Today is Tuesday, January 27, but I'm posting for Sunday and Monday. On Sunday we went to church in Laie. It's right next to the temple. The ward members are so kind. You can just feel such a great love here. It was a good meeting. Good talks about staying humble, helping your family and going forward in faith during this tough economic time. Isn't it interesting that the feeling of economic hardship is everywhere.

Then we went and walked around the temple grounds. The temple is shut down this year. They are taking off all the paint so they can repaint it. We went to the visitors center and watched a few movies and guess who we met? - Mark Eubanks!! He use to be a weather man on channel 5! He was very nice and told us the weather forcast in Utah - snow, rain and wind.

After that, we went over to Gma &

Gpa's condo and had really yummy hawaiian style pancakes. This picture is blurrier than I'd hoped but we had banana's, pineapple, coconut, macadamia nuts and coconut syrup on our pancakes!! YUM!!

Then we played a card game called 5 Crowns with them it was a good day.

On Monday we went to Costco. They almost didn't let me in. I guess my membership doesn't allow me in until 11am and it was 10:30am. I got separated from dad and gma & gpa but as soon as explained that I was with them they let me in.

Then we went and sat out at the beach at Turtle Bay while dad and gpa snorkled. It was so pretty and sunny you could see so many things in the water - it was so clear. Gma and I saw tons of whales out close to the horizon. It was fun we saw them raise up their tales and splash and we saw their fins come clear out of the water!! After that gma and I played in the pool. Then we went to sharks cove.

It was pretty calm this time and we were able to walk around in the pools just to the west of the cove. We saw all sorts of interesting fish and we even saw something that looked like a BIG OLD HAIRY legged spider!! Gpa insisted that is was some sort of sea creature, but we aren't so sure. Gpa and dad found lots of neat shells and then we tried to capture the sun set. I'm sure you can see - that dad was thrilled!! ;) We had a fun day and want to go back when we have more day light. Dad found you some neat shells.

Oahu on January 24

Hi Chapmans & Boys - hope you're having fun. Here's a little bit of what we did today.

We went to Ko Olina on the West side of the island. Dad & Grandpa went snorkeling. . .

and Grandma & I hung out in the beautiful park there.

Then we walked around to see what else we could see. The hotels there are gorgeous and really fancy and the landscape is just beautiful!

Here's what the entrance to the park looked like and the road out. It was really pretty here. Grandpa and Dad saw a really cool Trumpet Fish, Two Sea Turtles and an Octopus!! They said it was well worth the drive. What do you think?

Then we went for a drive to Haleiwa to get a shaved ice at the Aloha General Store - yum!! Grandpa got a smoothy and Grandma got ICECREAM - she loved it, but oh boy did she cough afterwards! She said it was well worth it!

Then on the way back to the condo we saw a beautiful rainbow, though this picture does not give it justice it was so brilliantly colored - it was a fun day!! We had to keep reminding ourselves that it's JANUARY 24th and it was 81 degrees here today.

We missed you today and want to bring you next time for sure - love you guys hope you are having fun and being good. Talk to you soon!!

Christmas Memories

Christmas this year was really weird for me this year. I think it had to do with several things. First of all both my parents are gone and it was weird carrying on traditions without them. The other reason was that we had everything ready for Christmas probably by the middle of October and I think I just had a hard time holding onto the Christmas Spirit that long.

Then the last reason is because Zac lost the "magic" of Christmas this year and that was weird to see him be excited but not have that same magic in his eyes. It turned out really great though. The kids had a really fun day. Their big famiy present was a Wii from Santa and I was worried that would be all they wanted to do, but they played with their other things for a long time first and then finally tried out the Wii. That was great.

As you can see there were still plenty of happy smiles and when Christmas finally came the kids still had a great time. I am just glad it got here, we had a good time and it's all done.

We also got two tons of snow!! Jeff's parent's always come out to our house for breakfast and I wasn't sure if they'd be able to come, but after shoveling the driveway and walks at least three times and them coming out in four wheel drive and very slowly - they made it!!

Here's my attempt at showing you how much snow we got. It was kind of fun in a way because that's what Christmas time brings - snow!! It gives it a great Christmas feel! I guess there were a lot of people who wanted a white Christmas!!