Hawaii

So we went to Hawaii for 2 weeks...without the kdis. It just about killed me. I was fine the first 10 days but the last 3 I really just wanted to go home. We went to the Polynesian Culture Centre which I loved! We went there twice so we could see all the pavillions. The neatest place ever. We went to the North Shore and watched Surfing and that was cool but the waves were too big for us to even attempt to go into the water...we were scared. The best thing for shrimp lovers are the shrimp trucks. They are ugly rustly old busses that serve the best shrimp. I hate shrimp and I even found it slightly tollerable so it had to be good. Preston made us go back for round two. With our lazy days we spent it on our balcony watching season 1 of heros. ti was nice just to lounge sometimes. We stayed on the west side of the island which is not very touristy and there were many people loving on the beach. I found that interesting becuas eyou could tell that these people had been there so long becuase their 'residences' were so built up. I'm sure that is a huge tension with the tax payers, but it's a small, very expensive island....
We also got to watch a brush fire on the mountain beside our resort one night. It was neat to watch but days of wrok for the firemen trying to keep it away from us and the nearby condos. All in all, I would recommend Hawaii and I basically told you the best parts about it.

Picture perfect Hawaii.




We spent a lot of time at the resort pool. It was really nice and never to busy. Except the last day when a big group of Narcotic recovery people came for a conference at our resort...that was an interesting crowd.



Beating the waves on the north shore. We didn't even go in the water, that's how afraid of the waves we were.

Hair

So, I cut my hair short for the first time ever. I love it! Preston hates it. Sure you can't see all my beautiful ( I call them tangles and frizz) curls but I like maintenance free mom hair. That means no scraggly hair in my face while I'm bending over a poopy bum...my kids poopy bum. We'll see how long I keep it around. I find it hard not to want to have a hair cut my hubby likes...isn't that sad?
My new hair

August

Here are our exchange students, Hiromi and Satomi and Kayla all ready for a party.

Lets see, it's been 3 months since August actually happened so this'll be tough. We did have a couple more exchange students. They were so much harder than the other ones becuase they were 11 yr. old girls and spoke zero english. So, I would tell them something, they would nod their heads and then do the exact opposite. They loved my kids and were very friendly, but I was happy to see them go. Preston and I took a very short trip to Ontario for 2 days to check out some houses. At that point we were thinking of moving to Ontario becuase housing was much cheaper out there and we thought we could live mortgage free and have less financial strain. However, Calgarys market wouldn't allow us to sell our house and we took it off the market the next month. It seems we are going to stick around a while and just learn to budget. We also started trying for baby number 3 this month...we are still not pregnant. I think we took for granted that the first 2 were conceived so quickly and we haven't been trying hard enough this time around:)
We took a trip to Edmonton at the end of the month and had a blast. We stayed at the Fantasy Land Hotel in The West Ed. mall. Fun, but we spent WAY too much money becuase we were in the mall. We went on rides, bought late night icecream...all things we wouldn't have done if we were in a normal hotel NOT attached to a mall.
That was August.

SUmmer Activities

So we ahve our exchange students now. Their names are Peter and Chris and they are from Taiwan. (I don't know their real names, they gave themselves Canadian names) They are great boys. They are easy to get along with. Although, one of them has never made any food for himself in his life. I asked him to cut the tomato for his sandwich and he said he didn't know how. Anyways, I got the cheque from the Board of Education today and there will deifantley be some surplus from houseing these boys. We took Clayton and Kayla go karting this past weekend and they loved it to death. They are go karts with a kids seat besdis the adult seat and Preston and I took turns having a different child beside us. Kayla was so cute becuase she squealed and smiled the whole time and CLayton would go "woooohoooo" with me as we went over the killy parts. It was a great family activity. I am heading out to the Stampede tonight with an old friend from YSA. I didn't even know she was in Calgary, but I am going to hand out with some singles tonight....wierd.
Our house hasn't had any bites yet, I'm still trying to pack more stuff up and get ugly furniture out of the house too. As clean as I've kept it, ugly furnitre doesn't really help.
Thats us!

SLacker...thats me

It's been two weeks since my last post. I thought I was better than this! Anyways, as some of you already know, we are moving. Our house is up for sale right now. If everything goes as planned wea re moving to....Brantford, ON. We can live there mortgage free and have room to make some other real estate investments, which Preston has been itching to do. His idea to move, not mine. This is not 100% though so don't go telling everyone I am moving ot Ontario. We need to sell our house and the market is full of houses like ours. Like I said, as long as everything goes right, we will be movin gto Ontario.
As far as the rest of our lives, it's just playing and cleaning. We get our sxchange students on Monday so we are planning for that right now. It's going to be a busy month!
I think thats it.

Preschool Graduation

Yes, there is such a thing. Clayton graduated from pre-school today with a certificate and a lot of new songs under his belt. He was pretty happy about it. It was short and sweet. He will go again next year to the same place, even though there are some closer to us now. He really likes his teacher and so do I.
We are developing our bsement right now too for our students in July. It's going pretty smoothly and pretty cheaply...which I appreicate. We aren't going to fully develop it right now. Just the bedrooms. My neighbour is chinese and she just brought me over some chinese pie (although I'm sure that's not what they call it) It was super yummy...and it had tofu and shrimp in it...two things I realy avoid but all chopped up it was wonderful. I'm going to get her to eacdh me how to make the dough so I can make my own version and make you all try it. It was delish.
My biggest trial this week will be Claytons attitude. He gets mad when I ask him to come inside or away from something he is enjoying and yells "You're not nice to me" or "I don't like you" A few times now I've even gotten the 'H' word (I hate you) The first time my response was to tell him how nice I really am and that not all mommies take their kids to the zoo, park, swimming, Let's Play and McDonalds, but I felt like I was trying to convince him and myself that I am a good mom, and it didn't feel too good, so now he just gets crap for it. I need to learn not to let my 3 year old talk back to me! I don't have to take it! I'm the mommy! I need to toughen up. Tell me your mean mommy stories....

Hair Cut

So I cut Kaylas hair today. I thought it would be pretty easy to cut straight across, but when you are cutting that short, it's not so easy to make it straight with the under layers and all. I actually like her with longer hair but It was really hard to keep it nice when it was long. Especially with these hot summer days. It just ends up all scraggly and dirty so I chopped it on a whim. Preston liked her little pony tails but we'll get over it.