capturing memories in sand- or just salt dough ornaments

Just to solidify some more memories for Roxi, my good friend Kiley and her baby Ellie came over to make salt dough ornaments! We did hand prints, foot prints and then some other little designs. Getting the girls to open their hands was trickier than we expected and we snuck the footprints while they napped! We really liked the final product because they look like prints in SAND! and they smelled like cinnamon rolls! Heres the recipe we used:

1 cup salt
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup luke warm water 

Cinnamon 

we mixed it all up, rolled some out, made our prints and baked at 200 degrees until they were hard. Easy right? 

To decorate, I tried spray painting, some nail polish, and even just permanent markers. 

Perfect gifts for the grandparents, (made us look like legit moms) and the perfect personal touch to the driftwood christmas tree! not to mention easy on the pocket book.

I did notice that with the humidity here and the rain storms we experienced they softened up and were kind of fragile. But they dried out again before I stored them away. 

Christmas Cheer!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This was my second Christmas in Hawaii and our first holiday season as THREE! Last year I lacked the motivation to exercise my holiday spirit. Having a baby kicked me into gear! I'm responsible for facilitating her first memories (or at least first pictures that she can look back at)...EEK. For me that was enough to make me try and establish some of our own traditions (which is hard sometimes!) well technically they are not traditions yet because we've only done them one year, but I hope they stick. 

My first item of decor was a christmas tree made of drift wood from the beach.  

Our apartment is quite small, so a tree in the house was out of the question. So this 3 foot door hanging tree was perfect.  In Germany (where my parents are currently serving a mission, and we spent Christmas 2 years ago) the tradition is to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. So, Des, Roxi and I walked down to Hukilau beach Christmas Eve morning and while Des was off roading with Roxi with the stroller in the sand, I collected our wood! 

At home I drilled holes down the center of each piece and threaded some rope through. Then decorated it with homemade salt dough ornaments! (Will post on that soon). I topped it off with a star fish a friend snagged for me in the freebie bin!

The final product was beyond satisfying, and I couldn't stop looking at it! I like the idea of decorating for christmas, but I want it to be my style. not red and green puke all over my house. I was sad to take it down, but set the wood free at it's proper home just the other day. =) I can't wait to make another one next year! Perfect Christmas Cheer!

As for the BIG morning, Roxi had plenty gifts to open and stayed awake for the entire gift giving extravaganza and Des' parents house. (After 8 am church of course)  

New Stroller

Fancy Christmas dress, Thanks Grandma Nona!

built in teether bow =)

Another Christmas Dress, Thanks Grandma Colleen!

New Year

2012 looks promising. Our theme for the year is FRESH and LESS!! 

FRESH: more fresh foods (less processed), more fruits, veggies and more water. better health! 

LESS: less waste, less junk, edit, SIMPLIFY, eliminate excess, and budget!

here's one of the inspirations for the LESS goal. watch this video

http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_less_stuff_more_happiness.html

Roxi rang in the new year with some new choppers

and can now sit up alone

Now 5 1/2 months, where did the time go? You will soon know as I continue to post! 

Baby Jeggings and Peanut Butter Blackouts

I'm a proud mama who loves to show off my baby! I'm soooo happy the weather has cooled off but mostly because Roxi can fit her baby jeggings now and I'm obsessed with them! One thing I always said I wanted for my baby was clothes I would wear, but baby size. Baby clothes tend to go too far with the bows and ruffles and STUFF. But these pants are the one!  Baby jeggings are genius. Practical and fashionable. I think every baby should have them. Macy's has some, the children's place has them, even walmart has them! My favorite ones are from the children's place. 

 Another thing I'm proud of is a beautiful concoction I cooked up this weekend... We used to eat these amazing peanut butter bars topped with melted chocolate chips growing up... Since WIC has fully stocked my cupboards with peanut butter to last us through the millennium, I thought re creating this childhood dessert would put that butter to good use! Of course I can never just follow a recipe , I always manage to convince myself that adding my own pinch of this or dash of that will somehow improve a perfectly good recipe. And if you pull up my recent google searches, "substitution for..." will come up all too often because I always want to make what I don't have all the ingredients for! I fail alot, but today I did good! The outcome, what I like to call peanut butter blackout bars.  caution: may cause sugar coma.  I made these for a bbq we threw together on saturday with some friends and neighbors. Someone said that this dessert was the highlight of their week. And the 9x13 pan was scraped clean...safe to say, I did good. Here's what ended up in it: 

1 cup butter 

2 cups peanut butter 

1 2/3 confectioners (powdered) sugar 

3 1/2 cups of Oreo cookies crushed 

Topping: 

1/3 cup milk 

1 cup chocolate chips 

1cup heath toffee bits 

 Melt butter and peanut butter, remove from heat. Add confectioners sugar and cookie crumbs. Mix well. Pour into 9x13 pan and chill. In separate pan heat chocolate chips, toffee(save some to sprinkle on top) and milk. Pour over set crust sprinkle with the toffee that was set aside and chill again until firm. partake and proceed to sugar coma. The original recipe called for gram crackers...and no toffee. But I work with what I got, and this time it worked well!

And I thought I'd throw in a classic bath flick that we can show her dates when they come to pick her up in the FAR future. 

Oh and I can finally post this picture now because one of my best friends who I made these for finally got them in the mail. 

She's having a boy in the beginning of November and they've been calling him Baby Bronco. So these are my 3 interpretations of broncos for her little boy. 

It's hard to name my blog posts lately because they are so all over the place! 

Dream Girl, Blind Boy

I'd like to think she's dreaming about her mommy when she moves her lips like that... 

Among today's other events... a bath!

Roxi is happy IN the water, but not OUT. Even with the variety of cute hooded towels we now own! (This one we just got in the mail from Dez's brother, Nigel and his family who live in Australia)  I'm discovering new spots the stank and dirt like to hide on this girl.  When your mom told you to clean behind your ear, it was for a good reason!! 

Another note on Australia. We are addicted to these, Australian Licorice. Nigel also sent us a bunch of these! They're so amazing we've ordered them before on amazon...in bulk. =)

Yesterday we got to drive to town and sit in the dr's office while Dez got his retina repaired. What started as tired bloodshot looking eye, turned into what we thought was pink eye, then was downgraded to a popped blood vessel in his eye. Just to be sure Dez went to the health center on campus. There the Dr told him it was something more serious and he was sent to an optomitrist. There the hole in his retina was discovered! So off to another specialist we went. After a series of tests, laser surgery and a whole lot of blurriness, he's can see! It  all happened so fast, but we're glad we acted when we did or else it could have been real bad. It seems like there's always something going on with us.

Look how we've grown!

I know all these are on Facebook, 

People are always trying to figure out who this child looks like... when she was born there was no doubt she belonged to Dez! Now I think she's evened out and looks like the both of us...

Baby Roxi, Splitting image of her dad!

Baby Dez, NOT Roxi

All that growing requires lots of sleep! Roxi's a real pro! (after some convincing from my older wiser sister Lisa, we are firm believers of swaddling although not featured in the photos below) 

Sleeping on Daddy

Fashionable Sleeping

Sore Tummy Sleeping

Beach Sleeping

The other night Dez and I put Roxi in her crib to try and settle her down for bed. We were looking at her all wide eyed and wiggling saying how she probably wouldn't go down easily. In the split second that we turned around to grab her pacifier, SHE FELL FAST ASLEEP! I'm surprised our laughing didn't wake her up, we just couldn't believe it. She's just so unpredictable, and we love every moment of it.

Rose Tinted glasses

9-25-11 Baby Blessing (7 Weeks old)

Just a few of those who could make it to her blessing. This girl's back is WELL COVERED 

The 3 of us

9 weeks old

Flawless, our RoxStar!

Today Roxi is 10 Weeks old! She is a little over 12 lbs and 24 inches long! 90 something(I forgot exactly) percentile for her age according to her Dr.. After a rough month, we finally figured out she had heartburn! Poor thing! We finally got her on some antiacid medicine and she's feeling better than ever! She even learned to roll over this week.

belated birthday flicks!

I know I'm 9 weeks and now 12 lbs late on these, but we're kinda caught up in other things now! I wont put ALL the details, but if anyone wants to know them, I have no shame; ask and I will share! My water broke around 7:45 Sunday August 7th after eating dinner at Dez's parent's house. And it's true, YOU'LL KNOW if/when your water breaks...(i was at the hospital 3 days earlier because i thought my water was leaking.) I was so anxious and excited to go into labor because I wanted to know what it felt like... I wanted to trust my body and push my limits. After 15 hours of drug free back labor, Roxi Peone Enesa was born!

I delivered at Castle Medical center in Kailua, Hawaii and would highly recommend it to anyone giving birth on the island. I labored, delivered and recovered in one room equiped with everything including a jacoozi bathtub and bed for Dez to stay the night on. The staff was awesome and never once made me feel like the dumb first timer.  My Dr arrived after I had already started pushing and told me I was acting like I had 2 or 3 epidurals... I don't know if that was a compliment to my pain management skills or she just thought I was acting OUUUUUT of it.  Pushing felt surprisingly awesome. After 14 hours of breathing to cope with pain, it was nice to do something a little more productive to birthing a child, like PUSH. And PUSHING I did, for an hour and a half.  At one point the Dr and nurses had their backs turned and I saw on the monitor I was starting a contraction. I yelled to them "HEY IM PUSHING WHETHER YOURE GONNA HELP ME OR NOT SO YOU MIGHT WANNA COME BACK!" Dez then took charge and held both my legs open while coaching me to PUUUSH!  (He loves telling that part to everyone, he thought the laboring part was booooring...haha) Everyone (Dez, my sister in law Jamie, the dr, and the nurses) were telling me I was doing great... but I wasn't sure what that meant exactly, all I hoped was that it equated that I was almost done.

Dez's family was amazing support because none of my family could be there for the messy stuff. =) They've all since met Roxi via webcam except my younger sister Megan who sacrificed a week to spend cooped up in our apartment helping me without complaining that she didn't get to get her tan on at the beach.

For the first few days after delivery when I would nurse Roxi I would get shell shock cramps as my uterus contracted and I would think I was starting labor contractions! I would have to remind myself, that the pain is over (for now) and you have your baby, she's in your arms!lol I've since healed and forgot enough that I've told Dez that I think I could do it again...I don't know if Dez could. haha!

what just happened

swollen after her trip through the canal!

samoan feet! At least she won't be able to steal my shoes!

proud but pooped pops

Roxi's great grandma, great aunt and second cousin Telau

bundle of...BLISS

classic snoooozers

Thank you for all the support and prayers.  I feel truly blessed to have this BIG spirit yet tiny body in OUR home, in OUR family.  LOVE and LIFE have a whole new meaning. incredible