Rededication

This past weekend our little town had the privileged of having our Prophet Thomas S. Monson here to rededicate the Laie, Hawaii Temple. It was so wonderful to hear him speak and we are so happy that our temple is open again.

Local photographer Mark Lee was able to take some awesome pictures of the cultural celebration that happened on Saturday night. Check them out here.

Happy November

In Utah fall is my very favorite season. The following have been the only things that have helped me not miss it.

Look real close. . . I'm staring at DOLPHINS. Best day ever.

We love our friends Mark and Nat. Here they are playing "earthquake" with Rod on the boogie board. My friends are ten years old.

I love Hawaii.

You Crazy!

I found this video on my friend Brynn's blog, and it is so crazy and cool. Here is what they said about it:

"In the city of Tarragona, Spain, castellers gather every two years to see who can build the highest, most intricate human castles. This uniquely Catalan tradition requires astonishing strength, finesse, and balance. Not to mention courage"

Casteller from Mike Randolph on Vimeo.

How did people not die in those spills? And what parents are letting their little girls be the tops of these towers?

Whenever we make it to Spain, we will plan around going to this event (or the one where they throw tomatoes at each other - or the running of the bulls - all equally entertaining)

Home For 'Da Holidays

When we moved here, we had come to terms with the fact that we would not be able to come home for Christmas, and we were fully prepared to spend the holidays alone (even though we knew we would miss being home with everyone)

Then some of Santa's little elves (pictured below) came along and graciously offered to fly us home for the holidays. We are so thankful for this gift!
It was really important to them (as it is to us) that we be there, since my brother Brian's family will be there from New Jersey, my sister Marianne will be there from Washington D.C., and my sister Danielle's family will be there from San Francisco. This will be our first Christmas all together in years!

We will be home for two glorious work-less and school-less weeks!

We also have two little nuggets that we have yet to meet . . .
Our Nephew Asher who was born in July
And our niece Chloe who was born in October

We are excited for the following as well:

To be in cold enough weather that we can wear our jammerz from last year
Our bed - we took the comfy queen that we have in
Utah for granted before we moved here to our springy, squeeky full.
(This isn't really our bed at home, but you get the idea - mind you, it's sitting in a room with the perfect temperature for sleeping, rather than a sweaty studio)
Our baby Winslow wearing one of his many Christmas sweatersPlaying Sequence, Scum, Settlers of Catan, Killer Bunnies, and Mario Parties with Tanya's very competitive family! Tanya misses them, this is the longest she has gone without seeing them.
Hopefully going snowboarding if we can find a way to make it happen
The list goes on and on.

Mele Kalikimaka!

Halloween Weekend

This weekend started out with Tanya deciding she wanted her hair chopped and colored dark, so she had our friend Natalie do it. She's an awesome hairstylist. Isn't it hot?

On Saturday morning I ran my first half marathon. It was at Gunstock Ranch which is right by Laie. It was a crazy course. The whole thing was a trail run with steep hills, through forests and jungle areas, and pastures. There was even one point where a bunch of us got to a river and wondered where the trail went - then we saw the colored flags on the other side. We had to cross the knee-deep waters (twice) and ended up slipping through the mud after. I had a lot of fun though and will possibly train for a full marathon within the next year (Maybe the St. George?)

Tannie was nice enough to cheer me on and make me this sign

Yesterday afternoon we went to a new beach that was really cool with our friends Mark and Natalie. It was nice and secluded. Best Halloween ever?

Mark taught me how to spearfish, but the conditions were not ideal, so we didn't catch anything

Last night we went to our ward's Halloween party. It was good old family fun with everyone and their babies! Haha. And musical chairs . . . it happened - and it got really intense.
We dressed up as tourists - sadly, we already had a lot of the items that we wore

And ate so many sweets that our heads almost exploded. Tanya made the white ghost cookies

Halloween was more fun here than we thought it would be. People get really into it and don't have to ruin their costumes with coats and sweatshirts!

Temple

This past weekend they finally re-opened the Laie Temple for an open house after almost 2 years of being closed for major renovations. The last time we went in it was the day we got married, and it closed a couple of weeks later. It is open to the public for the next month and then the prophet will come here and rededicate it the weekend before Thanksgiving. We are excited to be able to go again!

Today we had tickets for the open house. They started by showing a movie in these tents about temples and about the history of the church in Laie.

Then we got to go and take a tour of it. It is SO NICE inside. They redid everything - Carpeting, walls, chandaliers, furniture, setup, the font, etc. They re-did the outside as well. Now the entrance is more open (it used to be a room that looked straight out of the 70's (see wedding picture below) and they also have Gold accents all around the outside.

Then we walked around the grounds and ended up at the visitors' center, which we had never been to.

Pat Your Weaves Ladies

For her program here at BYUH, Tanya had to take a Hawaiian Studies class. The one that fit into her schedule was Hawaiian Basket Weaving. Today her homework was to turn this

Into this

So yeah . . . I'm pretty sure she's going to pass this class with flying colors.

On a totally unrelated note . . . we are really getting into collecting bottles that wash up on the beach by our house. They are all different sizes and shapes - some of them even have Japanese writing or crazy symbols. We plan on keeping the very best ones for life and filling them with sand from every beach we travel to throughout the world.