Cousin Fest, Close Up

Sonna and I must have some weak genes because our kids mostly look like our husbands. Don't get me wrong, our husbands are awesome and our kids are lucky to look like them. But still, I know every parent hopes to pass at least some physical characteristics onto their kids, if not for any reason but to physically see the continuation of their ancestors into the future generations. 

But thankfully, when I look at photos like this one of Gabe and Po, I can see at little a smidgen of a family resemblance. There's a photo of Sonna and I on a lawn chair in Pullman that is similar to this photo, but it might have been lost in the fire. Maybe my sister has a copy, and I'll add it in later. For now, below is a close up of the photo of Sonna and I when Sonna is about 18 months and I'm probably three.  

 Well, even if Sonna and I never get some little tan kids (which would truly be a shame because Sonna has the most beautiful skin and hair in the world), we sure do love these little toddlers, even with all the trouble they bring... 

 Sonna took us out to one of the must-see attractions in Vegas, the new Desert Springs Preserve. It's fantastic. It's finally the museum I always wanted in Vegas when I lived there. The kids will now forever equate visiting Vegas with going to the Springs Preserve, especially since we even went back for another visit after this marathon one pictured below. They wanted to take Jonah and show him all the cool exhibits. 

We also took the opportunity to photograph ALL the Fegert cousins to make prints for our parents of all of their eight grandchildren at once. Yes, everyone was hot and uncooperative, but we finally and thankfully got a few good shots...

 (Po is NOT that short. I promise. It's just an optical illusion caused by Riley's gargantuaness and Po's slouching.)

And here's the winner. Personalities and all. 

Can you tell how much I love my kids and nieces and nephews?!? The joys of my life. 

Hello Las Vegas!

Because our time was cut short last year by an impromptu visit to my dad in San Diego and then the fire in New Harmony burning all of our stuff, we didn't get much Vegas time in 2012. So this year we planned about 10 days at my sisters' house in Henderson, which is a suburb of Las Vegas. I "grew up" in Henderson, so I definitely have an affinity for the place. It's Memory City. I mean, come on! Home of my first everything. First grade, first love, first date, first kiss.... hey kids! There's my high school! Look! That's where we used to roller blade! Oh my heck! That house looks exactly the same!! But nope. Nobody cares. The kids and Jonah... they just go for the extended-family time and the pool hopping.  

But, in any case, Sonna is always a wonderful hostess and feeds us so well and always has loads of things planned for us to do. The first on the agenda was a picnic in their newly-finished beautiful backyard and with their recent family addition Evan the Guinea Pig (see above). 

But the truly exciting newish family addition was baby Luke, Sonna's third child. Jonah and the kids, minus Elsie who was with me when I came to the mainland in February, had never met this cutie and it was love at first sight for everyone. Who can help but love this happy, smily, loving baby!? He is so freakin' adorable!!! 

It was also great to reunite Ruthie, Gabe (aka Reggie) and my kids, of course. We luckily also got loads of time with my brother's daughter Riley, so it was Fegert Family Cousin Fest (um, yes, Fegert is my maiden name and I somehow survived, thank you). Po was especially loving Fegert Cousin Fest since Riley and Gabe/Reggie are  only six months and three months older than her. We were worried they would all terrible-two tackle each other, but they actually played really well together. And then there's Elsie and Ruthie, who are only six weeks apart. And luckily Cam and Ruthie pal up pretty well too, so it's really just Ana who is lonesome. (Yet, I think she secretly enjoys the alone and adult time.) 

We did a massive amount of swimming, especially at our friend Shannon's house, since she was out of town and let us use her pool (and let Jonah and I sleep at her house while our kids stayed at Sonna's. Score!). 

My dad and his wife Roxanne live in Henderson too, but they are slowly relocating to San Diego, so they offered to take all our kids with them on a weekend trip to their new place in San Diego. Um, of course! A childless weekend?! We'll take it.

While the kids were gone, Jonah and I helped Sonna and Sloan with some house projects and also took our car to get the windows tinted. The new AC unit Jonah had ordered for the car had finally showed up, but they sent us the wrong part! Since we didn't have time to wait for a new one, window tinting seemed like the next best option to help us survive the Southwest heat. We found an incredible deal and the guys did an amazing job on the tinting... and we were so happy.. and then they reminded us to NOT roll down the windows under any condition for three days!? Oh my heck. We forgot about that part. Jonah and I had to open the doors to the car at every red light so we didn't combust. We started laughing so hard. Here we were on our rare childless weekend driving around in a literal sauna.

So, we were reasonable, and went to the movie theater and watched three movies in a row until the sun finally went down and we could drive back to Sonna's. I think we borrowed Sloan's truck the next day for our great double date with Sonna and Sloan for Thai food and LuvIt Custard. Then Jonah and I went and explored the new casinos and City Center on the Strip and sadly discovered that we aren't as young or calloused as we used to be and finally collapsed in exhaustion from all the walking and from having to avert our eyes from all the lasciviousness of downtown Vegas. I think we slept all Sunday just to recover. 

When the kids got back from San Diego, we discovered that Elsie had strep throat. I started to feel a sore throat too. More on this later. But regardless, the kids had an amazing time. 

Early that next week, I took Ana in to get a much needed haircut. She also got a mini-blow out. She loved it. For the first time in years, she wouldn't wash her hair for days. She just sat around all day brushing it. Cute. 

(My kids took their In-n-Out visits very seriously-- it's another missed attraction here in Hawaii.)

My kids were real troopers as we dragged them all around Henderson and Vegas visiting family and friends-who-are-like-family.  But I was in heaven. I love visiting old friends and family SO much. It's manna for my soul. The kids... well... they like reuniting with all the friends and cousins, but I think they would put "adults wasting time visiting and talking for hours" as one of their top five worst things. Sheesh. I need to plan some more adult-only get togethers and leave them home in front of the TV. Remind me for next year, okay?

But one visit was especially magical for the kids, and that was visiting my late cousin Jerilyn's husband and boys out in Summerlin. They have a great pool, and Aaron's wife Libby is a delight. We had a cookie buffet. We even got to watch the NBA final game with Aaron, and watching sports with Aaron is one of Jonah's all-time favorite things to do. Aaron is a total crack-up when it comes to spectating. But the best part is that every time Cam sees Matthew and William again, they instantly reconnect. These three are like peas in a pod. I love it and it warms my heart. I miss Jerilyn so much, so this is a little glimpse into heaven for me, and it reminds me that family bonds can never be broken. 

 

(And here is the world's worst picture, but If I don't put it in, I may forget to write about this and then I won't have it recorded for posterity....) 

And one more bonus-- Sonna held a Voice Camp during the second week we were there. She had organized it so Ana could be there and participate, and it was totally worth it. The other girls in the group happened to be one of Ana's first friends from when we lived in Vegas and the daughters of friends of Sonna and myself that we've known since before we were all this age. Sonna, our old friends, and I were so glad to have all of our girls together. Sonna did an amazing job and the final performance really proved how much the girls improved. I hope she does the camp every summer (hint hint Sonna!)

And finally, we really got to spend some good time with my younger brother Tyler (Tyty) and his gorgeous and wonderful girlfriend Jerica and of course my darling and perfect niece Riley. Po calls Riley "my best friend" or "my cousin Riley". They get along so well. I love it so much, but it also breaks my heart that we all live so far apart. Cute Tyler is such a great dad though and has really handled all the challenges of single-parenthood with aplomb. I hope he (hint hint) settles down soon as has a few more siblings for Riley. Just had to put that out there!

Okay, more from Vegas coming up.... 

June's Visit to Orange County

From San Diego, we started easy and just drove a few hours up to my mom's condo in Dana Point. Dana Point is just south of Laguna Beach and is truly one of the nicest places in the world. My mom and her husband Ken had finally finished all of their remodel, so the condo was amazing. Plus, it just always feels good to stay in your mom's house. Ahhhhh. 

My mom and Ken are on a mission for our church, so they left every morning to work in the Anaheim Mission Office from 9-5. They had just started, but they already loved serving as administrators in the office where they get to help the mission president, meet and assist all the new full-time missionaries, and show-off their super-human efficiency. It was so fun to see them in action. They had both always wanted to serve a mission and it's exciting to see them "living the dream". 

The sad thing was not having my mom around during the day, but she did a superb job of finding the kids and I all sorts of fun, cheap, non-Disneyland, non-beach (we live on Maui...sorry, So. Cal Beaches don't compare) things to do in Orange County. One day, we took a trip to see their mission office and go to the Anaheim Science Museum/ Discovery Museum that was just a mile away. It's that big cube-like building you can see when you turn off the I-5 to Disneyland. Know the place? Well, it's loads of fun. 

My Lego-loving kids were delighted to spend a few hours in the Lego Castle exhibit that had just arrived. 

They also had some memorable experiences in the wind tunnel booth. 

Elsie laid on a bed of nails for awhile...

And they all enjoyed the pin-art exhibit... which was starting to gross me out a bit thinking about how many other kids had done open-mouthed silhouettes on the same pins. 

The older kids ended up falling in love with the last exhibit we visited, which was three big rooms filled with working wooden models of Leonardo daVinci's inventions and a few color dissections of his major works of art. It was fascinating! The three older kids seriously devoured it. But, unfortunately, Po's not much of a daVinci fan yet, so she was horrible. I finally took her out and she found heaven in eating everything in the snack bag and watching the Rube Goldberg-like marbleworks machine. 

Eventually, the older kids made their way out of the exhibits, and we went on our way. 

Another adventure we enjoyed in Orange County was taking Ana to a tack store with a HUGE collection of Breyer models. Ana is a fanatic Breyer collector, so needless to say, it took a few hours to get her out of here. 

Luvy (my kids' name for my mom) also found this cool seal and sea-lion rescue in Long Beach canyon where you get right up and personal with rescued baby seals and sea-lions. Cool! A tad stinky, but mostly cool! It's also next door to the animal shelter, so we went and visited some psycho dogs, some nice dogs, and some psycho-nice rabbits. 

My mom and Ken have been assigned to a ward (congregation) up near the mission office in Anaheim, so we went up with them for church instead of going to the chapel near their condo. While up there, we visited a forest reserve that my mom had found out about and went for a lovely hike and even happened upon a nice little wedding ceremony. It was a fun adventure and it was good to find some nature and solitude in the middle of bustling Anaheim. 

We also spent more time than I can add up at the condo complex's pool and also much time walking down to the beach from my mom's condo. We really packed the days full. Jonah was also able to work on the car some more to get it more to his liking and more safe to drive. I also made sure to get in some shopping, especially at Trader Joe's, the most missed store while we're on Maui.

Sadly, our visit had to eventually come to an end. Ana made sure to kiss Luvy many many times to let her know how much she would miss her. Ana is in that stage where she still wants to sit on your lap like a child but she's already the size of a small adult. It's hilarious and often painful. 

I can't reiterate enough how much my kids love being with my mom and staying at her house. They think and talk about it all year. They try to find ways to sneak on the airplane to make it back there. I love basking in the joy they feel when they are there. 

Thank you Mom and Ken! Can't wait until next time!

Leaving Maui Back in June and Sand Iego!

As I mentioned long ago when I last blogged, we had a lot to do before leaving for the summer. Some of it wasn't very fun, like packing up all of our personal items and clothes and storing them, finishing last minute house and car projects, and cleaning everything. But some of it was great, like juicing all the oranges off the tree and drinking orange juice non-stop before we had to ship back our semi-broken juicer to the seller for a refund. We also ate everything in the garden that was ready to be eaten and consumed all the food that couldn't be left behind. We did a fairly good job, if I must say so. 

Ana also had her first official Young Women activity (Young Women is the youth organization at our church for girls 12-18).  She was going to miss what would be her first year at Girls' Camp, but she still did the five mile hike with the Young Women since we decided to go for it a month before camp just to get it out of the way. The hike was amazing--we hiked up this gorgeous green ridge with infinite views. If Ana looks a little strained, it was because she was still trying to get over a weird ailment that she had throughout April and May that made her incredibly tired, groggy, slightly congested and have occasional bad stomach cramps and fevers. And it wasn't mono. And when the doctor finally decided to try antibiotics, Ana had a scary allergic reaction to the penicillin that gave her a 104-105 fever for three days and a measles-like rash covering her entire body. It was crazy. I think she finally prayed and willed herself well because she didn't want to have to miss Swim Camp in June. But, she's a trooper and still made an attempt to go to swim team every day and even made it on this hike right in the middle of the worst of it. But man are we glad she's all better! We missed our active happy Ana!

After many weeks of back-aching hard work, June arrived and it was finally time to leave. Back in January, I had found some great friends from high school to rent our house in June and another old

 high school friend and her family to rent it in July. We were so relieved because we knew both families would take good care of the house and car and really enjoy Maui. It made the departure much easier than last year when we had total strangers rent the house. Whew!

My one friend traded us stand-by tickets for part of the rent for June, so on Saturday, June 1st, we made our first attempt to get to San Diego on standby. 

 

(Po finally trying out "Trunki", the ride-on suitcase she got last winter)

Well... only Jonah and Cam made it on that first try. But even though it was a hassle to get all the way to the airport only to have to turn around and come back with the three girls, it ended up working out well for two reasons:

1. Alaska Air standby tickets allow you to check two bags for free, and they take them even if you don't make the flight. Jonah had a bunch of car parts to ship to our "new" car waiting in San Diego, including a rear window AND the entire rear-facing back seat, so the stand-by tickets ended up saving us a lot of money in bag fees. 

2. Since we left the house ALL ready to go, when the girls and I didn't make the first flight, we got to go back to enjoy an immaculate house and had a good excuse to just have some fun and relaxation. Plus, we had already eaten all the food, so we had to eat out for all of our meals. The girls loved that! We couldn't sleep in the clean sheets, so we camped out in sleeping bags. It was a party. 

The only major problem about missing the first standby flight was that  a friend had given us a ride down to the airport, so we didn't have a car to drive back home. Po was delighted when we decided to take the Maui Bus, which is $2 a person and stops about a block from our street. She loved it. I had all the carry-on bags and car seat on my lap, so I was a little uncomfortable, but Po's delight made it worth it. 

The next day was Sunday, so we went to church and then drove our car down to the airport and parked it in long term. My friends who were renting the house needed a car at the airport anyway, so we figured that would be a good way to do it, especially since there is no bus service on Sundays. 

But, we didn't have to worry, because we easily got on the Sunday flight and we were on our way to San Diego!

And, welcome the new addition to our family (did you read that sarcastically?!). Ana is here taking photos with the iPod touch she bought with lemonade-stand money. It luckily arrived at our house from Amazon.com just in time to come on vacation with us. 

San Diego

We had a great visit with Jonah's younger brother Noah's family in San Diego for a few days. They have four fantastic kids, ages 1-7. The cousins were in heaven. Elsie and I had been to visit in February, but the other kids hadn't been to their house, and they loved it. It's kid paradise. Even the blue couch was fun until Po slipped off the stool on top of the coffee table, went crash!, and then cried so hard that she passed out... which happens a lot with my girls so no need to panic, but it's still always a bit scary.  

 Elsie was over-the-moon to be reunited with another one of her "twinner" BFFs-- cousin Lyla. Lyla is a couple years younger than Elsie, but the same height and same level of princess. But, Lyla's awesome hair is about a foot longer than Elsie's, so they're not total twins. However, that doesn't keep me from accidentally calling them by each other's names about ten times a day. 

We had some good times using Kristi and Noah's awesome pool. We only had one near drowning... of Ana's iPod touch... baby Bennett grabbed it from inside and was about .2 seconds from plopping it in the water before I happened to see it and snatched it mid drop. WHEW!!!! I think Ana would have cried for the whole summer if it had drowned. 

 It was mostly a "kids and moms party" since Jonah and Noah worked for the few days we were there-- Noah at his job, and Jonah about 40 minutes away at the house where our new car had been sitting unloved for four years. We serendipitously found this car when a family came to our house in Maui to buy some snorkel gear we had listed on Craigslist. The wife mentioned that her husband had a similar car to ours in their yard in San Diego. They were South Africans who lived part of the year here in Maui and part of the year in San Diego (Lucky!).  The wife lamented that she wanted to get rid of the car since it had been sitting in their yards for years and years. Well, that was music to Jonah's ears! He and the husband made contact and once the family went back to San Diego, Jonah found out what parts were needed (including the back window which had been shot out with a BB gun) and brought them with. It took him two days, but he got the car running and street worthy and came to pick us up in our new travel wagon, complete with rear-facing back seat which was brought from a junk station wagon in Maui. This baby made it 3000 miles without a hiccup!

We named it Ox. Jonah quickly converted it to run on veggie oil using a kit FedEx'd to us from our friend in Washington and we were on our way in a previously unloved car running on free used veggie oil. Jonah wouldn't had it any other way. :)

Stay tuned for our summer adventures in Ox the 1983 Mercedes 300td. 

Golden Bathtubs

May is a busy month for most moms of school-aged children, isn't it!? We like to add to all the end-of-the-school-year by getting ready to leave on a two-month trip and preparing our house for two months of renters by packing up all of our personal belongings and storing them, finishing all of the in-progress house projects, stocking up the house with cleaning supplies and toiletries, and preparing the garden and yard to be virtually ignored for two months (we do pay someone to mow). Oh, and we have to eat all of our food and try not to buy any new food. It's a little stressful. 

But I was thrilled to put the finishing touches on our golden outdoor bathtub at the beginning of the month so we had time to enjoy it before we left for the summer. Well, actually, Po had time to enjoy it. It's like a jacuzzi, bathtub, and shower all in one. And I can see her perfectly from the kitchen! It's awesome. I especially love that she can splash and spray water with reckless abandon and she's actually doing me a gardening favor at the same time!

The bathtub is the original iron clawfoot bathtub from when the house was originally built in 1919. It was too big to keep in the indoor bathroom, and to be honest, I hate showering in clawfoot bathtubs. But it has a happy new home as the showpiece of the yard. 

The kids had some fun swimming events, including a fun(ny) meet with goofy swim races. Here's Ana with one of her best buds, Sydney. Someday Ana plans to pass her up in height. 

Ana's class (she went to school two days a week for three hours each day with all the other six graders in her program. It's a virtual-hybrid charter school, so most of the academic stuff was done at home online. Most of the projects, science experiments, field trips were done with her teachers and classmates in class). They had a "Great Leaders of Civilizations" dinner party. She was the Indian leader Ashoka. She was also recovering from a two month bout of something mono-like but that wasn't actually mono, but for which the doctor gave one last try to knock it out with a cycle of penicillin to which Ana had a horrible allergic reaction, complete with four days of a 103-104 degree fever and measles-like rash. That's why she looks a little worn out. She finally told herself she couldn't be sick for summer vacation and healed herself with mind power (and probably just because the virus had run its course) about a week before we left. Whew. 

We harvested and drank the last of our oranges until probably October. 

Here are photos of our final product before we left and gave the keys to our friends who rented the house for the summer:

We finally got the curtains up to keep the bugs out of our lanai dining area. It's a favorite area of the house (except its the one place in the house that doesn't get cell reception. Weird.) 

It was hard to plan to leave Maui, but by the time came, we were ready for a vacation. And plus, nothing like a vacation to remind us how lucky we are to live somewhere where life is almost a constant vacation. 

From That to This

I made some scans of old photos back in May, so I came across these when I was working to update the blog. How did my little guy go from this...

To this (I LOVE this photo... he's not too fond of Santa)...

To this (Dana Carvey?)? Love my little guy. He's the best.