Great Grandma Keamo

Lillie is so lucky to have at least one of her great grandparents still living. Lillie and grandma really have a good time together. It is so cute to see them together.

Above is a picture of grandma and Lillie at a party for the building where grandma used to live.

Above is a picture of Lillie playing catch with grandma. Lillie and grandma can spend hours playing together. They play catch, play with stickers, and have fun together. Grandma is 87 years old and Lillie is 3. There won't be much time left together, but at least we have these fun memories that Lillie will hopefully remember for life!

Merry Christmas in Hawaii!

We all went to the restaurant at Neiman Marcus for a fancy breakfast with Santa. It sure was a lot of fun and the food was delicious. Lillie isn't quite sure what to make of Santa just yet. Sometimes she is fine with him and other times she just doesn't want to have anything to do with him. For the picture shoot with Santa, we were lucky enough to turn it into a "family picture" for all of us. That was the only way Lillie would take a picture with Jolly Old Saint Nicholas!!

More pictures of our new home!

So the move went really smoothly. We hired a moving company and they had us all moved out of our old home and into our new home in no time. The home we moved into is larger than our old home. There are several additional rooms that we never had. For instance, there is a small dining area in the kitchen and then a formal dining room. There is also a formal living room and then another family area, and there is an additional bedroom upstairs. Because of the additional space, we don't have any furniture yet. Also, in our old home we had built-in book cases, and we don't in our new home, so we need to buy book cases at some point to put all our stuff.

Below is a picture of the open kitchen and the small eating area.

This is a picture of the formal living area. As you can see we don't have anything in there except for our lamps!

Below is our formal dining area. We have the Koa hutch there for now, but no dining table since our dining table we used in the old house is in the kitchen area.

Below is our large family room area. We love all the windows and the open feel to the entire room. Right now we have our old living room furniture in there, but that is eventually going to move to the living area and we are looking for nice family room furniture.

We Are Online Again!!!

We've been busy settling into our new home since we last posted. All is well and we are loving our new home. Luckily we moved into another ward in our same stake, so there was little adjustment to do with regard to the ward. We felt right at home at our new ward's Halloween party. Below are some of the youth dressed up for the occasion.

Below is a picture of some members dressed as the Duke's of Hazzard! They are our good friends Ginny and Tom.


Lillie dressed as Tinkerbell. Here she is with someone from her primary class, Abby dressed as Ragady Ann.

Here is our Tinkerbell with more members of her primary class. There are lots of children in the ward who are Lillie's age, so she will have lots of friends.

And last but not least, our little Tinkerbell. What a cute girl!!

After a LONG hiatus...
Let's see if I can shorten this long story...something kooky happened to our internet and we are now using dial up. Posts on our blogger will be few and FAR in between until November or so. Anyway, aside from feeling totally disconnected from the technology world, some pretty exciting things have been happening with the Sakai family in D.C.

For awhile now Keola and I have been tossing around the idea of moving to Southern Maryland to Calvert County. The area has better schools, safer communities, more home for your money, and a great ward. We knew that it would be all about timing, especially with the state of our economy. For about two months we went out every week looking for homes in Maryland. We found some great homes and finally put a bid on one that had been on the market for over a year and had no bids. Wouldn't you know it, two other families decided to bid on the house the same week. Unfortunately, we were rejected. Then we found another great home. It was beautiful, a foreclosure, on the market for over a year, and no bids. We thought this was for sure a shoe in. Meanwhile, we decided to talk to our agent about selling our home and trying to find a good time. The time we quickly chose was Labor day weekend. Shocking I think EVERYONE involved, our house was put on the market and a contract accepted in SIX days!! What was even more shocking was that the bid was more than what we asked for.

Well, as for the foreclosed home...rejection number 2. We couldn't understand it!! Now we had our home being sold and no home to move in to. Dealing with that thought on top of dealing with lenders, and thinking of the downward fall of banks and the economy, we were getting a bit stressed out. Then we found a home two doors down from the foreclosed home. We looked and it was beautiful!! We put in a bid and as of today, I think we have a HOME!!!! We had a walk through today with the inspector and things are looking great. Since the pictures were taken off the listing, I decided to take some pictures during the walk through. So hold your hats, here's our new home...well, sometime after the week of Halloween it will officially be our new home.

The subdivision is pretty small with only 10 homes.

Here's the home from the street. It's on a bit of a slope, as you can see.

Notice the gazebo on the back of the house off to the right.

Let me warn you now before we go any further...the current owners still have all their stuff in the home so you'll have to look past the "stuff". Everything will look much different once we get our things in.

Here's the living room that they obviously use as their office.

Here's the GREAT, BIG family room. I LOVE this room. It's nice and big and airy. Space wise, it reminds me a lot of my old home in Hawaii. Open and spacious.

There's a gas fireplace in the family room and an alcove for our t.v.

This is the formal dining room right inside of the front door.

One of my favorites, a nice open kitchen (Hey, no cooking jokes, Maka and Stew!!).

A beautiful bay window with a breakfast area. The kitchen and breakfast area both open to the family room which makes this "room" really open and large. I think from kitchen to the opposite wall is about 40 feet wide!!

Right outside the family room and kitchen is the large deck with gazebo!!

Now for upstairs. Again, let me remind you, current owners still have their "stuff" everywhere! The pictures of the rooms are not very good. I couldn't really get good angles.
This is the two story foyer.

Master bedroom with double doors. I didn't get a picture of the master bath, but it has a double sink, whirlpool tub (which we're calling Lillie's swimming pool), shower, and toilet.

Here's one of two closets in the master. The other is not quite as large.

Guest bath. Kind of BLAH, but we're hoping to spruce it up a bit.

One of two guest rooms

Guess who's room this will be??

The house also has a full basement that is unfinished. We're looking forward to adding another room and bath with a great added space, in the future.

We're REALLY excited!!! We'll keep everyone updated on the progress and upcoming closing dates on both homes.

Now, with more house, more space, and more guest rooms, we're REALLY expecting guests!!!! HInt Hint!!

Suitland Stake Youth Conference
Power From on High
Kirtland, Ohio

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Keola, Lillie, and I just finished packing our bags for our exciting road trip tomorrow. Although Lillie has NO IDEA where we're going, she's excited to have packed her DVD player, 4 movies, some pots, pans, and dishes, markers, coloring book, and of course, her bathing suit!!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Keola left this morning at 6:15 a.m. to meet the youth in our stake at the stake center. As you can see, they were busily getting their bags and themselves situated.

With most of the youth there, some of the "parent couples" (which this year, were the bishops and their wives) organized some of the bags and made sure they had their "family" of youth gathered together.

With youth counted and bags gathered, all "families" met to make a banner and get to know each other better.
Around 8:30 a.m. the time finally came. "Families" were rounded up and loaded onto one of three buses. A total of 115 youth and about 42 adults did a final count and all were excited to begin their youth conference in Kirtland, Ohio.

Keola, Lillie, and I loaded our bags into our car and drove up to Kirtland as a family. Technically, no kids were allowed on this trip, since it was a youth activity, so the "joke" was that Lillie was CONTRABAND! Lillie and I spent most of the time at the hotel, which we didn't mind, and got to see Keola every night...BONUS!!

After a slightly rough drive - heavy rains and LOTS of construction - we finally pulled into Ohio around 3:30 p.m. Lillie and I got settled into the hotel, while Keola went to the beach park where the kids were stopping. Unfortunately, the rains made it impossible for the kids to take a swim, so they just had dinner in a pavilion and listened to a high counselor explain the significance of the harbor. Soon after, the kids headed to John Carroll University, where they would be sleeping the next three nights. The youth enjoyed a very SHORT dance at the Kirtland Stake Center.

Thursday, July 24, 2008
Today was filled with lots of tours and church history information. Keola's bus took the Historic Kirtland tour.

Here's the Newel K. Whitney Store





This is a water wheel that supplied the power source to run the sawmill that cut the wood for the Kirtland Temple.
Here is one of the "families" posing for a picture. Each family consisted of a bishop and his wife, and about 8-10 kids from different wards within the stake.
Here's another "family"
Lillie and I spent the morning at the hotel at the pool. Keola had the camera, so unfortunately, I don't have pictures. We tried, for the first time the floater swim suit Nana bought Lillie. I'll just say this, picture a little string bean like Lillie puffed up like a body builder on top. I couldn't stop laughing it was quite a sight. Anyway, we headed to the hotel's pool and once inside, I tried to show Lillie what the floaters in her suit could do. After one try, she was NOT convinced or happy about the whole thing. I tried taking her into the deep end holding onto her, but she was not cooperating. After about 30 min. trying to play with Lillie in the pool, she got out, sat on one of the pool chairs and said, "I'll just wait here for you until you're done, Mommy" Well, that was the sign it was time to go. We headed back to our room to change, not realizing that would be the last trip to the pool (Lillie's choice).

That afternoon, I was able to go on one of the tours with the kids. Keola and I decided the best one would be the Kirtland Temple. It was such an interesting tour and the temple itself it so unique.
Friday, July 25, 2008
The day began with finishing up some tours and playing some games. The day ended with an amazing meeting in the Kirtland Temple. Unfortunately, I didn't go (the contraband thing - we didn't want to distract the youth at such a special meeting), but Keola described the whole thing to me. The stake presidency sat behind the three podiums and the youth filed in, including a choir of 70 youth. The meeting proceeded with the stake presidency preparing and blessing the sacrament and the bishops passing the sacrament to the youth. Then the youth participated in a testimony meeting with a musical number by the youth choir singing the Spirit of God. Keola said that the spirit was very strong and the youth were sobbing by the end. So much so that when the stake president, President Page, got up as the closing speaker, he asked the youth to take a deep breath. I can only imagine what an amazing experience that was.

Here is the stake presidency from L to R: President Denzel Frost - First Counselor, President Ken Page - Stake President, and of course Keola - Second Counselor.

They are standing in front of the front door of the temple. Apparently, the two doors that form the entrance to the temple weigh 200 lbs. EACH!


Saturday, July 26, 2008
What a great trip! After waving the kids goodbye, we got into our car and started the 6 hour trip back to D.C. We had a fantastic time in Ohio and enjoyed learning so much about the Saints during the time of Joseph Smith.