White House Easter Egg Roll

A friend of ours from church was able to get us tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll.  It is such a neat tradition here in DC, we had wanted to go ever since Lillie was old enough to appreciate it.  But getting tickets can be very difficult.  One year we thought about camping out for the tickets, when they used to give them out at the ticket office.  Now they have an online lottery, for which we registered this year, but did not make the cut.  So we felt so happy when we got tickets from our friends at church.

It began with waiting and waiting in a long line.

There were throngs of people attending the event...in fact the news said over 30,000.

We met up with some other friends from Church, so Lillie had some friends to run around with.

And Lillie was thrilled to see one of her faborite actresses from the Disney Channel, from a show called Jessie.

It was a fun day, but it was exhausting!  Lillie enjoyed herself, though, so that's all that counts!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

March 17th, and this is what we woke up to...

Lillie has yet another snow day and Keola is home from work since the Federal Government closed it's offices. And other than the shoveling, we love our snow days!!  Especially since we had stake conference this weekend. 

After conference, we took a two hour drive to visit poor Elder Kauwe in Delaware. He seemed to be in great spirits and also seemed to be recovering quite well!  We finally made it to his room...

And there he was. 

I know it may not look great with all the IV's, but talking to him, he seemed to be doing well. 

Lillie got to meet cousin Paul for the first time yesterday. 

Before we left, Paul went on his lap around the hospital floor - his doctor and nurses encouraged him to take 4 laps a day, and this was his third.  

Aside from the circumstances, we had a nice visit with Elder Kauwe. Now that he is out of the ICU, he is allowed to have a companion with him 24/7. We were glad that he could have some company and someone to watch over him. We hope to visit him again once he is out of the hospital. 

On the car ride home, we asked Lillie about her first meeting with her cousin Paul. She replied, "He was nice. It was a good visit!"

2014 Priest Laurel Dinner Dance

The stake had their annual Priest Laurel Dinner Dance.  The theme was "Under the Sea".  The youth leaders did a fabulous job as always.  It is a really fancy event.  They decorated the entire place to look as if we were under the ocean.  They had a drop ceiling with blue fabric draped across the cultural hall, balloons that looked like coral, and other balloons that look like bubbles.

One of the highlights is a live band!

And the other highlight of the decorations are the flowers.  This year, Kim made all the flowers, and they were beautiful.  The leaders put live goldfish in the tall vases.

Picture of the flowers as they were being made by the master florist.

Snow, snow and more snow

We've had a lot of snow lately.  Work has been closed, and school cancelled quite a bit.  That means we've been spending a lot of time at home, and we love it!  Our day usually begins by shovelling all the snow on the driveway, and then figuring out what we are going to cook and do the rest of the day.  We made an old hawaiian favorite on a very cold winter day...ox tail soup.  It was just like home!

And after we finish shovelling for the day, we built a snowman...

We've had a lot of fun together this winter!

Lillie turns 9

We just cannot believe that Lillie is already 9.  We granted 9 wishes on her special day.  Her wishes were: stay home from school, have daddy stay home from work. see the Disney movie Frozen, play games at home, have chocolate ice cream cake, sleep in mom and dad's room the night before birthday, sleep in mom and dad's room on the birthday night, have nishime for dinner, and receive at least 5 birthday gifts.  We all had a great day with Lillie on her special day.

Lillie's favorite meal...nishime and crab sushi.

New outfit from cousin Nai.

New boots from Nana.

Daddy's birthday

We had a lovely evening to celebrate daddy's birthday.  Mom made his favorite japanese food, and the cake was made in the toy easy bake oven!!  What a fun night!

New Year's Trip to NYC Part 3

Ever since we took lillie three years ago to NYC, she has wanted to see the statue of liberty up close.  So that's what we did today.

And we were like locals taking the subway all over the place.