Two Rizzle Pics

Look what Ryan did yesterday! He walked over to the ottoman with his ukulele, opened it up, pulled out a music book (just like daddy!) and then proceeded to open it up and start strumming!


Team Ty & Ry on their Sat. night playdate! These two play so well together- not a single fight or tear all night long!

Aloha Aunty Kathy!!!

Our latest visitor has officially left the island. :-( Ryan even held her hand all the way to the airport (which he'd never done before...so we think he understood she was leaving). He loved having his godmother here for a week- she played with him soooo much (and even changed her first diaper!), and he got to log in even more beach and pool time than ever! And thankfully, she left us some extra photos to remember her trip by!


Here's the baby daddy and Ryan at one of Aunty Kathy's favorite beaches (Kua Bay). She went there three times!

Building my ill-fated, but visionary 'baby pool' for Ryan at Kua Bay.

The night of the Running on Faith run(s)...our first evening run! Ryan loved all the police officers on the race course and smoothies afterward! Not our fastest run (30 min.) on record, but a memorable post-race!

Ry & his cousins each scored some glow bracelets after the race, here he is showing his bling off!

Aunty Kathy ended her trip with a short stay at the Sheraton Keauhou, and we were the beneficiaries since she kindly added us to her room so we could swim at the pool three times!

Cousin Riki shared his outgrown Shinkansen train floatie with Ryan...it was perfect!

Ryan...not such a fan of backfloating! For some reason it makes him giggle uncontrollably!

He also couldn't stop laughing while attempting to crab crawl (think it's nervous laughter)! Note to self: Kona Aquatic Center has the best crab crawl-friendly walls in town!

Ryan playing in the sandy keiki section of the pool on our last day there...

***Bye, Aunty Kathy...come again soon!!!***

Busy Birthday Week!

This past week might go down in history as one of our busiest ever! For starters, Ry got to go to three (out of four possible) birthday party celebrations! Ry looooves birthday parties!

Sei turned three on Wednesday, so Ryan was able to swim at Sei's pool for hours! FYI Kona residents- it may be worth buying a condo at Kona Surf & Raquet just because of their keiki-friendly pool! Loved it!!!

And then a few days later on Saturday, it was Samuel's birthday! Ry got to play croquet (sorry, no pics!) and take a few swings at a pinata! Grandpa and Grandma took Ryan for me because they know Samuel's family well and because I was at home whipping up Keni's penguin birthday cake! Thankfully, I had help! Rich and Kathy (visiting us from California) patiently helped me shape the penguins for the top of the cake!


And then on Sunday, we rang in Kenichi's 8th year!!!

There was a little pond on top of the glacier that Ryan called 'ocean'...so he insisted on eating the 'ocean' piece.

Keni had an outdoor water play themed party, which is pretty much tops in the 10 & Under category!

Aunty Mika had a slip and slide, Ryan's pool, sprinklers, water guns and tons of water balloons for the kiddies to play with.

Ryan loved the water play with the big kids! Especially cute little Makena...his special protector and playmate that day.

He's also been busy chillin' out with Aunty Kathy...the best aunty and godmother in the universe! So far Ryan has taken her to sparkling Kua Bay (she's gone back two more times on her own!) and snorkeling at Kahalu'u. Speaking of Kua Bay, I had to abort my attempted long run out there this past Sunday at mile 14.5 because I think I was still too sick/weak/tired (I've had a cold) to finish it. I started to feel light-headed around mile 14 and ran out of water, so I made the tough decision to stop. I think I've only ever 'quit' a handful of long runs, but it's always so hard to throw in the towel!

Someone also figured out a faster way to get his daily juice and milk quota down (I wish I were kidding, this kid rarely ever wants to drink anything)!

Here's Ryan checking out the new beats one day (head bobbing and all!) while Aunty Kathy shopped at Target...

.

There's also been some extra drama added to the mix- my 85-year old grandmother recently had a minor heart attack, so my mother and I have been dropping in her almost daily, often twice daily to check in on her, help cook her meals, bathe, clean, go to doctor's appointments, shop, get new medical equipment, etc. If you combine all this with the fact that she's very, very stubborn and well...a tad grouchy- it's been pretty tiring!

.

I also had two last minute/emergency dental appointments and a narrowly averted double root canal! Thank you Jesus, for letting me hold onto the $2,000 they would have cost out of pocket!!!

.

But on the brighter side of things-

.

Last night we participated in one of the best races Kona' ever seen (wish I had pics)- Jason Lester's book launch party and the Running on Faith 5k run! Ryan loved it because we pushed him in the stroller and he got to see a half a dozen police officers working the traffic! Ry's Aunty Mika ran in her first race ever with us, so he and his cousins got to run around down at Coconut Grove Marketplace all evening after the race eating pizza, popcorn, smoothies and playing with their glow bracelets! I loved running an evening race, it made the post race mingling all the more enjoyable because it was so nice and cool.

.

And best of all, we get to have even more run fun because this weekend the Lavaman is hosting a Keiki 6 yrs. and under 200-yard dash down at Kahalu'u Beach! This is double the distance of Ryan's only other race, and on the sand to boot- still, we think he'll be able to finish!

.

And the final event of our craziest week ever- After car shopping for weeks...

...we gots a new ride! After a few weeks of looking around, we traded in the FJ Cruiser so we could get a truck (I think this means we're official card carrying locals now)! We loved the Cruiser, but we figured a truck was more Kona-friendly, and even though this one isn't brand new- it's fully tricked out. Rich and my parents actually drove all the way out to Hilo and back on Monday afternoon/evening to pick it up. Once Ryan climbed into it, he said, "I like it!" (so I guess this means we get to keep it)!

.

I'm off to go curl into a ball, suck my thumb and take a nap!

Happy 8th Birthday Kenichi!

A certain little 8-year old looooves penguins! Happy 8th Birthday Kenichi!

***And special thanks Kathy & Rich for helping me patiently mold the penguins!***

Ryan the Rocket!

Hi! My name is Ryan, and I love to jump. This is what happenned last night when my daddy and mommy took out our new futon mattress and put it next to our sofa!

Wheeee!!!

Geronimo!!!

This never gets old!!!

Whew! I stuck the landing!!!

Cowabunga!!!

C'mon mommy! This is fun!

Whoops. Our timing was a bit off. Let's try this again!

Nope, still off!

Finally in sync!

Waikikiiiiiiiiiii!!!!

Back when I was a college student in the early to mid-nineties, I used to think of Waikiki as being kinda, well...seedy. Dirty. But I think a lot has changed over the past 13 years (and I'm referring to Waikiki and I), because the two of us just shared a very sweet, lovin' reunion over the past four days! And now I'm yearning for more! :-)

Seriously- I couldn't have asked for a better trip from start to finish. We got up at 4:45am on Thursday morning and then woke up a very confused, but quickly peppy Ryan to catch our early morning flight. Once we landed in Honolulu (or as Ryan calls it, Ha-nee-yu-yu) we quickly caught a bus to downtown. Rich hopped off after about 60 min. so he could go to his work conference, and soon thereafter, Ryan and I found ourselves very tightly wedged between two super chatty homeless guys- one kept inviting me to his Rastafarian church, and the other kept mumbling about there being too many bums in Hawaii (forgot what it's like taking the bus)! But the real challenge of the day was getting off the bus, because I had four things to juggle/carry off- a nervous 2-year old, my large travel backpack, the diaper bag and the jog stroller. Thankfully a nice lady held the doors open for me so I could shove all of our things out, and unlike San Fran, the driver didn't yell at me or roll his eyes for my taking too long! Gotta love the aloha!

But once we were in Waikiki- things just fell into place. Even though it was only 9am, I was able to check in to our hotel since I paid an additional $10 a day to upgrade us to a better room (that was available immediately). And man- what a phenomenal location...only minutes from the amazing beach, restaurants, shops, etc.! From there, Ry and I dashed off to the zoo for our first of two visits that day! Unfortunately, I don't have any photos from that day since I thought my camera was broken (it was not...long story). At first I was super bummed (no pics of Ry with the giraffes? elephants? tigers?! Unimaginable!!!), but told myself to just revel in the fun without having to stop all the fun every 3 minutes to take a picture. I can't lie, it took a few minutes of mental reconditioning before I could accept this (I am Japanese tourist after all), but eventually I got into it! Rich got back to the hotel around 5pm and then we met our friends for a quick swim and dinner at Lulu's afterward.

On Friday we went to Starbucks for what would become our daily breakfast & late afternoon tradition, then hit the Waikiki Aquarium (small, but perfect for kids Ryan's age!) & beach with our friends, cruised Waikiki, joined our friends again for dinner at Cheeseburger's in Paradise, and then closed the day with an Entourage marathon on Rich's new netbook once Ryan fell asleep!

.

On Saturday we walked over to Ala Moana to get some obligatory chichidango and peanut butter mochi for the parents, some t-shirts for Keni & Riki, a stop at Jungle Fun so Ryan could ride every ride in there twice (he played his first games too!), and then met up my Uncle for a decadent, indulgent lunch at PF Chang's. We ended up deciding to walk back to the hotel so we could burn off some of 4,000 calories we each consumed, then hit the beach for a third time, and met our friends at the Aston's Tiki bar for dinner followed by a hula show & fireworks display on the beach. Our nighttime entertainment was to watch Date Night on the netbook, because yes, we're such wild ones!

.

On Sunday I wanted to take Ryan to brunch, the beach and the zoo for a final visit (since he loved it so much), but since I woke up with a cold, Rich ended up doing it all solo! So I got to rest in bed with the Sunday paper and also ended up watching Grown Ups and part of Whip It! (kinda slow). We had to check out of our hotel around 1pm to catch the bus (more adventures with a homeless man who told the same story four times about the police, FBI and CIA all being in a conspiracy to stop him from telling the truth) back to the airport!

.

Here, in random order, are some of the pics we did manage to take once Rich fixed our 'broken' camera!

.

The happy family walking the beach at Waikiki...check out the classic Rizzle smile!

.

Ryan playing with his ocean-themed Silly Bandz in our hotel room.

Ry & I at the beach with a little boy that refused to leave our side the entire time and insisted on jumping into every picture we tried to take!

.

We spent nearly every night sitting on the beach at dusk with our friends...

Ryan dancing on the beach to the beat of the drums from the nearby hula show!

Ry & his boyz on the beach

Daddy & his brutha from another mutha, T-dawg...

Ry Ry at the zoo (one of three trips this weekend!)

The playground at the zoo is as fun as the zoo!
.

Riding the bus during naptime? No problem for Rizzle! Zzzzz. (Psst- if you think I look pale and sickly, it's because I am. I was getting motion sickness from the bus driver's brake-happy feet)!

Snacktime for the boyz outside the Waikiki Aquarium! Ry was so cute while we were there- at one point he ran up to a huge tank of jellyfish and said "Oh my! Looks like jellyfish!"

Ry doing what Ry loves best- running up and down a hill!

I showed Ryan how to roll down a hill for the first time...he loved it! (And I'm sure I looked like Model Parent of the Year rolling her little son down a hill!)

Ryan with daddy (& Diamond Head looming in the background) on their way to the beach (the second of four beach visits this weekend)!

It's becoming a family tradition to build Ryan his own 'bathtub' at every beach we go to!

Ryan (smiling of course) & daddy by the Duke Kahanamoku statue

Ry learning to swing poi balls around!

At the International Marketplace!

Ryan performing "Pupu hinu hinu" for our friends at dinner!

.

I will leave you all with a short glimpse of our little hula dancer (who is unable to resist dancing along to any music he hears) on the beach of Waikiki...