goodbye goodbye (part two)

after a great (but too short) visit in medford we headed up to truckee for a week filled with fun and snow...LOTS of snow. there was a good 10+ feet of snow when we arrived. it was amazing and beautiful and cold.

coen was really excited about all the white stuff, and was eager to bundle up and go check it out. what a dude!

it took very little conviencing to get him on the sled. he was totally up for the adventure. truckee has some pretty intense (and fun!) sledding, but we decided to start small, with the driveway.

since the snow was SO super high, wes decided he was going to sled off the roof. yes, that is actually him standing on the top of the roof preparing to make his way down.

pop pop and daddy worked really hard and built coen his first snowman! it wasn't easy to get the dry powder to cooperate, but they got the job done. gami hunted for all the accessories, and he tuned out perfect!

nice work boys!

who likes the snow? coen! coen!

daddy and pop pop came home one day with a new pair of skis for coen. we never could convience him to put them on outside, but there was lots of carpet skiing to be had. there's always next year...

we had a special early birthday dinner to celebrate the BIG 02! since coen has attended a few parties in the last 6 months or so, he is really into the whole idea of birthdays. gami baked him a funfetti cake (he calls it m&m cake) and he loved hearing us sing to him.

uncle bubs & auntie shelly came to celebrate with us. coen loved playing with them and his new tools he got from gami & pop pop.

watching squirrels out the back window. sorry coen and lily, no squirrels in hawaii :(

popsicle time with gami!

my sweet sweet boy!

during our visit to truckee we were lucky enough to get over to the ranch and visit scott and michelle. such a good time, and so so many pictures to share...later!

goodbye goodbye (part one)

our whirlwind road trip started out quite chaotic. before we could hit the road we had to finish up with the movers, take coen to a post surgery follow-up appointment, rent a car, officially sell wes' car, pack and load the rental car, and then we could say some goodbyes. we still had a very fussy, cranky, clingy toddler on our hands, and the lack of photos proves that i was very occupied with him.

our first stop on the farewell tour was to drop off our "mama kitty" at fav aunt's house. we decided she wouldn't make the move with us, and fav aunt was very kind to take her and love her. we were pretty sure that she would freak out about the transition and take some time to adjust. um, we were completely wrong. the rest of our drive i was getting texts with pictures of how well she was adjusting. i think she is going to be perfectly happy

in her new toddler-free home.

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after a few hour visit, we headed down to medford for a couple days. as long as i kept coen on his pain meds he was alright. in between the crankies he put on a pretty good show.

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we spent 2 nights at papa george and gramma's house and we got to visit with some very special people. popsicles, playdough and hot tubbing helped get coen through the recovery of surgery. our next stop was to gami and pop pop's house in the snow. stay tuned...

Our welcoming eruption

Hello all. I (Wes) am guest blogging. My advise to you is to pay attention to the pictures and less to the text. It won't be as elegant as Jenni's usual prose.

So here we go. Show up Saturday in Hawaii to hear that Madam Pele has a welcoming party planned. The first thing that happened at the eruption site was a catastrophic collapse of the Pu'u O'o crater. Below is a picture of the steaming pit. Those cracks in the foreground are fresh...don't get too close!

There is a spectacular video on the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory website detailing the collapse at

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/update/archive/2011/Mar/PuuOoCollapse_20110305_small.mov

Activity at this site has been vigorous over the past several weeks with several lava flows (as seen in the beginning of the video). The floor of the crater has actually risen around 200 m (600 ft) recently!

What followed was what is called a fissure eruption, which is where a crack in the ground opens up, and pressurized magma comes shooting out. Fissure eruption can be quite common at basaltic volcanoes in Iceland, Italy and elsewhere.

For some perspective, the photo below shows Pu'u O'o crater in the background with steam in the foreground. The steam was the site of the first part of the fissure eruption which occurred after the collapse of Pu'u O'o. At the time of the photo, no fresh lava was coming out of the ground at the site of the steaming.

The photo below shows the site of spattering when I made it out to the eruption. What you are looking at is two spattering sources, the leftmost spattering source is within a deeper lava lake, and lava is then flowing out of the pond to the middle and right of the picture.

Here's a closeup of the lava lake and flow.

And here's a look at the spattering sources and lava lake from the ground. The trees on the right are about 80 ft high by my estimate.

Below are some random spattering shots for good measure.

The day after these pictures were taken, the eruption stopped. Currently the eruption is "pau" or all done. For the first time in a long time, there is no exposed magma at Kilauea. Weird.

a belated birthday bash!

our last weekend in vancouver could have easily been spent preparing for our 'over-seas' adventure. but how is that fun? instead we did it up big with a houseful of guests and a belated 30th birthday bash for wes. woop!

wes' birthday is january 8th and he was warned well in advance that baby beckett was due to arrive on the 6th, and would totally steel wes' birthday thunder. it's a good thing wes was warned, cause it totally happened. however, i couldn't be a complete loser wife so i planned a belated overnight celebration at mcmenimen's edgefield. if you know wes, you know this is one of his favorite places on earth!

did someone say cheesecake? it is his favie fav :)

we were so blessed to spend the evening with such great friends. by the time everyone was ready to leave the restaurant i looked at the time...we had been there for 6 hours! holy moly, how did that happen?

the grown-ups weren't the only ones having a good time. all the kids camped out at our house with our very dear friend, caryn. they had a blast! having some older kiddos in the house for the weekend gave wes and i a huge break. they were great helpers and coen loved all the attention. we are looking forward to having lots and lots of vistors on the island...soon, we hope!

arriving in aloha...

well, we made it. we had a fantastic "farewell tour" through oregon and northern california, but i will tell you about that later. the morning that we flew out was quite humorous (and a little stressful). as you have heard in earlier posts, our house doesn't close till march 21st. what that means is that we don't get our stuff till then, and we are living in a temporary house for the time being. trying to return the rental car and cart all our stuff to the airport was chaos. wes dropped me off at the shuttle, while he returned the car and a man actually came up to me very concerned/frightened that i was traveling alone. at one point i looked back at wes as he was crossing the street and he was standing with the "smart cart" and a pile of luggage was sitting in the road. when i walked away from the stroller (with coen in it) to help him, it tipped backwards because i had too much stuff hanging on the handles. oops! we had so so so much stuff.

coen was a total ROCK STAR on the plane. wes and i were just looking at each other going, "who is this kid?!" he took a super long nap, watched movies and chatted with anyone that would stop and listen. the night before we left i bought him a cheap-0/ugly scooby doo suitcase from wal-mart. both wes and i were not sue if it was a good idea, we were pretty certain it would turn into a huge pain in the neck. ends up, coen adores it. he was pulling in all over the airport saying, "my suitcase! my suitcase!" best seven bucks we spent the whole trip!

coen kept up the rock star attitude till he went to bed that night. praise God! we woke up early the next morning and set out on an adventure to volcano village's farmers market. we bought tons of local produce and have been enjoying it all week.

our temporary house is in the national park. the volcano observatory owns the house, and uses it for visiting scientists and guests. we are a 3 minute walk the rim of hale mau mau crater at kilauea. the night we arrived the volcano goddess madame pele welcomed us with a new eruption and we felt several earthquakes. the hale mau mau crater is currently erupting, but it is not the location that you are seeing on the news. coen and i have been taking a long walk each morning along the hale mau mau rim. it is breath taking! coen has become obsessed with seeing the volcano, and he asks us a hundred times a day if he can, "see volcano please?" uh, oh...do we have a little volcanologist on our hands?

it is so lush and green. this side of the island remind me of a topical version of seattle. the picture below is the view from the lookout just behind our house. the plume is erupting to the left, on the far right of the picture sits wes' office.

here's a close up of the plume.

and here's wes' office, perched on the hill overlooking the hale mau mau crater. office upgrade? um, yes!

our enthusiastic volcano chaser said to me this morning, "there it is! very hot, be careful volcano!" good advice. he also insists that we try to blow out the "smoke" like it's a candle. we keep trying, but no luck thus far.

so far we are settling in just fine. it's fun to not have a house to unpack, but i am getting antsy to move in. these next couple weeks will be a good chance to explore, and adapt while we wait for our house. really, it feels like we are on vacation. i am sure that will fade when the chores of life start to build up. for now....the adventure continues.

oh, one last thing. coen has been learning to use the camera. i plan to highlight some of his work in a later post, but as i was going through pictures today i found this one. it made my heart happy. i love my boys.

today you are you, that is truer than true.

i was planning on holding off on this post, but since today is dr. suess' birthday...it seemed the most appropriate to go ahead with it. our sweet boy will turn two a few weeks after we arrive on the island. and although he will not remember how or if we celebrated his birthday, it was important to me that we had a party. a few days before our departure we did it up big with a "cat in the hat" themed birthday party.

my most favorite part of the party was the cake/cupcakes. i got the idea online and recreated it with my own touches here and there. i think it turned out perfectly! our little thing 2, thought so too!

since our house was in a state of chaos (the party was the day before coen's surgery and 3 days before we were moving out) we celebrated at the community center. they did a fabulous job accommodating all the kids and the different ages. the first hour the gym was set up with all kinds of play toys and the little bits had a free for all. good. clean. fun.

it was so great to spend time with some very special people. coen was a bit overwhelmed by all the attention. being the birthday boy is very, very hard work. we were thankful for each and every smiling face that helped us celebrate!

after the play time, everyone came back to the party room for pizza and apple juice. i was impressed with how much all the little people ate. they really worked up an appetite during the play time. coen's most favorite part of the day was when we sang to him. he went from a grumpy grouch to pure cuteness...instantly.

dr suess inspiration was everywhere, and it made for good fun. all the kids went home with a new dr suess book to enjoy. thanks to everyone who came and helped make our little boy feel oh so very special!

today you are you, that is true-er than true!

there is no one alive who is you-er than you!