Isabella Ka'iulani

This is the day before I had Izzy...40 weeks 3 days...I do not think I was quite this big with Jessie.

After 10 hours of labor, Isabella finally arrived on November 22 at 7:05 am. She was 8 lbs 3 oz. and 20 inches long. She is a great baby and is already starting to coo! We love her so much...Jessie is a great big sister. She loves Izzy and is a little overwhelming to Izzy at times, but her singing and kisses make up for it. This first picture was taked right after she was born. The nurses were still wiping her down. She was really purple becuase she had the cord wrapped around her neck and tangled around her body. Her color came pretty fast though, so it was not too scary. They layed her on my chest and she stayed there for 2.5 hours. They did not weigh her or anything...it was some nice bonding time, but it got a little long to be honest because Phil left to go pick up Jessie and my mom and I still had the stuff in my back from the epidural, so I was getting a little sore....(apparently right after I gave birth a girl came in who was only 30 weeks pregnant, so all the nurses where in helping with her. Luckily she had a healthy (for 10 weeks premature) baby boy, who was wisked to Oahu for better medical care.) Anyway, the whole experience was great, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE this hospital here in Waimea...my nurse was awesome!!!

Phil and I were both born with very, very light hair, so I am not sure where the dark hair came from. I was surprised when Jessie was born with red hair, but even more surprised when Izzy was born with such dark hair....I love it though....Jessie said that she looks like mommy and Izzy looks like daddy...(based on hair color of course!) Her skin tone is much darker than mine...I hope she still gets a few freckles though...I just love freckles on little girls! :)

Sewing Projects

My new favorite website is sew4home.com. They have great tutorials on easy, and some not so easy, projects. I found it when I was looking for cute material for crib bedding. It also had a tutorial on how to make the crib bedding. So, I am making crib bedding. So far I have finished the bed skirt. I still have the crib bumpers and I am going to tie a quilt. I think the bed skirt would be cuter if my crib was white and I am thinking about painting it, Except that I have a lot to do in the next 5 weeks. :) Maybe I will talk Phil into doing that for me!

In my quilting class, we learned how to make pillow cases...yes I know nothing to do with quilting, but the ladies thought it would be a good skill for me to have since I have little kids...the ladies in the classs are so awesome. So I made this cute pillow case in an hour. I could not believe how easy and cute it turned out. Jessie picked out the Hello Kitty material and was really excited to sleep with it last night.

Again I found this cute trick-or-treat bag on sew4home.com. It was surprisingly easy. It cost me $10 for the material and supplies, but I have enough material to make at least 3 more...so i thought it was a pretty good deal. Plus it was really fun to make. I am really surprised at how much I am enjoying sewing.
Isn't Jessie the cutest little model?!?
So next on my list is a cover and pillow for the Chase we bought at the thrift store, crib bumpers, tied quilt, and hooded towels for craft show(we are making 40, but I have help from a friend) And only 5 weeks to get it done....:)

Apartment Finished

So we have been in our house for 1 year, and we just finished the apartment. I had to bribe Phil to get it done. He got a new shot gun out of the whole thing. :) It has been nice that it was unfinished because we were able to use it for visiting family and friends, but we are glad it is done and rented out. It really helps pay the mortgage! :) So here are the pictures of the finished project. Phil really did a great job on everything!

Here is the front room/kitchen area.

Bathroom
bedroom
Other side of the bedroom
Kitchen

Best Friend Ever!

Tonight as I was putting Jessie to bed we were talking about what we had done today. We talked about shopping in town and watching Dora and playing outside and reading books and taking daddy to the airport so he can go work. This last one is getting pretty common unfortunately, but it is so cute to hear Jessie tell her dad, see ya in a couple of days! Anyway, as we were talking about taking daddy to the airport, Jessie says, "Daddy best friend ever!" It just warmed my heart, and if you see the way he plays with her you can see why she would say that! He is so patient and kind! He teaches her so much that I would never have thought to teach her...like to love little critters (skinks, bugs, worms, gecko's, frogs, etc.) and he talks about what animals we eat and do not eat. He teaches her about the things that he loves. The other day she was off playing by herself and she comes up to Phil and I and says, " my cow, i shoot him with my gun." Phil has been hunting a bit lately and brought home a pig that he shot, and he of course talked to Jessie about hunting. I am so lucky to have such a great man, and Jessie is so lucky to have such a great daddy!

My latest projects

So call it nesting if you want, but I have been driven by projects lately! I think it is because Phil has been spending a little more time on Oahu again and I am just trying to keep myself busy so I do not get depressed about being alone! :) I have taken up a Hawaiian Quilting class. They have a non profit organization here in Waimea called Tutu's house (grandma's house) where they offer different classes to the community, all of which are absolutely free. They have yoga, guitar, knitting, Hawaiian quilting, tumbling for little kids, ukulele, etc. Anyway, I decided to go to the HAwaiian quilting class, which meets once a week for a few hours. I am the youngest there by about 40 years or so, and I love it. I really enjoy listening to the girls talk and tell stories . Most of them come from different parts of the U.S. and have some really neat experiences. Anyway, I am learning slowly but surely how to quilt HAwaiian style and boy does it take patience! :)

I also decided that I need to knit Izzy(our not yet born baby:) a blanket since I did one for Jessie...so I am working on that. I also thought that becasue we own our own home now, I really should make Jessie and Izzy's room the cutest possible, so i thought I would make some crib bedding for Izzy. I wanted to make it gender neutral since we are hoping to have a boy someday, so I spent days on the computer looking for just the right fabric...I ordered it and am waiting for it to come in the mail. I will post pictures of it when it comes. Along with pictures of the process. I am sure it will be interesting...I am not sure what made me think that I am capable of such a task, but I have a seam ripper, so I can always try again...as long as I cut it out correctly. :) Anyway, Phil says that I need to be careful not to get too many projects goiing at once, but I think it may be a little late for that.

There are quite a few girls in our ward that are pregnant right now and so lots of showers to go to. :) I decided that I wanted to do something a little diferent as gifts, so I decided to make hooded towels. I made a lady bug hooded towel with my sister MaryBeth before Jessie was born...actually she made it while i watched and contributed here and there. Anyway, I still have a few to make but I am pretty pleased how they turned out. I am thinking about making a bunch and selling them at the Holiday craft fair in December...I have a few other ideas for different characters. We will see how it goes. :)

This Hello Kitty towel is one of my favorites. Jessie loved it and was sad that we had to give it away. :)

The last 2 months

This summer has gone by quickly! Although we did not get to go anywhere for vacation, we got to have family come and visit, and we kept ourselves pretty busy! Here is some of what we did this summer....not necessarily in this order.

Here we are mid July, and you can see my well pronounced baby bump already! It is a bit bigger these days.

Phils brother, Jeff, and his family came to visit us for a week. This was the first of many visit we hope!!! It was really so much fun to have them stay with us and Phil took off work the entire time they were here, so it was a little vacation for us too!!!
Phil and Jessie danced a lot this summer...and Jessie loved it!...Phil did too I am sure!
Josh, our nephew, stayed with us for a whole month. It was a lot of fun to get to know him. Phil enjoyed working Josh to the bone. Jessie still asks about "my Josh".
We did lots of swimming...especially Phil and Jessie...and Jessie is getting more and more brave in the water.
Jessie took lots of bubble baths because she got really dirty each day helping dad "move rocks".

We celebrated Phil's birthday...which Jessie enjoyed because daddy spoils her and got her a couple of gifts too.
She blew out these candles about 5 or 6 times...again Phil really spoils her sometimes.
Jessie had lots of play dates with friends. this is our neighbor Micah.
We hiked a lot which resulted in a lot of water breaks like this one. Jessie absolutely loves hiking and she is really good at it...seriously...the girl has her daddy's stamina when it comes to hiking. And she usually does it barefoot like in this picture. She is awesome!!!

IT'S A........

Girl!?????? Even though we got our ultrasound today, our hospital here is weird and the ultrasound tech will not "diagnose" the gender because technically they are not qualified....so we have to wait until they give word to my doctor, and then I have to call my doctor on Friday to get the official word. However, I talked the lady into printing us a gender shot...not the best, but we think it is good enough to determine that it is a girl! :) What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

To orient yourself with this shot, we are looking at her bottom on the right. the white long thing at the top of the picture is the baby's left femur.

Looks like she is sucking her thumb.

Her feet!
Her face...her eye is a little crazy looking. :)

Already?

This was my conversation with Jessie last night as we were watching some tv as a family.

Jessie: whats that mommy? (pointing to the tv)

me: those are people walking.

jessie: whats that mommy?

me: they are still walking honey.

Jessie:Whats that mommy?

me: Now they are standing and talking.

Jessie:Whats that mommy?

me: um it is a car driving on the road.

get the idea? I think she just wanted to have a conversation with me because most of what she was asking she really already knew. This went on for awhile and I was running out of answers...finally i told her to go ask daddy! That was the best answer ever! :) i did not know that these questions started so early. it was pretty funny! She is such a sweet little girl!

Projects, Projects, Projects

We were pretty busy today! Phil and Josh were busy digging a trench for the rock retaining wall they are going to build. It was a hot day, and I was really glad I was busy inside and did not have to help. This is our property line and we are quite a bit higher than the property beside us, so we decided to build a retaining wall and then put up a fence on top of it for privacy. It will maximize our property area, and it will look a lot nicer.

These are some of the rocks for the rock wall. They will be building 117 feet of rock wall. Yikes! I am glad Phil's nephew Josh is here to help out!
This is Josh. He lives in Utah, but for the next month he will be living with us. It is fun to have him here. Jessie really loves him, and Phil really enjoys the company while he is working.
Jessie kept herself busy playing in the sand pile with Josh and daddy worked. She loves to play hard and get good and dirty.

This is what I did while they were outside working...I think they turned out pretty well. I made the Hawaiian print ones...and bought the sheer ones at Ross.

I have to admit, they are a bit Hawaii vacation rental like, but I really liked the print and it matches our paint really well.
This was the big project a couple of weekends ago. I realize it is a little late to be putting in a garden, but that is one of the great things about living in Hawaii...the growing season is year round! This year we went down to the macadamia nut factory and got a couple truck loads of husks to mix in with our dirt. Our soil here is naturally very hydrophobic, so the added husks really helped retain water. I do not think they will help much with nutrients this year, but once they decompose a little, it will be great for the garden. we also spent a lot of time getting rocks out of the garden. Phil rented a jack hammer for a few really large ones. He also renting a rototiller which turned up a ton of rocks. I swear we have more rocks in our garden than a gravel pit. I guess that is what we get for building on a volcano! :)
These little guys found their way into the garden, but could not find their way out. Jessie really likes to run after them and chase them out of the yard or garden. It is pretty cute!

Jessie's Discovery

This is a picture of Jessie that was taken at the beach by my father in law and then painted onto canvas by my mother in law. I LOVE IT! I wish I were as talented as my mother-in-law. I am not an art critic, but I think it captured Jessie perfectly. It even tells of her personality a little. Jessie saw this picture on the computer and pointed and said, Jessie...got it! Thank you so much mom for sending this to us, it is perfect! :)