Merry Christmas

It was a really crazy week for us. It started last Saturday with some last minute shopping and running errands. I tried to get as much done that day so that I could relax and enjoy the sabbath.
Sunday sacrament meeting was so good! The ward choir director is our own Nat Kamau'u (who was awarded Hawaii's 2006 Na Hoku Hano Hano Female Vocalist of the Year). She and her extremely talented family joined our ward choir in putting on the Christmas presentation this year. It was really beautiful. I had chicken skin the entire time!
On Monday it was up and running ALL DAY! First, I had to baby-sit for YOGA (I do child care for my friend in our ward who owns YOGA4EWA). After that I was baking and putting together food for our dinner with the Wheelers at their new house up at Schoffield Barracks (the army base). That was really fun, but short lived, since I hadn't even started wrapping yet.
Will and I were up until about 2:30 am wrapping and getting everything straightened out. Mariah was the 1st up at 7 am and shortly followed by Brinlee and then Asia and Tatum. I went down and turned on the tree lights and started some Christmas music and got the computer up and running because we used the web cam with my parents so they could watch the kids open gifts and stuff.
It was MADNESS!!! They all had a BLAST! It was so much fun, though. My parents got a kick out of watching everything and the kids would run back and forth to the computer desk (just across the room) and show Grandma and Grandpa what they got. Tatum was actually into this year. She was happy to open 2 or 3 and then hold her new baby and new care bears. They all got what they wanted and were very happy and content all morning.
They had gotten movie tickets from the cousins that had drawn their names, so we took them at 1:30 to see "Enchanted". It was really good. Even Will thought it was "cute" (he needs a boy!! lol).
After that we were gonna go to the beach, but the girls wanted to go home and play, so that's what we did. Mariah hadn't been feeling well, she had been fevering off and on since Monday morning. It looked like a Barbie and Polly Pocket whirlwind had struck inside the house!!! There were tiny pieces and hairbrushes and dolls of all sorts and sizes lying around.
Later that night, the Kai's came over for a gift exchange and they brought Will's gift from me. It was the Wii that he'd been so desperately seeking for weeks and weeks. I had gotten it in the beginning of December and he had no idea!! He was all sad on Christmas Eve when he went to WalMart to do his last minute shopping and he went to the electronics counter to ask and they told him they had just sold the last one!!!!
He's been happily playing Wii Sports with the girls. And he got this need for speed racing game too that he really likes. I wanted to update on the Wii "saga" as it unfolded over the last month, but I was afraid he'd see it on here, so sometime I'll put up, because it's really quite comical!
Will just put Tatum to bed, but I wanted to put in a side note about that silly girl. It seemed like in the last hour or so, she has all of a sudden learned to talk. She said so many things that we had never heard her say before and she even counted to 3!! I was doing my new Sudoku book that MaryLou gave me for Christmas and she was sitting on my lap pointing to all the numbers, so I started counting out loud to her "one.." and she immediately piped in with "teewoo, feeee..." I was shocked! Then she noticed that Will and I were paying attention to her (and she got embarrased) so she takes her little water bottle and kind of put it on my face and says "BOK!" (bonk). She hopped down and went over to her car and she turned to look at me and held out her hand and said "cuh, cuh" (come). Like she wanted me to go for a drive with her in her little cozy coupe car! THEN, a few minutes later she pointed to the downstairs bathroom and said "see-see" (shi shi, which is pee pee in Hawaiian) and so Will took her in there and she went!! She has had dry undies all day, including her two naps. So far, she is still doing GREAT! She has had a few accidents here and there, but never poop, only "see-see"!! (She turned 16 mos on the 24th)
We only have one of the pullups left that our neighbor gave us and then we are going to try for all night. I really don't want to have buy any more diapers.