A room of her own

So it has been almost 3 years since we moved into the remodeled main house. In all that time, Lil J's room has been used as storage as we were in the midst of the remodel and getting the house livable. So she has been in our room for over 4 years. We were all ready for her to have her own room and space. She was definitely looking forward to it and wanting her own space. One day she had built a fort with her toys and told us we could not go into the space because it was her space. It was time, it was way past time.


Earlier in the summer, daddy finally emptied out the room and we selected some paint for the walls. She was involved in the whole decision making process. I picked out a few colors and we put up 3 colors on the wall and she selected the final color, a beautiful aqua. Perfect to off-set the pink explosion of toys and accessories she already owns. 

She got to pick out the ceiling fan in her room. The one she originally picked out was out of stock but she saw another one, which just so happened to be clearanced (even better for our wallets!) and worked really nice with the bedding we picked out for her room.



Then just a few days after school started we got the carpet installed and it was finally ready for Lil J to move into. That first day we put the air mattress in her room so that she could sleep there. She did really well and didn't crawl into our bed until early early morning.



The next weekend, we made a trip to IKEA and picked out furniture for her room. IKEA was good for our wallets and Costco was our go to for a mattress.

Daddy assembled her bed frame and toy storage and desk.The room turned out very nicely and is room I wish I would have had when I was a little girl. All the colors coordinated nicely. 

We like the Stuva modular system in which we were able to mix and match her toy storage system and a desk. Of course she picked out the pink cabinets. No problem since it went together nicely with her aqua walls. The desk was perfect with the chair we had picked up from IKEA a couple of years back. 

She really loves her room. She spends a lot of time in her room at her desk playing with her castle and drawing. What has been great is that I can tell her to go to her room to play instead of watching TV all the time and I think the time she spends watching TV and playing on the iPad has decreased. She still has her screen time and requests it, but she definitely spends more time pretend play with her princess and ponies.



I love hearing her play in her room, it is such a wonderful sound. She typically starts off sleeping in her bed and crawls into our bed around 4am. Some nights she sleeps in her room the entire night. At any rate she loves her room and her own space and I enjoy not being kicked in the middle of night, I just get kicked in the morning when it is time for me to wake up anyways.

First Day of Preschool (Year 3)

So Lil J started her 3rd year of preschool this year. She loves preschool and was so excited for the first day of school and the start of the year. In the last 2 years, she has grown so much and it is very exciting and bittersweet that this will be her last year at this school. We love The Children's School and will cherish our last year there.



Daddy and I brought her to her first day of school. She was very excited since we rarely drop her off together. It is usually just one of us. So to her this was a nice treat.



Ready for school with the same backpack she has had since she started 3 years years ago.



She is so happy to be back at school.

Gardening

Our front planter areas were totally overgrown and in need of weeding and pairing down. It had been 6 years since I last did anything. In the past my excuse was pregnancy, having an infant, then a toddler. I guess I had no really excusing this year, except for being lazy. Well, I was finally forced to take care of it and so we spend our Labor Day weekend gardening. It was hot and miserable, but our hard work was clearly evident from the before and after photos.

Before photo of the south planter. I forgot to get the north one:



In progress:



My little gardener:



After photos:





Much better!

Company picnic

Jordyn came with me to our company picnic. They had a lot of fun activities for the kids and Jordyn had a blast.

Face painting







She enjoyed the petting zoo. She enjoyed it with one of her little friends.








It was a really hot day, so we made our way to the fountains. The college students do it all the time.



I love being able to bring her to work, I like exposing her to the college and having her just be comfortable.

BFF

J has known her BFF since they were babies in daycare. Now that they are both in preschool, they don't see each other very often since they attend different preschools. Yet despite that, they constantly talk about each other and want to get together. We had a playdate in the mountains near their cabin. We had a fun time at the lake enjoying each others company.











They are both such great girls and I hope that their friendship continues.

Hawaii 2013 - The Last 2 days

After another day at the conference, I met up with my family for some cocktails and lunch at the beach at Dukes. A favorite.

You can't beat this view while sipping on some tropical drinks.





Our sweet little girl wanted to wear her Hawaiian dress her daddy bought her again. While walking around and shopping a little, Daddy was asked how long he's been in Hawaii. He told the guy a week. He was surprised because his hapa daughter looked like a local girl and so did her mama. Ever time I  go to Hawaii, people think I am a local. So our family fit in just nicely. The ironic thing is that I have no family connections to Hawaii, but Daddy does. Yup, my white husband has family history in Hawaii. Two generations of his family lived on Oahu. His great, great grandfather and great grandfather were the editors of the Honolulu Advertiser back in the day. His grandmother grew up in Hawaii and left for the mainland for college and stayed on the mainland because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.



Such a ham...









We enjoyed dinner that evening at Benihana's and mama was too cheap to actually buy the photo.



Our final day on the island we decided to head back to the North Shore, right where we started to enjoy the beach and sun. On the way we stopped for Hulu Hulu chicken. This place is only open on the weekends and boy was that some good chicken.



We found a nice quiet spot on Sunset Beach. Our favorite beach on Oahu.











After a beautiful day at the beach, we two rainbows on our drive back to the hotel. What a fitting way to end our beautiful Hawaiian vacation. As lil J observed at the early part of our vacation, "There are pineapple everywhere. Hawaii is all about pineapples and rainbows." Indeed it is.





Aloha!

Hawaii 2013 - Day 5

So I did take a day off from the conference and had some fun. Day 5 started with seeing this beautiful site during my morning run. Gotta love a run along the beach with a rainbow.



We headed to Hanuma Bay for the day.





Some snorkeling and building sand castles. We had an absolute blast.
















Then we headed back for a luau.