Stroller Cuties

Happy New Year

My sister and her husband started a tradition years ago and throw a New Year's Eve party at their house every year. It's always really fun.

Gavin was fabulous and went to bed at 7:30 and slept through all the noise of 30 plus people. Kylie stayed up until 1am and fell asleep in the car before we had even driven out of the culdesac. She was exhausted.

Kylie loves hanging out with her cousins and feels like such a big girl when her older girl cousins give her so much love and attention.

Christmas Festivities

The Kettley Family has a Christmas Eve tradition of decorating Gingerbread houses, eating dinner, having Santa visit, and re-enacting the nativity. Ty was sick that night so missed out, but here are some pics from the evening.

Gavin chillin'

Kylie and her Gingerbread house

Gavin loved watching all the kids with Santa, but when it was his turn he didn't like it a bit.

Kylie loved sitting on Santa's lap

Kylie was the Dove and loved her costume

Gavin was going to be the Baby Jesus, but I was ready to put him to bed so he didn't get to dress up this year.

Christmas Day was really nice. We had a really relaxing and easy morning. Kylie and Gavin both loved their Santa gifts and spent a lot of time playing with them. They didn't want to open any other presents for awhile because they were just enjoying playing. It was really fun to watch.

Here they are waiting to leave the kitchen and see what gifts are waiting for them in the other room.


Kylie loved her doll house.

Gavin's alphabet train set was a huge hit.

We headed over to my parent's in the afternoon and had a really nice afternoon and evening with the family. I really love living so close to my family.

Hawaii in December

We had a trip to Hawaii planned for June, however it was postponed until December and we just got home! We had a great time, however I recommend going to Hawaii in the summer. Out of 6 days, we had 4 sunny and 2 rainy. The ocean is really harsh in the winter too. The waves crashed on the shore and there was a strong current and undertow so all the signs said no swimming, snorkeling, etc.

We took about 400 pictures or so. Kind of ridiculous, but hey, that's what digital is for! Here are some of them.


The view from our hotel room the afternoon we arrived. Before






Here is the view from our room 6 days later when it was raining. The water was pretty brown from all the mud sliding into the ocean. After




We hiked the Waimea Canyon to the Kalalau lookout. The clouds were pretty crazy. One minute you had a beautiful view and the next it was covered by clouds.








At Shipwreck beach we saw a reef shark swimming really close to shore and catching some waves. Here is a pic of his front fin.




We drove to the end of the road at the north part of the island. We hiked 4 miles roundtrip to Hanakapi'ai Beach. After that we spent some time at Ke'e beach which is at the entrance to the hike. Here are some pics that show views from the hike, a rainbow on our drive out, and a really cool cave that had a great sandy floor and was incredibly huge.















Here are the Wailua Falls that were brown due to the heavy rain the night before.



These are the Opaeka'a Falls.


Kylie loves leaves so when we saw these gigantic ones, we had to take a pic.

We're Back to Blogging

I know it's been too long for me to not blog. For those of you who know my work schedule, 4th quarter is pretty killer. I work way too much and don't spend anytime on the computer for fun stuff like blogging. Even though it is still fourth quarter right now, the workload is not as crazy at the moment, like it was in October and the first part of November. I can finally take a breath and spend a few minutes blogging. Yeah for me!! My stress level has gone down and I'm much happier to have more "me" time.

Even though this post doesn't have any pictures, I plan to put some up soon.

1st Birthday Cake

We celebrated Gavin's 1st birthday today. His birthday is the 25th, however we were celebrating some other family birthday's and figured we'd do it together even though it's a week and a half early. Here are pics to show the events of his cake eating. He had us all laughing. It was a fun time.

Here he is all nice and clean.
















I thought this was really cute. He and his cousin Rachel having a cute little moment while we sang to him.





Gavin's 1st taste of his cake.













He liked the first taste and has decided to use both hands now.













To make his eating more efficient he puts one hand in his mouth while the other hand is getting ready with more cake.
















Now he has started the pounding. Notice the blurry arms due to speed! He is having a blast just pounding away at his cake. Cake is flying everywhere and people start backing up to get out of his way.













He was putting fistfuls in his mouth and cake was going up his nose. He kept sneezing it out. One of his sneezes was really powerful and sprayed cake about a foot or two.













He is digging in to make sure he has reached the bottom of the cake.
















This is what is left over from the 8inch round cake that used to have chocolate frosting on it!
















Here is one happy boy who is very pleased with his 1st cake!!

Comfy Counter

Kylie was helping me make Gavin's cake today so I let her sit on the counter to help me pour the ingredients into the bowl. She wanted to watch a movie so I turned on Leap Frog's Letter Factory. We finished mixing the cake mix and as I put it in the oven and cleaned up, she continued watching her movie. Next thing I know, she is as comfortable as can be just like she were lying on the floor in front of the t.v.