A Happy Apple-versary!

That's what we called it all day on Saturday. We woke up realizing that we weren't doing anything exciting to celebrate our 6th anniversary. It was a day that was bound to be filled with anticipation and excitement for the 'big game'. Yes we maneuvered televisions, shifted living room furniture, sung the Cougar fight song many times, blew up crimson and grey balloons, and prepared our house for people to come over, not to celebrate our anniversary, but to watch the Cougars take on the UW Huskies in the 100th Apple Cup. And so, we called it our Apple-versary. (Beth is such a good sport)

As expected, it was an evening of doing my best to keep my emotions a little less volatile with our friends over. Though my heart sunk a little more with every Husky first down, I did my best to keep it inside - which I got worse at as the game progressed. Though it also rejoiced jumping off the couch and onto tthe ottoman with every big Cougar play and "...Another... Cougar first down!" My temper built more and more with every time Fox Sports felt it had to mention Jake Locker's name even when he had nothing to do with the play. (I swear they talked about him more than 100 separate times in the first half alone) But in the end, it was the Cougars who stole the show. In the end, it was the Cougar fight song that blared through the living room speakers as we jumped and hugged and celebrated. In the end, it was the Husky fans that quit calling/texting to harrass us Cougars with 31 seconds left in the game. In the end, it was the third Cougar victory in the past four years of this Apple Cup. In the end, we will be celebrating our anniversary on a different night.

Is there a much better way to celebrate your anniversary than with a Cougar win over the Huskies? Well, probably. But this way was pretty fun too!

Happy Apple-versary, Beth! And Go Cougs!

Big Weekend...

In case you didn't realize it, this is a VERY big weekend. It is a weekend full of being thankful, celebration, and either being really happy or really ticked off.

Thursday is Thanksgiving - I'm hoping you've figured that out already. This year we are having two T-Day dinners. One with Beth's family on Wednesday and mine on Thursday.

Friday, well, it's a means to Saturday - but we don't have to work. :) That's always kinda nice.

Now Saturday, this is where the celebration comes in. Saturday is Beth and my 6th Anniversary. Yep, six wonderful years of marriage. After six years, we've never had an argument. Never disagreed on anything. And have never been anything but perfectly happy every day! While that might be a bit of stretch, it's still fairly true. We've had six great years of marriage and we've enjoyed them very much. We have our disagreements, etc, but we love being married to each other. So that is cause for much celebration.

Now, the reason I'll either be elated or ticked, is because Saturday also happens to be the 100th Apple Cup - the annual rivalry football game between God's team, Washington State University, and the symbol of all that is bad, the University of Washington. And kids, I'm sorry, but good does not always triumph over evil. In fact, good has lost many more times than it has won. Yet, we try again on Saturday to prove that there is still good in the world. We will have plenty of Crimson in our house on Saturday as we cheer on our Cougars. However, it looks like we'll have some purple in our house as well because we'll have some UW friends over. Remember, Jesus hung out with the sinners too. But with all the pent up frustration through the year of living in Seattle near the UW as a Cougar fan the emotions run high - and a WSU loss it a tough pill to swallow for me.

So, it is a big weekend here at the Soderlund home. It has already started and we're looking forward to the rest of it. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Beth, Happy Anniversary. And to everyone else... Go Cougs!

On our way home...

Tonight is the night... the night that we risk our sanity and everyone's around us as we take a 1 1/2 year old on an all night, red-eye flight home. Our plane leaves at 10:30PM (or something like that) and is a straight shot from Kona, HI to Seattle. Nathan will either sleep almost all of the way, or he'll be a wreck because he'll be pulling his first all-nighter. Which of course means that we'll be pulling an all-nighter with him. The last ones of those that I remember were in college the nights before tests where I 'studied' - which consisted of going over everything that I had failed to pay attention to before the test.

In a debrief of Kona, here are a few notes that the average Hawaii traveller might want to know about before coming:

1. The Big Island (where Kona is) is a VOLCANO! The active lava flow is still going, but is a 5 mile hike to where you can see it - the roads are blocked off otherwise.

2. "Kona Coffee" seems to be all it is cracked up to be. The drive through coffee farms are worth the trip, especially if you want good free coffee. They just give you little cups, but a whole bunch of little ones make a big one... or five.

3. Geckos are all over the place. Including in your bedroom on the walls as you're falling asleep threatening to jump on you and bite you as you sleep. (OK the last part isn't true, but they're in the room)

4. There are tiny little ants everywhere and they DO bite. They're crawling on the computer right now as I'm writing.

5. There aren't very many sandy beaches. The ones that are 'sandy' are tiny ground up pieces of lava rock and shells. Not exactly the stuff you like between your toes. Unless you stay at the Marriott Resort north of Kona. They have their own private perfectly sandy beach (that I'm sure was shipped in) for their guests. I know where I'm going next time. Or you can find sand at Huggo's On The Rocks bar where they have a 'barefoot bar' where the floor is all sand - this sand was either shipped in also, or they stole it from the Marriott.

6. The other beaches are all lava rock. While they look cool, they're not very nice to your feet.

7. The food, yeah, that's pretty good.

8. Mai Tais. Mmmmm. But they're not cheap. Unless you go to Sushi En Fuego where they have $2 Mai Tais from 11-5 on weekdays. And yes, I did say Sushi En Fuego. Don't knock the place that has the cheapest mai tais in town. And for the record, they were pretty darn tasty. And stiff too.

9. Houses here have solar-powered hot water tanks that kept on the tops of their houses. Interesting.

10. The "Free" Hawaiian highly acclaimed and advertised show called "Ho'oilina: Beauty, Passion, and Rage" held at the Mauna Lina mall is HIGHLY overrated. If you stumble upon it while you're there, it's worth watching. But don't drive 40 minutes to it and 40 minutes home for the 20 minute show. I promise staying home and letting your child sleep is a much better option. It seems that no matter where you go, "You get what you pay for" applies. Excpet in the Dominican Republic where cigars are really cheap - those are also really good!

The trip has been fantastic and we're on our way home tonight. Nathan's been really good this week and we even finally got him comfortable in the pool. He even finally put his feet in the ocean yesterday without thinking he was going to die. :) We went back to try it again but as soon as we got to the one sandy beach around (not the Marriott - that'll be next time we sneak in there) it started pouring down rain - so we went home.

See you back on the mainland...

Aloha! Or as Nathan has been saying 'Al-low-pa'

On Hawaiian Time

Aloha!

This vacation is 'just a little bit different' than any other vacation we've taken before, especially past trips to Hawaii. Here is a little comparison for you between our last trip and this trip.

Past Trip: Get up around 7am

This Trip: Get up around 7am and pray that Nathan doesn't wake up for another hour

Past Trip: Take a walk on the beach or something fun like that before breakfast

This Trip: Change a nasty morning diaper, Get Nathan breakfast, changed, and let him run around the house

Past Trip: Get mai tais packed up with towels and snacks, go to the beach, sit quietly in the sun reading and snorkeling

This Trip: Pack up diapers, lots of water, the stroller and drive to a new place and show Nathan things he's never seen before

Past Trip: Lunch - find a restaurant near where we were hanging out

This Trip: Come home, get a nice sandwich and get Nathan ready for nap

Past Trip: Around 1pm - Sit by the pool or by the beach again drinking more mai tais

This Trip: Around 1pm - Put Nathan (& Beth) down for naps. Aaron goes upstairs to watch a movie or sit by the pool at the house

Past Trip: Later afternoon - Enjoy mai tais (yes, that would have been a lot by then) in town walking around

This Trip: Family swim time at the pool at the house. Listen to Nathan scream at the sight of the water, scream louder at the feeling of the water, until finally giving in and realizing he actually likes the water.

Past Trip: Go to a fun dinner wherever and whenever we wanted.

This Trip: Dinner at the house and then out for some kind of evening activity Nathan can enjoy too - like the Dolphin Quest exhibit at the Hilton where he saw dolphins for the first time.

Past Trip: Go to bed around 9pm

This Trip: Put Nathan to bed around 8pm and watch TV or a movie and go to bed around 10pm

It has been a blast so far on our Hawaiian vacation with Nathan and Nana and Papa. It's just a little different pace now that we have a child. Nathan has been fantastic on this trip. He's handled everything so well and loved taking in the new places and the new people. He's smiled more in the past few days than we've ever seen - and if you know how much he smiles normally, that's really saying something. But then again, who isn't happier in Hawaii?

We hope you are all doing well and look forward to seeing you soon back at home. Of course, it would be more fun to see you in Hawaii.

Phew... We Survived

Well, it wasn't how WE had planned it to go, but it went pretty well considering. We got to the airport in plenty of time as we're supposed to be to see almost nobody in line at check out or security. The security was great. They were even overly helpful. Then... the plane ride from Seattle to Maui. The first hour: Great. The second and third: Decent. Hours 3-6 got a little more difficult. We were expecting him to fall asleep at this point. But it seems we forgot that Nathan 'napped' for 20 minutes on the way to the airport in the car. So as far as he was concerned, he'd done his nap. Shoot.

Honestly, if you asked the people in our neighboring seats how Nathan did, they said that he was 'great'. They all said how great he did and how proud we must be. He really didn't cry or yell much. It was more so that Beth and I needed to get over the mental hump that he wasn't going to fall asleep. The cure: More movies. Nathan watched about 3 1/2 hours of movies on our little personal DVD player. We just bought it two weeks ago with this (and future) trips in mind... and it turned out to be what saved the day for rows 32-37. Wiggles and Elmo were the hits. What did parents do before portable DVD players? I'm glad I'm a parent in today's technology.

The only 'bad' part was that with his carseat thingee in the plane seat, his feet perfectly stuck out to the chair back of the seat in front of him. So needless to say, he pushed it with his toes and moved the chair back and forth for a lot of the flight. We apologized to the lady in advance before we left and told her we'd buy her a drink. She took us up on the offer. :) But was very nice about having her chair rattled for 6 hours.

By the time we landed in Maui, he was done. Unfortunately, our trip wasn't. We had an hour layover before a 30 minute flight to Kona. In this hour, we found him wandering off in many areas he shouldn't have been in, like behind the deli counter at the restaurant with all of the workers. (They made a terrible sandwiches, by the way). Then it was off to the plane again, where he reluctantly sat in his seat, and as soon as the plane pushed back - promptly fell asleep. It was 10:30pm by his internal clock on a 20 minute nap for the day. Ugh.

Nana and Papa were at the airport to pick us up and Nathan was thrilled to see them. Beth and I, we were thrilled when we saw the bed we could collapse in.

But, we made it. We're here and enjoying sticky, humid air. Geckos crawling in the room around the bed. And soon... Kona Coffee.

It's always worse for the parents, I'm sure. And it got stressful. But so far so good here. We're enjoying this little part of Paradise.

Nervous...

Beth and I are only a little bit concerned about how this trip is going to go tomorrow. We're off to Kona, Hawaii in the afternoon on Monday for the first LONG plane ride with a little boy. He went on a plane to Sacramento to my friend Scott's wedding, but he was only 6 months old and it was a 2 hour flight. Now, on the other hand, he's 1 1/2, has his own opinion, knows how to run down isles, and with our luck will find the booze cart before anyone else and will be passing it out to everyone - you know how he likes to give people things.

Well, either way, we've done all we can do to prepare for this. We've got movies and the movie player - not that he's ever worn headphones (we'll see how that goes over). We've got a bag of toys, food and a change of clothes in case he throws up all over them or something. I suggested War and Peace, but Beth didn't think he was quite ready for that. He's bring Clifford the Big Red Dog instead.

He'll probably be just fine. I figure if we let him just wander the isle beforehand, everyone will fall in love with him and then they won't care when he cries for the next 5 hours. OK, I'm depressing even myself now. I'm sure he'll be just fine and we've just heard all of the horror stories. If you have horror stories, don't tell us until we get back. :)

I'll try to keep updating this while we're off on our little tropical vacation, having mai tais by the pool or something exotic like that.

I'll let you know how the plane ride went. Who knows maybe he'll sneak a couple of those booze bottles for himself and he'll cash out for the whole trip. :) Of course I'm kidding. That would be terrible. I think. Maybe. Hmmm. I'll let you know.

Aloha!

Happy Halloween!

As of last night, Halloween has totally changed for us. It's no longer a night of getting to hang out with friends, rent scary movies, or whatever... it's now walk around the neighborhood with the boy and let him get all of his loot - while making sure he says 'Thank You', of course.

Nathan came to my office yesterday for Trick or Treating around to all the different agents' offices. He was a little skeptical in the lobby with taking something out of a big bucket and putting it into his. But by the second person, he had this Halloween thing down pat! By office door number two, he opened his bag up, reached his hand in the person't bowl of candy, grabbed a couple (which we made him put one back), and then dumped in his own bag. Followed by a little "Dah dyu" ('Thank you' - to the lay person), he smiled and walked off often turning around and yelling "BYE!" at what seemed like the top of his lungs.

So come the actual night, he was a pro going over to all of the neighbors. I think that he was so enthrawled by this new system of people giving him stuff, he forgot how to 'Roarrrr' which he had trained for and perfected during the week. Oh well. Nobody seemed to care - they would have given him anything he asked for. Ahh, the power. This boy had so much candy by the end of the night. (see picture above) He doesn't even like candy. Hmmm... What ever will we do with it then?

But let me tell you the even better news of the night. After that whole 'more protein' talk yesterday, I convinced Beth that Halloween was a great night for a pizza. Yes sir! Pepperoni & Sausage. (Please note, we realize that is not the healthy protein the doctor was referring to, but just be excited for me - Beth's pregnancy has left her not liking pizza much lately). And the OTHER exciting revelation I figured out last night is that I no longer have to worry about buying too little candy for the kids at the door and for me to have enough leftovers. We have Nathan's! And the next couple years, we'll have the new boy's. What a system. We buy for the neighborhood kids, Nathan brings home for mommy and daddy. That's what I'm talking about!

We got some video of Nathan roaring in his lion costume, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get it on here. When I figure it out, I'll post it. But for now, the pictures are going to have to do. I never claimed to be really tech-savvy. I've got a brother-in-law for that.