May/June 2014

I'm totally behind with this blog but I'm going to try and at least document a few important things that happened in the past year or so.  In a nutshell, my parents visited us in Dec 2013 which was awesome!  Then Christmas and Oliver's birthday were upon us (both were great).  January 2014 brought swim lessons into our life for the next 4 months and Tory started coaching Parker and five other little 5 year-olds (and Oliver who tagged along) in soccer.  Penelope also started soccer.  We had a great spring break in March (see the 3 previous posts for more on that).  In March/April we made the difficult decision to leave Hawaii and move back to the mainland.  May and the first half of June were spent packing and finishing school while trying to enjoy our last few weeks in Hawaii.   Here are a few pictures of May and June:

Penelope at her cinco de mayo dance recital:

 She loved her dance class especially since her friend La'akea was in it with her!

 I got to do a mother's day tea with my Oliver at his preschool, it was so much fun!

Since we had a big birthday bash for Parker and Penelope last year, we weren't planning a friend party for their sixth birthday.  But when we realized we were moving just after their birthday we decided to have a big swimming party so we could see all our friends before we left.  We reserved the pool, got a bouncy house, ordered a bunch of pizza and had a great time!  It really was fun.  I think the highlight was having Parker and Penelope's church teachers come.  They LOVE the Bryces!!

As luck would have it, Parker and Penelope had a field trip on their birthday.  They got to ride a train and have lunch at the train station.  They were so excited, especially since dad came along as a chaperone.

Then came moving day, we sold our house and moved out (that was so easy to type and SO hard to actually execute!) so on the twins' actual birthday, we walked out of our house for good.  As it worked out, our vacation rental wasn't ready til the next day so we crashed at our friends' house (thanks again Youngs!)  for the night.  They were so nice to take us in and Parker and Penelope thought it was so exciting to sleep there on their birthday.  Tory had seminary graduation that night so we went out to dinner and when we got 'home' sans dad, our friends had made a cake for the twins which was so nice.

After school the next day we finally got into our rental and felt a huge weight lift as we unpacked in a great vacation rental at Ko Olina. We spent just less than a month there and it was a perfect last hurrah for our wonderful 4 years in Hawaii!


The last day of school for my kids was quite sad for me.  We were so blessed when it came to good teachers this year.  And knowing we wouldn't be coming back to these schools made it all the more hard (for me).  Here is Oliver with Ms. Christine:

And here is Parker with Mrs. Hasebe:

And finally, here is Penelope with Mrs. Shirk:

We had lots of pool/beach dates with our friends before leaving Hawaii:

 And this one kept us on our toes all through the packing and moving process!

 So that is May and the first half of June in a nutshell!  More to come soon.......

Spring Break 2014 - part III

After our hike we headed to Sea Life Park.  For those of you that have been to Sea World, take that and divide by 10 or maybe 20 and you'll have Sea Life Park.  Its small, but we still had a good time.  We found a grassy area and ate our lunch, then headed to the dolphin show.  The kids LOVED it!  Especially Lily, she squealed at every jump, it was pretty cute.

Then we looked around, saw the few exhibits they have and 15 minutes later we headed over to the other dolphin show.  We had some time to kill so we decided to take pics of our darling Lily:

She's really into prayers!

Dad and his kids!

Sea Life Park isn't Sea World but our kids loved it and it was fun to see them get so excited about seeing dolphins do flips and other tricks.  It was a great outing for Spring Break 2014!

Spring Break 2014 - part II

On Thursday I decided to bite the bullet and head to the other side of the island knowing that we wouldn't make it home for Lily's nap time.  We first hiked to Makapu'u Lighthouse.  We've done it before but not in a while and I love that its paved and we can bring our bob (stroller).  It may not look it, but pushing that stroller up the path with 3 or 4 kids in it was no joke.  I was sweating and huffing and puffing for the 5 minutes I pushed--I let Tory do the rest :)

I was hoping to see some whales but no luck this time, it was beautiful though. 

For the most part, Lily did really well, on much of the way down she was tired of being in the stroller so I carried her most of the way but then I was done carrying her so she wailed in her stroller for the last 10 minutes, we got a lot stares as we hurried down those last minutes!

Spring Break 2014 - part I

A few weeks before spring break, I called to charter a train ride with the local railway society.  They only offer runs on Sunday so in order for us to go, I had to set up a special run.  We needed 38 people to make it financially possible or I would be on the hook for $200.  I put it up on facebook and boy did I get a response.  By the day before the ride we had 200 people coming.  Luckily only about 100 showed up so we weren't packed in like sardines!   We got there a little early and hung out with our friends and played on the train they have for kids to explore:

 Finally it was time to board the train.  Parker's best friend from school, Lily, came and he had to sit by her.

We were all excited to ride the train, especially Oliver since he was too little the last time we rode this train.

 

Time for a few selfies before the train pulls out:

The train ride was 90 minutes and while it certainly isn't an amusement ride, it was fun.  We waved to a lot of people, got to see Costco, Target, Ko Olina and best of all, the ocean!  The kids had a great time and it was so fun to hang out with our friends on the train!

Lilyana's Birth Story

  I started this post back almost a year ago but never completed it.  Since today was Lily's first birthday, I thought it was fitting to complete her birth story and post it:

11/24/2012:  We needed to get the the hospital by 7am, the c-section was scheduled for 9am.  But it was black Friday weekend and due to the impending arrival of our 4th(!) child we knew we were going to need to (within the next year) do some room shuffling and we need to invest in some bunk beds.  Kmart had a great sale on bunk beds but they didn't go on sale until Saturday morning. So......I persuaded my hubby to get up at 5:30am, we ran to Kmart, got the bunk beds, ran home dropped them off and made it to the hospital by 7:10am.  The lady that checked us out at Kmart asked when I was due and I told her I was headed to the hospital right after paying for my bunk beds.  She couldn't believe it and laughed and laughed.  It made for a great story at the hospital too.

At the hospital I started to get prepped for surgery.  The anesthesiologist came in and talked to me about whether I wanted to do an epidural or a spinal.  I previously had done spinals but this time he recommended the epidural.  With the spinal there is a time issue, once the medication wears off, you can't add more so if by chance they weren't done, I would have to go under general anesthesia.  So I opted for the epidural.  Getting it put in wasn't fun, I about passed out, but once it was in, I was ok.  So they wheeled me into surgery (funny sidebar, they took me into the wrong surgical suite first, it was set up for a twin delivery later that morning, I was so happy to not be in that room having twins- been there, done that!).  Then they got all set up and numbed me up, made sure I couldn't feel anything (that part is VERY important to me) and had Tory come in.  He was dressed in scrubs and had a mask on, he fit right in.  A few minutes later my doctor said "she's a big baby" and in my head I was thinking 8 lbs, then a minute or two later they pulled Lilyana out and she was big!  We all waited for them to call out the weight and Dr. Bachman was right, Lily weighed 9 lbs 14 oz.

The rest of the c-section was not so fun, they eventually gave me some medication to help me 'relax' or in other words, I don't really remember a lot of the rest of the operation for which I am grateful!  They were a little worried about her blood sugar at first but I knew she was fine.  She has been a great eater from the get-go.

I sent Tory home that first night because I know he is never really comfortable in hospitals and sleeping there is even less pleasant than being awake there.  I also wanted him to have a good nights' sleep since I would be recovering from major surgery.  Well as luck would have it Penelope was sick in the night and Tory ended up being up a lot of the night.  The other kids followed in sickness so none of them were able to come visit me in the hospital.  Its a little sad, since Oliver was born in the midst of the swine flu scare, no siblings were allowed to come visit their moms and new babies.  Then since they all got sick when Lily was born, they missed their chance with her.  So I'll never have my kids come to the hospital to meet their new sibling.  I guess there are worse things.

I stayed in the hospital until Tuesday and then headed home.  It was naptime when I got home so Lily and I headed upstairs to take a nap as well.  But I couldn't sleep and then Oliver poked his head around the corner.  I told him to come meet his little sister.  He came over and started to climb up on the bed.  I instinctively leaned over started to help him up on the bed, big mistake!  It seriously hurt my incision.  Oliver wasn't all that impressed with Lily and asked if he could go downstairs.  Penelope was scared of Lily at first but warmed quickly to her.  Parker has been such a good big brother from the get-go.  He just loves her, its been so fun to watch.  They all love to hold her and think its so fun to get her to smile, laugh, etc.

I'm so grateful my little sister could come help out when Lily was born.  One of my biggest stresses leading up to her birth was planning for care of my other children while giving birth.  But Dantzel really came through for me, she flew all the way from North Carolina and totally pitched in and watched our kids and helped u s out for 10 days or so.  I'm so grateful for family.

Lily has been an amazing edition to our family.  I love how she has just completed our family and makes all of us happier.  I can't believe year one is done but am looking forward to watching her grow up in our family!

Lilyana: 9-months old

Where does time go, is my baby girl really 9-months old?  I've decided that I really like this age, Lily is just so much fun these days.  She has been doing the army crawl since 6/7 months but in the last month she's finally realized that regular crawling is faster and less painful.  She also learned to pull herself up on anything and is starting to cruise around the furniture.  Lily has discovered the stairs and loves to climb them--we are in the market for a gate!  She is on a pretty good schedule and gets up between 6:30 and 7am, takes 2 naps a day and is ready for bed by 7 or 7:30pm.  She loves solid food especially when she can feed herself but boy she can make a mess!  At her 9-month appointment she weighed 20 lbs and 12 oz.  She has her 2 front bottom teeth which popped out around 6 months and two weeks ago her top two teeth made their appearance.  Her eyes are still as blue as ever which makes her dad so happy.  She loves watching her siblings, especially when they are running around, she will be so excited when she can join them!  And she has recently discovered dogs, she gets SO excited when she sees a dog, its so cute to watch :)  

Here are some pics of our sweet little caboose.

Lily makes a beeline for the dishwasher anytime I open it, she loves it!

 Lily LOVES fruit:

 

 Her siblings love to hold her:

Enjoying the sand at the beach on the 4th of July:

Chowing down on a pickle:

When I have laundry going, I'll often find Lily in the laundry room watching the washing machine go round and round:

Here is the sweet face I get to see when I go in to get Lily up from her crib:

Don't grow up so fast Lilyana!