2012 Week 3 - January 15-21

Week 3 - January 15-21, 2012:

This week started out with a 3-day weekend in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Sunday morning we got up bright and early and hiked part of the Waihe'e Ridge Trail. It was a beautiful clear morning. Dean wasn't into this hike, probably because of the really REALLY steep climb that starts it out, but he did pretty good once we got going and probably hiked a total of about 2 miles. He definitely would have gone farther if it wasn't for that initial climb (which we call the "Ass Kicker"). It was hard to pick which photos to include in my Project Life album from the hike, so I created a couple of little 4x6 collages and used another "flip pocket".


Dean spent the night at Tutu's Sunday night and went to the beach with her Monday morning. On Monday morning Joel and I both participated in my employer's (Kaiser Permanente) Community Day of Service by helping to paint Ka Hale a Ke Ola Homeless Resource Center with several of my coworkers. Joel worked harder than anyone.


Dean had a dentist appointment on Wednesday 1/18, which went better than usual (he at least allowed them to do his cleaning this time!) and I finally finished my December Daily album, which I am really REALLY proud of (this was a daily holiday-themed scrapbook project that documented our daily life from December 1 through Christmas this year). It was A LOT of work, but I'm so glad I stuck with it.


The weekend was full of fun - a special breakfast at Krispy Kreme (Dean's fave), a birthday party for one of Dean's classmates at Maui Mini Golf, and Dean went fishing at the beach with Joel and Uncle Vince Saturday night.



I also chose to document lots of normal "everyday life" stuff this week in Project Life - Gas Prices that were $4.37 at the time (and looking back at mid-January now that it's early April and our Gas Prices are hovering at right around $4.80/gallon on Maui, I WISH they were still $4.37!!), another Family Game Night that ended with Dean in tears (my journaling under a picture of Dean crying in front of a Monopoly board reads "At times, parenting a 5-yr-old is really, really difficult and frustrating. This one is only happy if he's winning. Sigh.")

I also journaled a little bit about my monthly Book Club get togethers, which happened to be that week. I said "Friday evening the Book Club girls got together at Sarah's place for our monthly "meeting". There are 5 of us in the group who can be considered "regulars" - me, Sarah, Jayci, Lindsay, and Katie (although I'm sad to report we'll be losing Lindsay for 10-week stints as she starts her new job as an Environmental something-or-other on a Cruise Ship soon). Sue started out with us but hasn't joined us in over a year. Ellyn likes to join us when she can, but has only made it a handful of times. This month Joel's friend Elizabeth joined us, so we'll see if she sticks it out. We get together on the 3rd Friday of each month and take turns picking the book, everyone brings food to share and there's always lots of laughs and plenty of wine. We don't take things too seriously and don't even spend too much time talking about the book - it's more about getting together with a great group of girls. The book is just an excuse".

And here's a look at the Week 3 in the Project Life Album:

2012 Week 2 - January 8-14

Week 2: January 8-14, 2012:

This week started out with another Daddy / Dean day of adventure with some time at the Splash Park at Maui Mall and then a few hours at the park in Wailuku where we discovered Dean will most likely NOT be a basketball star in the future.


Tuesday was awesome because I FINALLY convinced Joel to buy a Vitamix. I heard that Costco had Vitamixes in stock, called him and begged him to go buy one (when Costco gets Vitamixes in stock, which happens about twice a year here, they sell out in about half a day). The only way I got him to agree was through negotiating a deal - I reminded him that Costco will take anything back and I convinced him to buy it and try it for 30 days and if at the end of a month he still wasn't convinced it was 100% worth the $400 price tag, he could return it without a single word of complaint from me. He agreed. And within 3 days of buying it, I totally caught him giving a full-on Costco demo / info-mercial to his friend Vince!! He loves the Vitamix and we use it almost every single day.

Wednesday we woke up to find a beautiful full rainbow directly over our house.


We also received Dean's 2nd Quarter report card this week - he's doing great of course! I love the Kindergarten Report Card, because they include a Self Portrait on the front. So cute!


Friday we had another Family Game Night. Dean loves to play Monopoly (ugh) and is really good at adding and subtracting the money amounts and calculating rent, etc. If only he would learn to lose graciously (or not even necessarily lose, just not have a complete meltdown when things don't go how he's expecting).


Dean's been doing pretty well with the Kindle Fire and not too terribly grumpy when we limit his "screen time". His current favorite games are Angry Birds, Where's the Water, Fruit Ninja (he's constantly telling us all kinds of interesting facts about fruit that he learned from this game), Mazes, and Cut the Rope. He also likes to play with some of the educational apps we've downloaded.


Saturday we went to a Baby Luau at Kam III for our next door neighbor's baby, Alex's, first birthday. Dean had fun playing with some of the other kids.


I made a goal to read 24 books in 2012 and I finished Book #1 this week and loved it - Cleopatra's Daughter. It's historical fiction set in a time that I knew absolutely nothing about. Very good writing. I'll definitely be reading more by this author, Michelle Moran.

Here's some longer journaling that I included in the Project Life Album this week:

This week with Dean has been a rollercoaster of emotions - from hilarious to proud to frustrated. Such is life with a 5-year-old I suppose. Early in the week we purchased a Vitamixer at Costco, something I had been wanting for quite some time in the hopes that it would help in my quest for cleaner eating this year. Dean's a great fruit eater but not a great veggie or protein eater, and I'm not a great fruit eater. So every day this week I've been adding a scoop of protein powder to his beloved fruit smoothies (along with sneaking in some fresh veggies - carrots, spinach, kale, etc). Thursday afternoon while I was still at work he was reading the label on the Protein Powder container and became extremely upset. He asked Joel "Daddy, what does poison taste like?". Joel wasn't sure where that was going and told him he didn't know, why did he ask? Dean started getting very worked up, crying and carrying on about how "Mommy has been putting poison in my Smoothies. I've seen her. And she's been doing it EVERY DAY". Joel said it took quite awhile to figure out what he was talking about and when he did, it was very difficult to keep from cracking up laughing while explaining to Dean that no, Mommy wasn't poisoning him. See, Dean had read this warning label on the Protein Powder: "Warning: Accidental overdose of iron-containing products is a leading cause of fatal poisoning in children under 6. Keep this product out of reach of children". The very literal mind that he has took that information and put it together with the fact that he's under 6 and that I've been feeding him that protein powder daily for the past week and you'd think his whole world was falling apart! Poor kid. Joel was finally able to convince him all was well by explaining that Mommy wasn't giving him the powder by accident, but it was fully intentional, I was doing it on purpose. That, of all things, seemed to do the trick!

We also discovered this week that sometimes there's just no pleasing a 5-year-old! The issue of closed-toe shoes has been an ongoing struggle with Dean since starting kindergarten in the fall (it's required to play on the play structure at recess and during P.E.) and after purchasing SEVERAL pairs of shoes, Dean finally agreed to wearing his Keens to school. Sadly, sometime over winter break we lost the Keens. This resulted in some major meltdowns when school re-started last week and Dean was forced to wear his Crocs, which he said he hated. So I ordered new Keens from Amazon and they finally arrived on Thursday of this week. Friday morning Dean declared he didn't want to wear his Keens to school anymore, he liked his Crocs better and just wanted to wear them. {sigh}.

2012 Project Life - Week 1

Ok, so I've been terrible about updating the blog this year and I apologize. I HAVE been documenting our life diligently and I thought it would be fairly easy to translate this new scrapbooking project (which I am LOVING) into a quick and easy blog post, but it just hasn't happened. I'd like to get caught up soon with 2012 so I can do a post every few weeks. I am doing something called Project Life, where I capture little bits and pieces of Everyday Life - not just the big / exciting moments, but also all the little things that, put together in this project, really paint a picture of what our life is like right now, in 2012. I think this will be so much fun to look back on in 10, 20, 30 years. It's a pretty simple scrapbooking project that uses pre-designed pocket pages, almost like old-school photo albums and I just slip our photos in each week, but I also add lots of journaling and also bits of memorabilia. I try to remember to collect things that are true to our life and times right now. Anyway, I think what I'd like to do this year here on the Tapler Ohana blog is do a little weekly overview for each week of 2012. I'll post a photo of my Project Life album layout for the week (which will be a 2-page "spread"), where you'll see how all the photos, journaling and memorabilia go together into my album project, and then post each of the individual photos that I took for the week as well as my journaling about our life for the week. That's my plan for now anyway. It could change. What do you think? How about I start with 2012 Week 1 now and you guys let me know what you think? (and yes, I know I have quite a bit of catching up to do...)

The photo above is the photo I used on the cover page of the album.

Week 1 - January 1, 2012 to January 7, 2012:



A closer look at the details:

On Sunday, Joel and Dean went to the beach and then to see the new Chipmunks movie while I stayed home and did some cleaning and went to the grocery store (Whole Foods AND Safeway - it seems we can never get it all in just one run).


On Tuesday, Joel took down the Christmas lights outside. Dean went to Tutu's. Joel and Jen had a Date Night - Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.


Thursday, Jen got a new chair at work, which was very exciting (I included the tag from the chair in the album along with some journaling). Friday my friend Sarah and her mom, Aunty Les, came over for some craft time. Dean got "green" on his behavior chart at school and was very upset about that. (Green is not bad, it means "ready to learn", but it is where they start out each day and Dean seems to think if he doesn't move up the chart, then it is bad. My poor stressball child).

Saturday we hiked King's Highway Trail in the morning and then had Family Game Night and a little slumber party / movie night ("Rango") in the living room with our sleeping bags that night.


It was a pretty good start to 2012!