Category: month 11-12

Today is Grace’s birthday – we now have some pictures from that day.

Check out a couple of videos that we put together of our vacation.  The first one shows the scenery and the second video is a summary of our trip.

The view:

Our trip (with comments!)

We had an awesome vacation – loved it!  It was very different to take a vacation with a baby.  We weren’t able to do things exactly the way we used to.  Actually, we weren’t able to even get out to see a sunset this time.

Ryan never really adjusted to the time change (3 hours) so he went to bed at 5pm and woke up at 3am.  This might sound horrible but in Maui it is pretty cool.  The best time to go to the beach is at about 8am – it’s not too hot, and not crowded and very peaceful.  It starts to get hot at around 9am (it is plenty warm at 8).  At this time of the day, it isn’t hard to find parking or the best spots at the beach.  We also tried to leave the beach by 10.

Waking up super early was not what we expected but it worked out just fine.

Ryan decided on this trip to master his walking.  Right from the very beginning of our trip he would not give up on walking everywhere.  In his first day he mastered turning, and by the 2nd day he was mastering getting up on his own.  It was a very big moment for him.

The weather was awesome and very typical for Maui – perfect in the morning, nice and breezy in the afternoon.  Ryan fell in love with the fresh air, and would either bug us to go out of our room or open up the balcony door.  He really loved our hotel room and had a blast there.

Daddy was a bit freaked out by the fact that we were on the 11th floor and Ryan showed no fear of heights.  We had one of those balconies with the railings – it almost looked like Ryan could fit through it (which he couldn’t) but at the height who would want to take a chance.  In the end, we came to terms that it was impossible for him to fit and let him hang out on the balcony by himself.  He loved it!

On our second day at the beach Ryan was still asleep when we arrived so we set him down to hang out at the beach.  He looked so relaxed and peaceful in this picture.  Daddy couldn’t help but join him. It was very precious to watch Ryan wake up at the beach because the first look in his eyes were –“Where the heck am I?” to “Oh my goodness, am I really at the beach” to “HOLY JUMPINGS IS THIS EVER COOL!!”  all within 5 seconds.

Ryan loved the sand.  We dug lots of holes and buried each other a lot.  We weren’t sure how he was going to like the sand and how much he was going to eat.  It wasn’t bad.  He only tried to eat things that were in the sand such as seeds from the trees overhead.  It doesn’t take too long to learn that sand sucks to eat and it doesn’t feel good to rub it in your eyes.

It was not easy to get many photos of the family together at the beach.  Ryan just wouldn’t cooperate with taking photos.  He was just too busy having a great time to look at the camera.  This photo made us laugh – let me know if you think it is funny.

Ryan loved the water.  It took us a day to figure out that we needed to go to a special beach with small waves.  In Maui there are lots of beaches with great waves – great for adults but for a baby being introduced to the water they can be quite terrifying.  We found a baby beach and Ryan loved the water.  Ever since that day he has a new love for water and bath time has become sooooooo much more fun.

Yesterday Ryan decided that he all but had it with daddy’s hair and he was going to do something about it.  He grabbed a pair of hair clippers and went nuts on daddy!

Before:

During:

After:

Ryan was very happy to celebrate daddy’s birthday – it was sort of a preview of what’s to come for him on birthday #1.