It’s been awhile…

It’s been six years since my last post. Jameson was two years old and Quincy was four. Just thinking about the person I was then gets me feeling emotional. I’ve been through so much. We’ve had three more children. We’ve had three new addresses since then.

We were living in our little apartment on Gage Boulevard in Richland when I wrote my last post. Now we live in Chubbuck again. In a home that we own.

Life has felt very chaotic for the past three years. (Our fourth child is about to turn three). There is so much I plan to write about. So many things that have been swirling in my head, and I’d find myself wishing I had someone to talk to about it but it’s always that there’s either no one to talk to or no one who would understand. I’d find myself having imaginary conversations in my head. That probably makes me a crazy person.

Moving back to Idaho was a relief in a lot of ways but it’s also felt somewhat isolating. I’ll go into that more in a separate post.

I plan on writing about the births of my younger three children. I’ll share about my experience leaving group fitness behind. Maybe I’ll share my thoughts on health/healing/contagion. I’ll share about changes in my health and body size following the birth of Morgan and how that’s been tough to deal with mentally and what I’m doing about it. I may share about the time where I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints anymore. I could detail what I felt during the year of 2020 and how I’m coming back online and blogging about entirely personal things after years of posting nothing on social media.

I hope that writing it all down is healing in some ways for me. I don’t know or care if anyone even sees this. I’m not doing it for anybody else. (I used to share my posts to Facebook, but I deleted it in 2020- I’ve only come back onto it now because I needed to use marketplace. Apparently, no one uses Craig’s list anymore).

The world has changed so much in the last six years and so have I. But, I do have a habit of starting things and not finishing them. Even now, I’m tempted to just save this as a draft and not publish it because I’ve just laid out plans for this blog but what if I change my mind tomorrow and decide it’s not worth the effort? Except I don’t think I will change my mind. My day to day life is so hectic these days, I often feel overwhelmed and overstimulated. I put my baby to bed tonight and then just walked out the front door so I could sit on my front porch, in my hammock chair from Costco, and soak in the quiet and calm of the cool night air. I just sat there and tried to let the overwhelm of the evening routine relax out of that tense spot in my neck and shoulders. I had so many thoughts swirling around in my head again and it often feels like a burden I want to unload but I don’t even know how. And I don’t know why but this blog popped into my mind. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to open it up again. I wondered if I should write it all down- catch up on the past six years. And it suddenly felt like the thing to do so… here I am.

Springtime

I have a lot of catching up to do! Back in April we had the chance to head over to the west side. This trip happened to be the week before our five year anniversary and also the first time we had been back to Seattle since our wedding day. We were excited to stop and take some pictures there with our kids. Oddly enough, it was raining in Seattle. 

Our wedding photographer decided not to edit our photos so they are all horribly washed out. 

"Quinn, touch the flower."

"No. It's too wet."

After we took all of these pictures, we went for a walk around the temple. Both of our kids tripped and fell because they were running. We think Jameson chipped a tooth, we didn't notice until later that day. Quinn fell in the mud and got really dirty. That's life with kids, and we wouldn't change it!

The kids had fun on the ferry over to Bremerton. We toured the USS Turner Joy. It was really cool! But crazy how the ship was built like a maze. The men on that ship had to know where everything was which is amazing. Looking at it, it was hard to imagine how anyone lived on it because everything was so cramped. 

It rained so, so hard that day.

Jameson loves "pop pop" and kept asking where he was! Taking a small child on that ship was a little scary at times because there are lots of places he could have fallen down a few stories. He did not like anyone holding him except my dad. 

The only twenty minute window he actually slept in the car on the way home. That kid can be so wiped out and will almost never sleep in the car longer than 40 minutes. Then he just cries because he's tired. 

I made Kelly a heart pancake on our anniversary because I'm so thoughtful and also because I didn't get him anything else since we were leaving on a trip in a few weeks. 

In May, Kelly and I went to Maui!!!!! It was wonderful.

Our first night there we stopped at a shrimp truck for the best shrimp and crab macaroni salad ever. We tried to go back on our last day and they closed early because it was raining. 

A panorama from our condo. The grassy area with the lounge chairs was nice because lounging on the beach wasn't always possible due to the wind blowing sand in your face.

We took this right after we got to our condo. I can still feel the ocean breeze and hear the sound of the waves. 

The next day we all woke up around 4:00am because of the time difference. We decided to get up early and go to Hana. We took the back way to Hana. There is a main "road to Hana" that everyone uses to go in and then goes back out the same way. The back way was indescribable. The road was winding around the island, cliff on one side of us and ocean on the other. The most stunning views I've ever seen. We didn't take any pictures because we were in a bit of a time crunch. We had been driving for about 30 minutes on this back road (it usually takes 2-3 hours to get there) and we saw a sign that said the road was closed at starting at 7:30. It was about 6:00am at this time. We debated turning around and going back, but ultimately decided that since we'd already come that far we should just stick with it. So Kelly drove our rental car like a madman on that windy crazy road. We passed the construction site right around 7:30. There was lots of heavy equipment but I guess the workers are on island time because no one was there yet. We did talk to some people later that day who tried to go that way the day before around 9:00am and had to turn around. 

Our first stop was to hike the Seven Sacred Pools of Ohe'o. Kelly snapped this picture of me and then turned around to capture the view behind us. 

This was that view! A beautiful oasis. Each pool overflows and runs into the ocean.

A really cool tree we came across on our hike. 

It has vines that drop down from the branches and then take root into the ground. 

 

 It was really dark inside this little bamboo forest!

I don't know if you can see, but there is a dead goat inside this pool. It must have fallen in. Or maybe somebody sacrificed it to the sacred pools. 

 Black Sand Beach in Hana. So beautiful!

 All along the main road to Hana there are lots of waterfalls with little swimming holes. Of course, I had to get in and swim by the waterfall! 

Later in the week we found out that a man had died swimming in one of these swimming holes on the road to Hana. Rocks fell and killed him. His friends couldn't get him out, and the first responders had to wait until the next day to go and get him because rocks kept falling. Scary and sad!

 This is a cave that we swam in! The water was cold, and it was super dark at the back of the cave, I didn't last very long swimming in it. 

On the way back.

Is there any better feeling than laying in the sun!?

A view of our beach. You can see how it was really not crowded. We stayed in Kihei, and I think it was probably the best place to stay on the island. 

 A delicious little cafe on the way to Lahaina. They had the best pies! I had key lime and Kelly loved the chocolate macadamia nut pie. It had a salted caramel crust. So good! He also loved his seared Ahi sandwich. I had gotten food poisoning the second night we were there from some Mahi Mahi so I stayed away from fish the rest of the week. 

The coolest thing to see in Lahaina is this tree! It's super old, and every part of a tree that you can see in this picture is actually all one tree. It takes up an entire block. We thought the tree we saw on our hike the first day was crazy until we saw this one. 

Eating dinner at Monkey Pod. This was the best restaurant we ate at. It's on Wailea Beach and it's fantastic. 

A breakfast cafe where you can get banana pancakes. I don't like banana pancakes but Kelly does. 

We took a hike out to this spot and right after we took this picture a school of dolphins started swimming around right in front of us. One of the dolphins kept jumping out of the water and twirling around in the air. 

We don't have any pictures of it but we went to Black Rock Beach. This is where most of the big resorts are on the island and also where there is some really great snorkeling. We saw so many bright fish and we got to see a turtle swimming around! Kelly reached out and touched the turtle. It was so a younger turtle, it looked so surreal the way it glided around underneath the water. 

Shave Ice. Everyone says to get this but to be honest it was underwhelming and it was $15 for both of ours so maybe just wait until you get back to the US and buy a snow cone at the snow shack for $4. 

In the Kahului airport about to board our red eye flight. Our flight back to Seattle took 90 minutes less than our flight to Maui. 

It was an amazing trip, and I'm so thankful we were able to go! I was glad that we didn't bring the kids with us, but I really did start to miss them the last few days. I started to ache for the feeling of holding a small child in my arms, and I was afraid I'd never get to feel it again. There was something about having an entire ocean between me and my babies that made me a little nervous! I would do it again but I also know that I'm meant to be a mom and I'm thankful for my two healthy, happy babies. 

Kelly and I both had birthdays this spring. He loves angel food cake with chocolate frosting. My mom brought me a yellow cake with lemon, cream cheese frosting the day after my birthday. Quinn was really worried when we didn't have a cake on my actual birthday. Oh, Jameson had a birthday, too. He turned two the day after we got back from Hawaii. I made him a cake but we didn't get him any presents. We had just brought him back a gift from our trip, and he doesn't even know it was his birthday. 

Kidz dig Rigz was really fun for the kids! Jameson is obsessed with any motorized vehicle but especially tractors. He got to climb in lots of big tractors and trucks that day. 

 Quinn and I took a monster truck ride. She laughed so hard every time he turned a sharp corner. 

Father's Day! I always forget to have Kelly take a picture of me with the kids on Mother's Day. 

Hahaha we went to spend time with Kelly's dad on Father's Day. He has some cats around his place and Jameson had to chase them and hold them. He's not good at holding them, obviously. Poor cat. 

They both liked riding the pony, though. 

We went to George on the 4th. We had fun doing fireworks with friends, we've never done fireworks with our kids before this year. They loved it. 

This is just a picture I took of Quinn one day. Before it started getting to be eleventy hundred degrees every day she liked to go eat otter pops on our balcony with her blanket on her. I had to quit buying otter pops though because I ate ten of them a day. 

We did take a trip to Montana to go camping at Flat Head Lake last week, but I don't have any of those pictures on the computer yet, so I'll save that update for another time. Probably by Christmas you can expect to hear about that. 

We've been having a really fun summer! The kids are at such fun ages. Jameson has finally figured out how to swim in the pool with his puddle jumper on so we've loved using our apartment pool. It's mostly old people that live around us, so we usually have the pool to ourselves! I teach 4-5 classes every week at the gym, and Kelly really likes his current position at Lamb Weston. We are so blessed and grateful for this life we get to live!