HAPPY 4th of July!!

For the 4th, we celebrated by visiting the young women at girls camp!! Their camp started on Monday and ended this morning. Last night, we all headed up to the camp to meet with them and Keola and the stake president did a short fireside. Later we ate dinner and Lillie and I headed to a hotel to hang out while Keola attended a testimony meeting with the girls. The campsite was about 2 hours from home, so we decided to spend the night at a hotel closer to the campsite.

Here's Lillie ready to go with her backpack full of essentials...dolls.

The girls camp was close to the Pennsylvania border, so we decided to take a little detour this morning and visit Boyd's Bear Country. I first heard of Boyd's Bears from Keola's grandma who has a collection of these cute stuffed teddy bears. We heard their factory was in Pennsylvania, so we took the 25 min. detour to visit.

We pulled in and saw this massive, 4 story red barn. We were excited and so was Lillie. Can't you tell from the picture!! ha ha Somehow, Lillie had too much fun at girls camp and was VERY tired this morning (sorry no pictures of camp. I totally forgot to bring out the camera).

The Sakai's celebrating the 4th at bear country...Take 1

Take 2

We came across this section of decorated gourds (like a hula ipu). They were SO cute all painted up and decorated. Meet the Santa gourds.

Keola trying to get back to his roots

The gourd tree

The black cat gourds

I actually thought this was really pretty. They cut leaf shapes out of the gourd and had a light inside shining through. Here are some with the light on and some with the light off so that you can see the cutouts.

And last, but not least, the cats and dogs.

Lillie couldn't get over how big this snowman was. If you look closely, there's a band-aid on the nose. I guess the stitches ripped in the sewing.

Bears, bears, and...

MORE bears. All dressed in super cute outfits.

On one floor they had a puppy adoption center

They also had a baby bear nursery. I'm not sure what Keola was doing...you decide.

And best of all, Boyd's Super Duper Bear Factory. We couldn't resist when Lillie kept asking if she could take one home.

Lillie is not usually a stuffed animal kind of girl, but looking at them all day must have gotten to her. When she saw this cow, she couldn't part with her. Why a cow?? Not sure. She's never shown interest in cows before. Maybe it's the book Aunty Berta just sent her.

First step, get a hardhat and time card for your work day in the bear factory.

Step 2: Choose some magic "beans" to stuff your animal. Different colors represented things like friendship, love, courage, and laughter.

Step 3: Have the women help stuff the beans in the belly.

Pour all the beans in.
Then shake, shake, shake it in the belly.
Step 4: Find a cute outfitI'm not sure why we don't have a "finished" picture of Lillie with her doll, but she absolutely loves this cow...Miss Cow or more formally known as Miss Tinkerbell. We'll have to take more pictures of her with Miss Tinkerbell later.

After the 2 hour drive home, we relaxed, ate dinner, and watched the fireworks on TV. It was a nice relaxing 4th of July. I hope you all had a fun holiday!!

Welcome to the Calvert Carnival!!

The past few days we've seen this carnival set up at a middle school down the street. We were planning on going this weekend, but decided it might be really crowded, plus there was a chance of rain. So Keola surprised Lillie by telling her we had a special place to go Thursday night. She could barely stay in her car seat!!

First stop, the fire truck.

Next stop, a helicopter flight!

Before she even got off the helicopter, she scoped out the Dragon "train", at least that's what Lillie thought it was. Lillie's first experience with a rollercoaster.

Lillie is destined to be a rollercoaster queen!

This was the first time I actually felt like my little girl is growing up.

Then the BIG ride - the Ferris Wheel. Lillie had her eyes on this ride for a while!

Bring on the cheese!

After the Ferris Wheel, the good 'ole Bumper Cars proved to be a riot!

Lillie takes the wheel

I know this is a bad picture, but I couldn't resist the best looks on Daddy and Lillie's face.

It was getting late, but we squeezed in one more ride.

Swing, swing, swing!

We had a GREAT time at the carnival.

Home improvement contiinues at the Sakai household. After doing the family room curtains, we decided to make some short curtains for the kitchen and breakfast nook. I finally finished those today. So here they are.
The next project is to make longer curtains for the the bottom half of the breakfast nook.

We had so much of the family room fabric, I layered it with a coordinating stripe fabric. I think they came out pretty well. Here are some random pictures of Lillie that I took one day while we were playing at home.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my Lillie!!

Well, our house is FINALLY looking like a home!! We've received all the furniture for the family room (for now), and we are so happy that everything matches and looks great!!

Here's the before...

The during...
And the after!!!!

Meet Gypsy Rose!

The day after the bookshelves were delivered, Lillie was playing with her blanket. Before I knew it, she had twisted it into a rope and somehow stuck it on her head.

The next feat was curtains. This was a painstakingly long process. Not to actually make the drapes, but to decide on what we wanted to do, and what we could afford. When we purchased the couch, the company also made custom drapes. We decided to look into it to see what our options were. We have 5 windows in our family room, 3 of which are fairly large. The designer we were working with, quoted us almost $5000!!! We almost fell over. We kept hearing words like, custom made, exclusive fabric, professional installation, blah, blah, blah!! We weren't buying it. That led us to a small family owned and operated shop here in Prince Frederick, near our home. We went in, had a little talk with the owner (Agnes), and she said she could get us a great deal. We found the manufacturer of the "exclusive fabric" and noticed a wholesale store right here in D.C. Agnes made a few calls and wrote up a proposal for exactly what we wanted from the 1st store, but with a price tag of $2300. A big difference, but we were still not sold on the idea. We found out the fabric we were looking at IS pretty exclusive, and that is what drove the price since the fabric was $50/yard!! Well, we just couldn't see paying that much. So that led us to look for different fabric. We finally found one we both loved, but it still about $30/yard. We did our homework and after scouring the internet, I found a website that sold the exact same fabric for $16/yard, which was much more reasonable for us. Still cringing at the cost for everything (now at almost $1800), Keola got this bright idea...Kim can MAKE the curtains!! I thought he was kidding at first! After much convincing, I decided to take on the project. Keola helped prep the first panel. We cut, ironed, pinned everything, and then I went to work sewing it up. We were so proud of ourselves, until...we held it up to the window. We noticed the bottom hem was short...4" short!!! We couldn't believe it! I lost all hope after that. Then Keola had another idea...call Aunty Bertha. We did and she gave us some great ideas on how to cut the fabric more evenly and some tips on how to do everything else. After a week of getting my confidence back up, we forged ahead and tried it again. This time it was much easier and we were much more successful. We calculated that after a little lag after the first panel, it took us about a week and a half to complete the drapes. This past Friday we went out to find the rods, had them cut to our custom lengths (that is a whole other story!!), and we were ready to install them ourselves. Saturday we attended two wedding receptions, then when we came home, Keola asked, "should we put the drapes up?" He didn't have to ask twice. I was so excited to see our new drapes up. After some measuring, drilling, and attaching...here's the end result!!

We are so thrilled with the results. The drapes make the whole room look different. We absolutely love the outcome!! Now, when Keola goes downstairs, he always says, "Who's house IS this?!?"

Now for the next project...the kitchen drapes and decor!! Stay tuned.

I couldn't leave out pictures of Lillie. Tonight she decided to be Sleeping Beauty. Notice how perfectly straight and flat the blanket is...our little perfectionist!!

Well, not always!! She's not crying, just making faces for the camera.