Memorial Day celebration!!

Ok, so it's been almost a month since Memorial Day, but better late than never right?!?! We actually had a visitor stay with us the week before Memorial Day. Many years ago, the Morgan family lived in Hawaii and we were in the same ward in Kailua. Heather was actually one of my young women when I was the YW president!! Anyway, Heather is here in D.C. doing an intership, but her housing wasn't ready for the first week she was here so we were so happy to invite her to stay with us. We didn't do a whole lot with her since she was working, but we did celebrate Memorial Day together. The funny thing is, I didn't get any pictures of her!!

For Memorial Day, we headed to the Calvert Marine Museum. Some friends told us that it was pretty fun for kids, so off we went. The first stop was a kids room with a bunch of hands-on activities. Here's Lillie greeting people from the lighthouse.

Next stop, the little dress up cottage. Lillie makes a cute pioneer girl.

Here's her somber state

Ships AHOY, Captain Lillie!!

A little observing time at the live sea life tank. Here's Lillie checking out the horseshoe crab. See her clenched fist...she kept her distance.

Lillie also saw turtles, jellyfish, fish, and clams. No pictures of those sea creatures.

It's OUR Little Mermaid!!

After seeing LOTS of different kinds of sea life, including these 2 sea otters that entertained us for quite a while, we went on a boat ride!!!

We rode for about an hour on the Chesapeake Bay. Lillie loved looking at all the homes on the bay and all the boats docked at the piers. She especially loved riding under one of the bridges that we often drive over.

It was a fun, relaxing day.

If we talk to you at ALL, you know that Keola and I have been looking for furniture. With the new house, came new rooms to fill. We now have a formal living room, formal dining room, and a much larger family room. We wanted to look for furniture that would hopefully last us awhile. So after visiting many furniture stores, warehouse sales, and scouring catalogs and internet websites, we FINALLY purchased a few things to fill our extra rooms.

We always knew that our "old" furniture from our Capitol Hill home would fill our formal living room. However, since we didn't have any furniture for our family room, we've been using that furniture to sit on. So on Monday, we started the set up of some of the rooms.

Here's the before...

Here's the after...well, sort of. We haven't totally set up yet. We still need to put up some art work that will finish off this room.

The living room furniture was now in place and the long awaited family room began it's transformation. The family room is coming together in stages. What we didn't expect was the LONG wait for the furniture.

Here's the before...

Then the first installment...2 chairs that flank our fireplace. We came across this furniture warehouse sale recommended by a friend. We didn't quite know what to expect, but we are sure glad we went. We found these super comfy, butter yellow chairs for a THIRD of it's original price!! What a steal!

So for about two months, our family room looked like this (with the living room couches)

Then the long awaited call came that our sectional was done!! Yipee! Woohoo!! I was excited!! After two months, TODAY was the day. About an hour ago, this is what came...

Then, this!!!!

Our beautiful sectional is here!!! I am so happy!!! The sectional is extra comfy, super big, and beautiful!!! Now after some rearranging of a few things, drapery and art work for the walls, and our bookshelves, the family room will be done!!!

Can you tell Lillie loves the new sectional?? I've always wanted a sectional, maybe it reminds me of my home in Hawaii.

This is the fabric we're considering for the drapery. That will be our next project.

When we went to the warehouse sale, we were in search for a dining table for entertaining. We found this beautiful and sturdy table for a serious bargain. Get this, the original price was over $2100!! We bought the table for $199!!! Can you believe that!??!? We only paid about 10% of the original price. Unbelievable!! Now, full disclosure, there are some scratches and knicks here and there, but after some polish, I really think it looks great.

I also think it matches the koa hutch quite well, too!

Let's see if you can find the scratches and knicks. Ok, so it's not quite fair since the sunshine is glaring and I think I got the table at a great angle. In any case, it's a great table.

The happy family!!!

On the 23rd of APRIL, we got a little surprise...HAIL!! I'm sorry, I thought it was Spring...Wait, it IS spring!! We were all surprised by the quick hail storm. You should have seen Lillie's reaction. She didn't quite know what was going on.

Happy Easter!!
Ok, so we're a couple of weeks late!! In blogging that is. We did celebrate Easter on Easter day!! Ha ha Well, the Easter Bunny was quite generous this year. At least a few weeks before Easter, Lillie kept asking, "Is it Easter yet????" Finally, the night before, we told her that the Easter Bunny might be visiting the house and might leave her a few treats. So, of course, on Sunday morning, Lillie was up and ready to check downstairs.

Lillie was thrilled to find plastic eggs filled with plain M&M's and peanut butter cups (her two favorites!). She also found a chocolate bunny, gummy bears, chocolate covered marshmallow eggs, a jump rope, princess notebook and pen, a bigger Doodle Pro (best church activity - for those of you with young kids), and of course, more candy.

Nana sent her the cutest Manuheali'i dress! Lillie was super excited to wear it to church.

Lillie with her Easter spoils!! We're working on taking pictures without the squint!

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's...Elmo??!?

Keola bought Lillie a little kite a week ago, but the wind hasn't been cooperating. Finally, today the wind was whirling and Keola decided to take Elmo for a flight.

As you can see, Lillie loved every minute of it.

One day I decided we needed to have a little photo shoot, just for fun. Here are some of the better shots. Lillie is growing up so fast and she is as cute as can be!! Ok, so I might be a little bias.

Lillie has recently been interested in using scissors. She especially likes cutting shapes. One morning, I decided to try out her skills and see if she could make a picture with her shapes. She was so excited, we made two and continued the next day to make two more. Here are her first two works of art with a caption she made up.

She's getting pretty good at writing her name, too.

What do you get when you have frigid temperatures in the teens and a lot of moisture?

9 and a half inches of SNOW!!!! YIKES!

and this is a measurement from the back of our house on the deck! The front yard has at least a foot on the ground. Boy, it's been a LONG time since I've seen THIS much snow!

The snow storm started Sunday night. We went to an orchestra concert at the visitor's center by the temple. The weather was ok, with just a bit of snow. By the time we drove home around 8:30pm, the snow started coming down the closer we got to our house. By the time we entered Calvert county, the roads were covered with snow. We never felt unsafe as we took our time and followed tracks made by other cars. At one point we were actually laughing because a two lane road turned into a one lane, since you couldn't see the road at all and people were just driving in the middle of both lanes...we think. We finally got home safe and sound and started getting Lillie ready for bed. As Keola was rocking with Lillie in her room, the all too familiar (from the Hawaii blackout) flicker of lights, occured once, twice, then nothing but blackness. The only light for a moment came from the computer that I had been working on. Keola quickly got a couple of flashlights for us and we moved Lillie's mattress into our bedroom. Living in this new house proved to be a challenge for the first time, as we lost not only electricity, but water flow, t.v., internet access, and HEAT!!! We pretty much had no contact with the outside and what was going on. Luckily, the house was still pretty warm, we snuggled up and went to bed.

The next morning proved to be a little more difficult. The electricity had not come on yet, and the house was a chilly 58 degrees. We brought Lillie in our bed and snuggled up until about 10am. There was no way Keola was getting the car to go anywhere, so it was nice to have daddy home. We went downstairs, turned on our gas fireplace that gave a little heat, and found some fruit and sandwiches to eat. We didn't worry about the fridge being opened and closed since it was probably colder OUTSIDE of the fridge, then inside. Keola attempted to shovel some snow, but it was so thick, it was pretty pointless. We found games to play and kept ourselves busy. Finally, a little after 1pm or so, the power came back on and so did the HEAT!! In the end, Southern Maryland had the worst snow storm since 2006, with an average of 12 inches of snow.

Here's our deck, decked out in the white stuff. About a month ago, we got an inch or so of snow and I took Lillie out to make some footprints on the deck. It was so cold, but she was excited to get her feet in the snow. Can you imagine how she felt when she woke up Monday morning and saw this!?!?

Aside from the fun, we did have a moment that we're thankful didn't end in disaster. During the night, we had heard a noise that sounded like a crack. But since it was pitch black outside and in, we couldn't see anything. The next morning, as Keola went out to shovel some snow, this is what he found.

As you can see, this tree fell during the night and hit our deck. We found a piece of the tree branch on the top of the deck. Luckily, it just missed doing any kind of damage to the house.

Here's Lillie trying to see if she can get in on the snow ball fight the neighbor boys were having.

Here's Lillie, so happy to be in the snow with her Daddy

Lillie was so excited to get her hands in that snow

Yipee!!!! Snow!!

AAHHHHHH!!!! It doesn't get better than this!!!!!

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Watch me make a snowball...or a snowman...or a snow boy!