Simple Home in Paradise: February 2014

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!

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!