meet the sloths...

"mommy, you be the mommy sloth, daddy will be the daddy sloth, and i'm the baby sloth!"...

and so it's been for the last week or so that we are the sloth family...she must not be addressed as honey, princess, monkey, pie-pie, palmer, or any of the other names we have been allowed to call her for the last several years...now we are corrected!...

"no mommy sloth! you say 'it's time for lunch now BABY SLOTH'"...

my most humble apologies baby sloth!

"honey?...where do i put the baby sloth?"

"i think the box says living room."

"oh right, with the rest of the sloths"don't you wish you could be a sloth too???

i want to be a sewist...

i got a serger for mother's day...having previously only ever quilted, this is a big step...

i don't really know what i'm doing...but i started from a tutorial at sew, mama, sew and sort of ended up here:

i have had the fabric forever - i think it's probably moved 3 times now...i don't know...it must have been really cheap cause i don't love it...i'm not *sure* what i had planned for it...i think i had a hawaiian shirt pattern for bear years ago when i thought i'd learn to sew...but anyways...i had a few yards...

so first i made palmer a simple shirred bodice dress...then i found that tutorial and thought i'd make myself a matching shirt...(i did...but i'm gonna modify the hem so i didn't take pics yet)...but then i like the bamboo material i used for my neckline and so i made a little mini one for p...i really like the straps in the back...lessons learned: blind hem stitch is still not all that easy...even with a guide on the presser foot, it's hard to catch it in the right spot!...practice, practice, practice!...aaaaaaand measuring twice, cutting once only applies if you remember the right measurement to cut!!!

but the customer is happy...very happy...she even insisted on taking the other dress over to our friend's house for a visit so they could be matching "island princesses!"...and she wanted to wear it again yesterday and today...

did you know...

that when they say FIJI water is "from the islands of fiji", they actually mean it???...

i know this cause i, along with probably 100 other tourists a day, actually asked at the pizza joint where palmer and i had dinner the first night!

had a great time in fiji and "honowuwu"...will update more later!

bula!!!

(and aloha!)

we are headed to fiji for a few days...bear is flying the island hopper to hawaii today, where he will get in very late and then meet his mom tomorrow to head to fiji tomorrow night...palmer and i will leave tonight for fiji and spend the day at the pool tomorrow waiting for them...

not sure what we're gonna do there, but maybe zip-line!...there is a turtle club child care at the hotel that bear has checked out and feels comfortable with (our friends have used it too!) so we would leave the tot there and check out zip-fiji...we are staying in nadi which is not one of the premier diving locations so i don't think we will be doing that...in fact, bear said the beach at our hotel is not even that great...(but really - who cares - we have our own here!)...

there is a big hindu temple and a garden that may need checking out too...and definitely on the list is partaking of a cava root ceremony!...

we'll be there a few days then all fly back to hono where bear's sister and kids will be staying...we are only there a very short time (36 hours or less i think), and we will mostly be shopping so we can send stuff back to guam, but it will be fun to see the kids and for palmer to meet them at least!

truly...i'm drooling at the thought of walking around target, costco, and the like!...we have a list of stuff we need to get while we're there (MUST HAVES: bear is getting a half and half ice blended from coffee bean, and i'm getting a decaf grande nonfat mocha from starbucks!!!)

oh, and palmer went to her very first movie the other day - "how to train your dragon" in 3-D...very cool...we had the theater to ourselves (1:30 showing) and it was nice and cold so we got to wear sweatshirts and palmer was very good and stayed in her seat very well (the popcorn may have helped there!)...the glasses were a bit big on her so she only wore them half the time!

open water divers!!!

since we weren't able to make it back to the states for bear's vacation, we decided to put the time off to good use and go get our open water certification...("what is open water certification? - i thought you guys were scuba diving?"...open water certification means we are qualified to go on our own...scuba certification means you know how to dive but still must go with a divemaster to supervise you)...

so we started by getting the best instructor out there...perfect blend of cool guy/jokester/laid back, while still being knowledgeable, safe, thorough, and trustworthy...we had two days of classwork and tests, then we got in the pool...

at first i wasn't sure i would be able to go under the water...it took me a couple of tries to psych myself up to submerge...but finally i just closed my eyes, focused on breathing and didn't open them til i was underwater...from there on out it was smooth sailing!

here is rodney having bear do the free-flowing regulator skill test...

and here is me doing it...it looks really violent in real life...the air is blowing your head all over and it almost makes your mask come off, but it is very easy to do really...when he demoed it, it looked like his head was gonna blow off and i admit i was like "holy $h!t!!! - how are we gonna do that?" - but it was easy as pie...



(a little shout out to jeff and becky who watched palmer that night so we didn't have to worry about her, and were really great when we were late picking her up cause we weren't allowed in the pool on time!)

the next day we headed out for our first open water dive...the fish were swarming the second we got in...it was great! (we even saw a lion fish)


we did two dives that day and did different skills in each one, both surface and underwater...here we are doing an alternate air "ascent" (bear is breathing from my second regulator - then we hang on to each other and swim)
the next day we did two more dives...we saw a sea turtle which was really cool and got to pet a pufferfish!...we also did underwater compass navigation which had us swimming through pure blue water where you could not see anything around you...no point of reference (well, the surface 50 ft up but you would have to look straight up)...no floor no wall of reef, nothing...eerie, but cool...
then we came up to this really great massive flat reef...AWE-SOME...really cool stuff to see and touch...(gently of course!)...we didn't have our camera for that one though cause it's only rated to 33 feet and we had already pushed it the day before in the 40 ft range...didn't want to take it to 60!...

but then we grabbed it off the float again before we came in so we could feed the fish! (they love vienna sausages!)(another shout out to kelly and alyson who watched palmer for our second day of open water...she had a great time at their house! - we had a babysitter from our gym for the first day)

it was really cool...i would recommend trying it to everyone...i thought i would be all panicky and anxious...but really doing the reading and knowing what to do made me feel really prepared and not a bit of anxiety...




i think we have a new hobby!...(we really ought to find cheaper hobbies!!!)