FROM HONOLULU TO HANOI: Catching our Breath

Where to begin? The last 3 weeks have been an unbelievable whirlwind. First of all, I wanted to say a quick "thank you" to our family and friends who have been so wonderful and supportive during the loss of Cris' Grandpa. Cris was honored to be able to participate in the memorial service of such a truly great man last weekend. Cris and Juneau both flew home to Ohio for the service. I was unfortunately unable to attend (I have basically been "strongly advised" not to take any more leave from my residency program after my 6 weeks of maternity leave and 3 weeks of adoption leave). Juneau did great traveling 18 hours on Thursday, spending Fri, Sat, and Sun in very cold Ohio, then turning around and traveling another 18 hours on Monday. She is a trooper. Cris has started back to teaching at UH this week, and we are all settling back into a somewhat normal routine (although i imagine our idea of normal may be a little warped).

Four Generations: Don, Denny, Cris, Brent

I wanted to try to post a little about our unbelievably wonderful week with the family. I also want to eventually get around to posting an adorable video of Juneau demonstrating her knowledge of anatomy by showing where her Phalanges, Clavicle, and Patella are. Although she did get her patella confused with her medial mallelous. Poor Juneau, she is doomed to being a giant nerd with an Anatomy Professor for a dad, and an OB/GYN for a mom. Although i would like to say i had no part in the anatomy lesson.

So, back to our vacation. Nova and Juneua's (from here on known as Noveau- a term coined by Aunt Nutkin, for the sake of brevity) Grandpa, grandma and Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma flew in on Christmas Eve night. Actually, to back track just a bit, on Christmas Eve Day we attended the Hawaii Bowl, in beautiful 70 degree weather, and watched Hawaii get sadly embarrassed by Notre Dame. Later that evening the family started trickling in. The girls had an awesome Christmas. Neither of them has really grasped the concept of presents quite yet, although they are both enthralled with paper.

Our 2 Favorite Nova's

They spent the morning opening presents, and playing on the new Kangaroo climber that now resides in our living room.

Not that we were ever the defiition of "classy decorators", but any hopes towards having a somewhat normal appearing house have been squashed by a huge, plastic climbing gym and slide that occupies approximately 1/4 of the space in the living room. Fortunately, Nova's swing engine burned out from constant swinging for the last 7 months, and it made a little extra space for our new designer plastic furniture. It's totally worth it because the girls are crazy about it. Nova is dangerously near-suicidal on the thing, and can climb all the way up the slide the wrong way, then balance precariously on the platform.

She's fallen off the platform both forwards and backwards several times, which have led to our newest problem - breath-holding. She has had a couple of pretty serious episodes of getting really upset from something, then crying so hard she actually stops breathing. she gets a little dusky looking, then gets floppy and passes out. She did this about 3 times last month, until Dr. Aunt Coral taught us the magic cure-all of blowing hard in her face. So far it has been working to snap her out of it, and she hasn't really had any bad episodes since we have been using this technique.

The Girls on their first Christmas Morning

So, Christmas day was great. The next day things got even better when the entire Matus clan landed in Honolulu. Noveau completely ADORED the cousins. Alex, Lyndsey and Brent were so awesome with the girls, and the girls loved the attention from the 3 coolest kids on the planet. We then headed up to the North Shore to check in to the rental house.

The first night in the rental house was a little freaky. That was the night of the total, all-island blackout. Lightening had struck some major power line, and completely cut out all electricity for the entire island. We didn't have any power until the following evening.

The rental house was very nice. it had a huge living area, with plenty of room for the kids to play (and for everyone to play Wii!). It had an unbelievable view of the ocean, and although there wasn't really a beach, there was still a very nice swimming area. Fortunately, the waves weren't too big (as is often the case in the winter) and we got to enjoy lots of quality beach time

There Was Lots of Playing - And Napping - on the beach

Highlights of the trip were our frequent visits to Matsumoto's for Shave Ice. I think Great-Grandpa was the biggest fan of the Shave Ice, and probably packed away more than anybody else. We also had a very nice trip to the Arizone Memorial, which i hadn't had the chance to do yet prior to this trip. We spent an awesome day snorkeling, and also some time bodyboarding. I think Cris' highlight of the trip was setting off hours worth of fireworks on New Year's Eve. this may have been Juneau's favorite part as well. I think Ed's favorite thing, and probably Alex and Lyndsey's, was jumping off the giant rock at Waimea Bay. Alex and Lyndsey attracted quite a bit of attention as they were by far the tiniest jumpers, and probably the most fearless. Most of the crew also took an amibitious kayaking trip to the Mokes (little islands just off the kailua shore). I stayed back with the girls, and i can't say i was really sorry to stay behind for that one. It is definately a pretty significant physical endeavor, and we had some very tired people when that trip was over.

Juneau LOVED her cousin Brent

Dad and Bug

A Farmer visits the Beach

Grandma trying her hand at a little Wii Bowling - She's a tougher competitor than she looks. You gotta watch out for her mean spin on the bowling ball