Cookie Night

Our Christmas festivites began with our annual cookie making party. Every year we get together with our cousins and make lots of yummy holiday cookies. It was fun this year that Logan was old enough to actually decorate some cookies. And that he did. The sprinkles were his favorite part, of course.

First he had to taste them to make sure they were ok.
Then once he determined they were ok he would start to sprinkle away....
....and keep going.........to create these beautiful creations! I think there are more sprinkles than frosting but hey he had fun.
When he got bored with the sprinkles he then went to help his grandma with rolling and cutting out cookies.
Here is a picture of just some of the cookies we made that night. It really is crazy how many we bake but the crazier part is they all seem to be consumed!

Logan's Stocking

In preperation for the holidays I decided to make Logan a stocking this year. My mom had made me a stocking when I was a little girl and when Ben and I got married I made him a stocking to match mine. I, therefore, thought it was time to make one for Logan.

I decided to put a reindeer in the center of his stocking and just made up a pattern for it. I was impressed with how cute it turned out. Here is a picture of how it turned out....

And here is what they all look like together. I wouldn't have been able to make this without my mom's help (and sewing machine). I love that our cute family all has matching stockings now. When Logan's stocking was finished and I hung it up at home he came and asked me "what's that". I told him it was his stocking and he said "cute!" That was enough to make me feel good about the work I put in to it.

Tremendous Two!

This year we decided to have two different birthday parties for Logan--one with my family and one with Ben's. December is a hard time of year to fit these in so it seemed to work out better this way this year.

His parties began on December 5th with a party at our house with my family. We decided to make him an airplane cake since he loved the airplanes so much going to Hawaii.

I was a little disappointed the cake didn't turn out as cute as last year. I was going to pipe the whole cake but just ran out of time...it takes forever. Oh well, Logan didn't care.

Logan definitely was more in to the presents this year. He knew just what to do with them and would act all surprised each time he opened one. Ben and I gave him a Racing ramps garage to play with all his cars on which he has quite enjoyed. His favorite present was probably his Lightening McQueen pajamas from Aunt Roo and Uncle Jeff. He asks to wear them every night and even wants to wear them all day too. He also enjoyed his Lightening McQueen plate and bowl from his Grandma and Papa Jack. (Are we seeing a theme? I think we should have made him a Lightening McQueen cake.) However, the biggest reaction came when he found some M-n-m's in one of his bags. I wish I could have caught the expression on his face. He was very excited and we were thankful it was just a small bag.

Logan surprised us all when we sang Happy Birthday and he blew his candles out all by himself. He has since been quite interested in candles and blowing them out. I have to say he has quite the lungs on him!

We then had a party with Ben's family on the 13th. We, unfortunately left our camera at home for this party (one of our new year resolutions for 2010 is not to forget the camera). We made him another less involved cake with m-n-m's all over it. I think he liked it better than the airplane cake. He loved taking all the m-n-m's off of it and got quite concerned when others were taking them.

At his two year checkup Logan weighed 27 lbs 13 oz and was 34.5 inches long. He is in the 50th percentile for both of these and following the curves very nicely. He has actually come up a bit as he used to be down in the 5th percentile.

The weekend of Logan's first party we also decided to try to get him off his binky. We just poked a hole in it. When we gave it to him he would say 'broken'. He still took it the first night but the next night Ben said binkies were for babies and Logan said 'yeah' and gave it to Ben and never asked for it again. For a few days he talked about binkies being for babies but he never asked for it. We were both very surprised at how well he gave it up. Our biggest reason for making this change was that Logan was starting to get a rash on his face from it. Since we have taken it away this has cleared up quite a bit and he sleep binky free!More things about Logan at the age of two....

• he is obsessed with Snoopy and asks to watch one of the movies daily. He also knows many of the other characters by name (Linus, Lucy, Woodstock, Schroeder, etc.)
• one of his favorite things to say is "What doing?"
• he loves to look at pictures. This is one of the only things that he will sit still for.
• one of his favorite snacks has become fruit snacks. He asks for them multiple times a day and we have had to set limits for him or I think he would eat them all.
• he has learned what a 'cute' voice is and to ask for things like chocolate and suckers in that voice.
• he loves Lightening McQueen and can tell you what he says...."Ker Chow!" The funny thing is he only has seen this movie once but loved it that much.
• he knows his shapes and colors (most of the time).
• he can count to three if that means counting "two" three times. :)
• he is starting to learn his letters.
• he calls himself "Nenen." He can tell you the names of many other people but for some reason cannot say Logan. He seems to think that his name is "Nenen."
• he loves to put his stuffed animals to bed and feed them as well. He will often ask them "want some?"
• he often wants to sleep with a book along with his doggie.
• some of his favorite foods are spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets and mandarin oranges.
• he loves to run and tackle people.
• he loves to dance to good music.
• he is starting to sing songs like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "The Itsy Bisty Spider."
• he is starting to put more and more words together into sentences like "want daddy to change" meaning he wanted his daddy to change his diaper.

Hawaii--Day 8 and 9

On day 8 the boys decided to take SUP (stand up surfing) lessons. We had seen several locals doing this each morning from our house and the boys thought it would be easier to do than surfing. So we got there first thing in the morning and they got their instructions.....
.....and then went to try out their moves. They both did really well and only fell off a few times when trying to turn. Their instructor then convinced them both to come back and try surfing later that day. They both did so great at this as well. They got some waves and were able to ride them in. They were pretty far out in the ocean so I wasn't able to get pictures of them surfing but here if Ben afterwards carrying his board to shore. I think they wished they would have taken these lessons earlier so they could have experimented with it more at our beach home (there was a surf board at our house).


That night we took it easy and just hung out at our beautiful beach home. There was a wheelbarrow at the house and Logan loved to play with it on the patio. The funny part was that is was pretty small so he would squat down and walk around like this...... It was quite amusing to us.

Our last day in Hawaii we got up and went to breakfast and then headed to Turtle Beach. This had to be the most beautfiul day that we were there. The ocean was crystal clear which made for good turtle watching.
We had seen several turtles close to our beach home and we saw several more at this beach. It was amazing to watch them swimming only a few feet away. If we would have stayed a little longer the turtles would have come up on the land during the afternoon but we had to head back home to get ready to leave. Can you see the turtle in the picture above?


Before leaving we all had to go get in the ocean one last time. The best thing about this time was that Logan finally decided that he wanted to get in. Before now he was a little intimidated by the waves, but not today. he would keep pointing out further into the office and telling us to go 'out there.' We finally had to take him out because it was starting to get cold. Kindof ironic that on the last day there he finally warmed up to the ocean.

This is one of the last pictures we took in Hawaii and I think it sums up our trip nicely. We had such a great time. We had a few more delays coming home but nothing like our flight out there.


Logan had a hard time adjusting when we got home but after a few days he was back to normal. We are so lucky to have been able to go here. I always feel like vacations like this go back too quickly. It seems like you try to savor it when there but then its over in a flash. I hope we are able to go back here someday, I am already craving another chocolate covered pineapple.

Hawaii--Day 5-7

The 13th was my sister's birthday and she decided she wanted to go and hike Diamond Head. We all got up early and drove to the other side of the island to do this hike. It wasn't too bad of a hike and Logan enjoyed walking for a lot of it. It was pretty narrow though so it was hard to let people pass us cause he walks slow. The worst part of the hike was the 100 stairs or so at the very end that just went straight up. We all did it and got some great views of the island from the top. After we were done hiking we went to a local shrimp truck for lunch. Ben and I really don't like seafood but I braved it and tried some pineapple shrimp and thought it was pretty good. They didn't have any fried shrimp which is usually more up my ally. We then spent the rest of the day playing in the ocean and celebrating my sister's birthday at our wonderful house (Logan was kind of melting down by this point and we decided he just needed some down time). She turned the big 30 in Hawaii and we got her a cake from Tom's Bakery (the best bakery on the island supposedly).


The next morning we went to visit the Dole Plantation which was only a few minutes from our home. I think this was one of Logan's favorite places we visited as a lot of the activities were geared towards him. He loved feeding the fish.... ...riding the Dole train .....and putting his head through the pineapple cutout.

And his mom loved the chocolate covered pineapple. This was one of the highlights of the Hawaii trip to me. It was sooooo good. I also loved learning how pineapples grow. I had no idea they grew on small bushes like this. You learn something new everyday.
The only thing we didn't love about the Dole Pineapple Plantation was that our rental car got broken into. We didn't even notice until we got in the car to go horseback riding a few hours later. We went to plug in our iPod only to find and our GPS missing. All in all they stole two iPods, a GPS and prescription sunglasses. So frustrating. If you every go to Hawaii, take the signs about not leaving personal belongings in the car seriously.

After the Dole Pineapple Plantation we had reservations to go horseback riding on the other side of the island. It was so beautiful. The North Shore is a bit more desert looking. It doesn't get as much rain as the east side of the island. Here are a few pictures from our horse back ride. There were several movies filmed on this location. For example, 50 First Dates and Jurassic Park were filmed here. While we were horseback riding, my mom and dad stayed at the beach house and built a sand castle with Logan. He loved playing in the sand and helping fill and dump the buckets. The next day we went to Waimai Falls. It was a beautiful park with a trail to a waterfall. Even better you could actually get in the little spring at the base of the waterfall and swim right up to it. The water was pretty cold at first but felt so good once you just got in. Logan hadn't really wanted anything to do with the ocean up to this point but it was all we could do to keep him from swimming out into this spring.

After our hike, we went to check to Waimai beach which looked pretty calm from the main road. We were hoping it would be calmer so that Logan could get in a play. The sand at this beach was just beautiful but boy were we mistaken about it being a calm beach. There was a drop off just a few feet out that would send waves straight up right before they hit the beach. Many people enjoyed getting thrown around by these strong waves. Logan and I mostly sat on the beach and watched.