whole way in the car and Nora was wide awake keeping us all entertained!

The first day was a little rough. We were all exhausted. Nora got out of the pool about 12:30 and said to me “I want to go inside and take a nap.” I didn’t really believe she would do it, so I asked her “Why?” She looked at me like I had 3 heads and said “Because I am tired!” I took her in and sure enough she slept for 3 hours! Luckily for me my mom and aunt watched the other 2 kids and I got to take a nap too.

Today Emma and I spent the afternoon together shopping. It was so nice to spend some one on one time with her. She was just glowing the entire time. Every time I looked at her she was just glowing from ear to ear. I really need to make more time to do things like that with her.

I haven’t gotten my camera out yet. But I will soon! Tomorrow the kids are planning to decorate the gingerbread houses that we put together today. Maybe I’ll take some photos of that!

I did it, but this year was a hard one for me!

I had a hard time coming up with interesting things to post about. Actually, I don’t think a lot of my posts were very interesting, but at least I did it

Hopefully someday this will give my kids a little snippet of what our life was like.

See you next year!

Nora has been diaperless for the last 7 nights–and dry 4 of those nights! The other three nights the alarm woke her up.

The first wet night she absolutely flooded her bed. The second night she wet just a little before the alarm woke her up. The third night I was so tired when she came to my room that I just let her get in bed with us The last two nights she has been dry all night.

It has been great, and I’ve only had to wash the sheets once! Scott remembered that with Ian we had him wear underpants with the alarm, then put a pull up over it. That way the alarm works and they feel wet, but if they have an accident, they don’t wet the bed and pajamas. Brilliant!

We are well on our way to being dry at night!

What a nice Thanksgiving break we had! With our “Blizzard of 2010″ we got one extra day off, and ended up having a 5 day weekend. It was such a nice break. I loved not having to get up early and not having to run around driving kids to all their activities. Wednesday I stayed in my pajamas all day! I did a bunch of things around the house. The kids just relaxed and played video games and watched TV–a real treat for them!

Thanksgiving was nice. We spent the morning getting the ice rink going. The forecast called for very cold temperatures, so we decided it was a good time to make the ice. We put the liner in and started filling it up with water. We headed down and spent some time at Scott’s mom’s house. It was fun to see his brother and sister. The kids enjoyed seeing their cousins. Then we drove back to Park City for dinner with my family. It was fun to have Carolanne, Andy and Christian there. And Gert and the kids came too. Bryan and Mary came in from Arizona. The food was delicious and everyone had a nice time together.

We also spent part of the weekend skiing. It was lots of fun. I can see that this is going to be a good winter for us. We are finally at the point where we can all ski together as a family and actually enjoy it I’m looking forward to lots of family ski days.

I’m not looking forward to getting up early tomorrow and getting the kids off to school!

I’m so glad that November is almost over….I’m sick of trying to think of things to post every day This has been one of the hardest NaBloPoMo’s I have ever done!

We spent today hanging around the house in the morning. I’m feeling a little bit under the weather. I took advantage of the time at home to start on my holiday card list and to get bills paid and a bunch of other little things I wanted to get done before I leave for Maui. Did I mention that I leave 2 weeks from today???

In the afternoon we took the kids to see Tangled. Ian and Emma had been with my mom. Scott, Nora, & I met them there. Ian came in crying and it went downhill from there. He had a bad headache and then he threw up. Luckily he made it to the bathroom. Scott took Ian home before the movie even started. But the girls and I really enjoyed the movie.

After that we came home and took care of Ian. I got a few more jobs done around the house and we had a left-over Thanksgiving dinner. I kept feeling like today was Sunday and I am happy that there is still one more day left of the weekend!