Hooray for presents

This holiday season Noah was very much into opening presents! It wasn't even necessarily about getting a gift, he just enjoyed unwrapping the boxes.

Here are a few photos of Noah opening gifts we received the other day from the AZ Jakes :)

He loved the flying robots!

Rain, rain, go away

Today has been a relatively unusual rainy day on our side of the island. We had some errands to run at the *outdoor* mall, and unfortunately it was raining there, too.

Noah had a great time running around in the rain, though! Well, he enjoyed it until we got home and he was told he couldn't ride his tricycle in the rain.

Waving to Daddy

The other morning we made it out to the beach in time to wave to Daddy as he flew by :-)

If you look close, you can see the plane :)

Apparently he thought the bucket would make a great hat

Softball practice

Fresh and Fruity (Banana edition)

We have palm trees in our front yard and banana trees in our back yard! I may have mentioned this before, but the exciting thing this time is that we have bananas growing in our banana tree!!!

I had no idea that bananas have a flower thing that grows off of them! Who knew we'd learn so much in Kauai ;)

This is what Noah was doing while I was snapping pictures :)

The full view of our banana trees in the corner of our yard. If you look closely you can see the purple flower where the bananas are growing.

We haven't had any bananas ready to eat from our trees yet, but luckily our neighbor's tree just had some bananas ripe for picking! And since no one actually lives next door, guess who got the bananas :)  

Here's a portion of the bananas from our neighbor's tree

These bananas are the best bananas we have ever eaten!!! They are so good, in fact, they finally cured Noah of his banana phobia, whoohoo!  

We aren't entirely sure what happened but for some reason when Noah tried real bananas for the first time, the texture freaked him out! For two years, we could not get him to even take a small bite of banana! 

Now, we can't get him to stop eating them! I'm pretty sure he ate four in a row the other day :)

The "I love bananas" dance ;-)

Fresh and Fruity (Coconut edition)

There are palm trees ALL over the base, including in our front yard! While it's cool to see coconuts growing on the trees, it's also...dangerous...duh duh duh.  But seriously, after the coconuts reach a certain size they literally just fall out of the trees! So in an effort to avoid serious injury, the housing people trim all the palm trees before the coconuts start falling on our heads.

We've seen them use two different techniques to trim the trees, but I'm not sure what determines which method they will use.

The first method is having a guy just scale the tree with some kind of tree climbing rope thing (sorry, I don't know any technical terms for tree trimming equipment :) and quick feet.  It was pretty cool to watch this guy in action! 

On a side note, this guy caught me taking his picture so he stopped and waved! That's talent ;-)

The second method of palm tree trimming (pruning?) involves using a truck with a cherry picker basket. That is the method they used to cut the palm tree in our yard.

I took this picture of our palm tree right before they came over to prune it. Sorry it's not the best angle for comparison, but they were trying to kick me out of my yard ;-)

Here they are in action. Sorry about the cord in the picture, I had to take the photo through our kitchen window so I didn't get knocked out by falling coconuts and palm fronds!

Our tree after it was hacked to death!

Aviators

Noah having fun with Daddy's sunglasses :-)

Every time he took them off he yelled, "Surprise!!!"

Take me out to the ball game

Ely's softball team had a tournament on Saturday, so Noah and I went and cheered them on in the morning.

Noah got to work on his batting skills with Daddy   :-D

*Luckily* for me, the softball field is surrounded by Kauai's famous red dirt...

Back at home and ready for a bath!

This is what I got when I said it was time to go in and clean up!

Little boys

The guys on base started a softball team, so Noah and I have spent the last couple Friday afternoons watching them play. Noah desperately wants to run out onto the field and play, too! Luckily for Noah and I, there are a couple of other little boys who come watch the games, too and help keep Noah entertained and off the field :)


During one of the innings Ely came out and pulled the boys around in our wagon for a little bit, and Noah had a great time helping push the wagon.

Ely, Mugan, Camdon, & Noah

Our 3rd (and final) Christmas Parade

I know it's technically after Christmas, but I figured you were all very anxious to see the photos from our last Christmas parade of the season!  This parade was in Waimea, the second closest town to us (about 20 minutes away) and the closest town with a restaurant! Daddy was also in this parade, but luckily we had lots of friends to sit with.

Of the three parades, I think Lights on Rice was my favorite!  The Waimea Christmas parade was really nice but it was a lot shorter and they started before the sun went down so some of the effects of the Christmas lights were lost. But we still had a nice time and Noah loved it and loved seeing Daddy :)

Ella Kate & Noah waiting for the parade to start

They decided to switch chairs :)

The guys before the parade

 Coloring before the parade

Aloha Santa

Enjoying a sucker and watching for Daddy

Jimmy, Daddy, Paul and PMRF's goofy holiday costumes

Daddy!!!

Melts my heart every time  <3

Tractor in lights

The parade must have had some kind of theme (which we never figured out) but this group made an Angry Birds float!

Hula dancer