Fall in Wyoming

I guess I never posted these pictures. Probably because I haven't checked or updated my blog for months. Now that summer is here (kind of) my goal is to keep our blog updated. So here are a few pictures of Mike from the Fall (2010).

This post is a little late, but I wanted to get it on before I made another blog. We visited Kauai just before we left the islands for good. It was only for a weekend but we had a lot of fun and saw a lot of scenery in just a few days. We stayed at the Kauai Beach Resort, its just a little outside Lihue. We drove around a lot and just checked out the island. It was gorgeous there to say the least, we loved it. We also hiked a few miles of the Napali Coast (just 4 miles in), which was quite a feat with Maika on Mike's back the whole way. People loved seeing her on the trail. An Asian man even called Mike "superman" for carrying her that far.

The next few pictures are of the 4 miles of the Napali that we hiked. We started about 8 am and didn't get back to the car until 6 pm. It was a really long day, but completely worth it. Mike carried Maika the whole way in that backpack and she never cried until the last 10 minutes of the hike.

Here's the three of us at Waimea Canyon. It was really windy up there and a little chilly for Hawaii.

We stopped at this beach out last day there and played in the water. It kind of reminded me a little of Waikiki here.

We just celebrated Michaels 26th Birthday and are counting down the days until we have to leave Hawaii. We're excited to move on with out lives, but we are really going to miss it here. Hawaii is an incredible place and we have so many good memories, and are really hoping that we can have place here someday. But as for now we are going to enjoy and soak it all up until we leave. We try to make it to the beach everyday if we can, its a good thing we all love to go.Here's Michael and Maika on his birthday with the balloon she got him.


The next few pictures are at the beach near Pipeline. It was such a beautiful day and not many people were on the beach. We dug a little hole for Maika it sit in and everytime the water came up on the beach, it would fill up her little pool. She also enjoyed the sand and ate handfuls at a time. How do you stop babies from eating stuff like that?

I can't believe my last posting was in April! Wow...the time really flies. Our summer (7 weeks) at home was awesome. We had a blast playing and working and spending time with family. A year is too long to go without seeing your family. We're so glad that everyone got the meet little Maika. Isn't she the coolest little thing ever! I think so. I can't find our pictures from Lake Mead, so I don't have them on yet, but here's a few pics of what he did this summer. Mike and Maika on her first four-wheeler ride. And, yes, a beanie was necessary for the weather in June in Wyoming. She squealed the whole time, so I guess she liked it.

This wasn't Maika's first time on a boat, but one Saturday Mike, Maika and me all went to Palisades for the afternoon. The water was still pretty chilly, but Mike and I took turns jumping in. I even went wakeboarding that day (but I wore a wetsuit, I'm such a wimp).

We camped for a few days over the 4th of July at Palisades. We spent a lot of time fishing and swatting mosquitos, but it was really fun.

This was really cool. Here we are with some of our good friends from Hawaii, Billy, Sarah, and Clara Buckley and David and Elisa Robbins. The Robbins came and stayed with us for a few days in Wyoming and Buckley's happened to be at family reunion and Bear Lake.

Graduation

Congrats to Michael this past weekend for graduating, kind of. He's not actually done with all of his classes until September, but since they only hold graduation ceremonies twice a year at BYU-Hawaii, Mike got to "walk" in graduation and receive an empty diploma. It was still really cool to see him be in graduate. Maika, Erica and I made it through about 1/2 hour of the whole ceremony, and spent of the rest of the time walking around outside until is was over. Here's a short clip of Mike getting his diploma. Sorry about the image and sound, but we just recorded it on Mike's digital camera.

Maika (and me) were much happier at home after graduation than during the ceremony, but I'm still glad that we went. Yes, this is a happy face compared to what her face looked like earlier.

This is Mike with one of his favorite professors, CaryWasden.



These are some of Mike's buddies, Remy and Garrett.

This is the first blog in a long time that I haven't started out with a picture of Maika, but I thought this one was really funny. I had just finished telling Michael how he needed to clean up after himself because I was sick of doing it. So he me made himself some microwave popcorn, then sat on the couch by me. I looked over at the kitchen, like I usually do after Mike finishes making himself something, to see what I was going to end up cleaning up. Count how may things things were left open after he finished making one bag of Pop Secret, not to mention what was left out on the counter. But what he lacks in cleanliness, he makes up in being a dad. He can always keep Maika happy and is always coming up with new ways to make her comfortable. You can't see it very well in the picture, but there was a long stream of spit running down Mike's arm.
This picture is for my mom and dad. Does this look familiar? I've been catching her sucking her two fingers a few times. I'm hoping that this is just a phase because she lacks the coordination to put anything else in her mouth.

another month already

Trying to get a picture of Maika smiling is so hard. I've been tryin to master it for the last few weeks. Everytime I pull the camera out, she stops smiling and just stares at it. For this picture, we held the camera down and when started to smile, SNAP, we took it. And that's all we got, but it's so cute isn't it? I'm not sure what's going on with her hair though. Mike created this 'invention' (its two pillows surrounding Maika) "now she can sit like a big girl" he says.


Yeah, she is well fed and she knows it.

This was just before we left for church (two hours late, but better late than never). We didn't actually make it to church with the bow, headband or tights. She hates things on her head and the tights were one layer to many. It was cute while it lasted.