Aya's preschool on the farm

Since we moved here during the middle of the school year it was quite difficult to find a preschool with an open spot for Aya (people register 6 months or more in advance here) but we lucked out a someone moved and a spot was available in February at Little Farmers Preschool at a farm really close to our home!  I'd been to this farm (Petersen Family Farm) many times before to buy their fresh eggs, grass feed beef and produce during the summer and fall months.  I LOVE this place and it's amazing that it's so close to my house.  I love that you can see the chickens that lay the eggs you buy and watch them bring in produce from the garden just outside of the "Farm Market".  As I'm sure most of you know, I adore real food that is local so it doesn't get better than this for me! I could go on and on but I'll save that for my other blog. ;)  If you live in Utah you should totally check out all the amazing things they do there.  Anyway, I was delighted to hear that they had a preschool and that there was a spot open so we hurried and registered Aya and got her enrolled.  Here are some pictures from her first day:

Our proud "Goose" so excited to step out the door for her first day of preschool on the farm

Entrance into the preschool

They have a live bee hive in one of the classrooms with glass on it so the kids can watch the bees in action! So cool!

The arts & crafts & writing practice room

Reading and rug time room

Super cute play time room

Aya in her yellow farm boots that the farm provides for the daily trip to the barn to feed and check on the animals.  Aya was so excited to be chosen as the line leader!

Looking at the pigs

Aya was beyond thrilled to spot some kitties in the barn!

Feeding carrots to the bunnies

Saying hello to the goats and sheep

So pleased with her art project (Love Bug is one of the many nick names we call
Aya so this was perfect!)

Aya has been going to this school for a month now and really loves it.  I've been really impressed too and so happy we were able to get her in.  In Hawaii her birthday in August missed the deadline for starting Kindergarten next fall so we weren't planning on it but here in Utah she makes the deadline so we decided we better hurry and get her ready to start next August! 

Love you all and miss our friends, family and Ohana that aren't close by!

Rachel

Hana's Baptism and confirmation!

This weekend was a very special one for our family.  Hana chose to be baptized and confirmed for the gift of the Holy Ghost into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints by her father.(http://mormon.org/faq/baptism-beliefs)  She has been looking forward to this for a long time and it was a wonderful event.  Thank you so much to the family and friends who were able to come and support her in this.  We know a lot of you would have loved to be there but live to far away or had other conflicts.  The spirit was so strong and I knew that Heavenly Father was happy about Hana's choice to be baptized.

Right before the baptism, in the foyer of our church

All the people who came to support Hana!  Thank you, everyone!  We sure love being close to our families again.

Hana's best friend and "twin" cousin was born a week earlier than her and also baptized the week before her.  Here they are in their beautiful baptism dresses.

Another one of Hana's best friend cousins was baptized last September so we had to get a picture of the three of them in their white dresses.  Also, notice the candy lei Aunt Lisa made since Hana was sad she wouldn't get leis like in Hawaii.  So sweet of Lisa!

The grandparents!  My parents on the left, Great Grandma Pugmire in the middle (Geoff's mom's mom) and Geoff's mom and step-dad on the left.  I love and admire all of these people so much!

Hana's favorite breakfast and dinner is waffles so we had a waffle bar with all sorts of yummy toppings and bacon, sausage, breakfast casserole and fruit!  Yumm-y!  Thanks so  much for bring something to contribute everyone! p.s. Isn't my baby sister gorgeous?!

Can't believe Hana is so grown up!

It was a wonderful day!

Whirlwind of craziness!

It's been a crazy whirlwind of selling all of our possessions (again!) in Hawaii, saying goodbye to all of our ohana there (so hard!) and taking the flight back over the ocean with 13 pieces of luggage and 2 exhausted girls, then being welcomed back to Utah by awesome family and friends, having a huge climate shock to the wintery cold which included the worst cold/cough/sore throat I've ever had last for 4 weeks, celebrating a wonderful Christmas with family (SO loving living close to family!), finding and moving into a lovely yellow town house back in Daybreak right across from the lake, (2 blocks from our red Victorian house that we sold last year), being welcomed back by our neighbors and friends in Daybreak, buying winter wardrobes for all 4 of us, and then buying all of the essentials for a new house (again!)getting Hana enrolled in an awesome 2nd grade class at the school a few blocks away, finding a preschool for Aya and  looking for and finding a job for Geoff!...Phew!  Can I just say that it's been a crazy roller coaster!  So many highs and lows and stresses and gratefulness and learning and growing.  We miss Hawaii terribly!  We miss the sunshine, we miss the clean air, we miss the ocean and we especially miss our wonderful friends there.  But we also love being close to family and Utah friends and are thrilled to move back into our old neighborhood in Daybreak with all of the wonderful people here.   (Hawaii friends, Daybreak is pretty much the Ko Olina of Utah.  Check it out:  http://www.daybreakutah.com/community-story/)  It was great to have a white Christmas too and I still go into a happy shock about how cheap everything is when I go to the grocery store or buy gas or look at house prices. 

Anyway, if you're still with me you must really love us so thank you, thank you so much for all of the love, support, aloha, prayers, hugs and helping hands during our whirlwind of craziness!  I have so many fun pictures and stories to share so I think I'll back up a bit and start with our last few weeks in Hawaii celebrating the Christmas season island style...

We celebrate St. Nicholas Day every Dec. 6th to celebrate our German heritage and this was the first time St. Nicholas left surprises in "slippahs" instead of shoes!

We had a yummy German breakfast too with our friends who lived in Germany for several years.

We took the kids from our church to sing Christmas songs and bring some cheer to a local retirement home and they were so cute!  I love these kids!

Greeting the tutus around the room

All decked out!

The cutest reindeer in Hawaii

We were accompanied by our favorite ukulele and guitar players

Christmas lights on palm trees!  This is at Paradise Cove in Ko Olina on the way to our house.

We had a really fun church Christmas party and the kids performed again

After a yummy traditional Hawaiian dinner (best Kalua pig I've ever had!) a special visitor arrived!

Notice the jingle bells on Santa's slippahs!

Enjoying the Christmas decorations in the neighborhood

 Well I better wrap up as this post is getting long but I can't resist adding two more pictures

I passed this every morning on my walk to the gym!

I love Hana's pose in this one ;)

More pictures and blog posts to follow soon!