He turns ONE again.

Makili's luau was absolutely lovely. I had a great time. Makili slept under a picnic table for 3.5 hours, but still got in a lot of fun.

3-week old Kane was able to come.
And Tim
And Rachel, who really liked the dogs.
Gabrielle who really like the water.
Quite a gathering on the beach. It was only the kids in the water.
Makili showed off his little plumber's crack.
And hung out with Ariel, his favorite aunt.
He tried on Gabby-chan's glasses
And went swimming with dad.
And hugged Sally.
Grandma made cake

A VOLCANO cake!
Ryan carved a pretty amazing fruit bowl.



Raph stayed up the night before to paint the flowers which looked AWESOME, and yet were not captured in a single photograph.

The McCall family provided the "Big" kids and watermelon.

Sarah and Brogan got a little lost, but found us in time for food and fun.
And Peter (unpictured), Sagrin, and Lilia had a great time. Peter even snorkeled.
All in all, I think we all had a pretty great day.

2 for 2

For the second year in a row Makili spent the fourth of July with his cousin Gabrielle. We went to the New Castle Commons, a pretty fantastic spot we'd never been to before. Our friend Sarah's idea, though we showed up 4.5 hours after we told them we'd be there. Makili and Gabrielle spent the entire time shoving food in their faces. But there was lots of cuteness going around between Makili's buddha belly, Gabby's "independent" self, and Brogan (Sarah and Craig's kid).

Latest Developments

We left our card reader at Ann and Larry's and therefore haven't been able to download any pictures. Plus I've been busy chasing Makili around. He's getting better at walking every day. Yesterday we took him to the beach. He wanted to walk through the water forever. He was completely fascinated by the waves that kept coming and coming. We forced him to get out of the water against his will even though he was shivering. Poor kid was born in Hawaii after all. While sitting in the grass he learned to stand up on his own which he proceeded to practice over and over.

As for the garden, these picture were taken over a week ago and I swear a lot of things are twice the size now. The first pictures shows our new invisible deer fence. Seriously, you can barely see it, except when dew gathers on it. Maybe it works because the deer walk into it and that scares them? Unfortunately, the deer visited our gardens on the other side and munched one of my big tomato plants and gobbled up one of our heirloom tomatoes in its entirety. So another fence may be in the future. Right now I have the other deer deterrence system in place - lawn chairs, kids toys, and random junk. We'll see if that works. The next picture is of our magnificent cauliflower. Doesn't it look glorious? It really is twice as big now and I expect we'll be eating it before too long. And finally, my little sweet potato which is growing fast. It looks so cute and it is amazing to me how they grow. You let a sweet potato sprout and then snap off the sprout and stick it into the ground and it grows. No roots or anything. It just grows. I think that is amazing. We have planted quite a lot and we'll see how many sweet potatoes we end up with. In other news, the regular potatoes are UP (we were a little late sowing them) and peas are flowering!

Raph started his summer job last Wednesday and has been raking in the big bucs. Unfortunately he has to drive pretty far, but he's been sharing the ride with our friend Mark. Today is supposed to be really hot and beautiful so Mark's wife Lauren and I are taking the kids to the beach again. Woohoo.

Makili's Magic Shoes

So my sister gave Makili these really cool shoes for his birthday. And even though it was pretty hot today I couldn't resist making him wear them. And then we were at Rumble Tumble with the kids I babysit and I was holding his arm as he walked across the room. I realized that I was in fact not actually helping him so I let go and he walked clear across the room! And then he did it again and again! Yes that's right, Makili walks! (I'll post a picture of the magic shoes and hopefully a video of the act soon - hard to videotape and egg on his walking at the same time!)


Here it is. You may be seeing this before Raph, who is still in Boston!

In no particular order.

I tried realy hard to get a sllide-show on here last night, but ultimately gave up. So instead here are a slew of random lictures from Makili's first year and two videos from yesterday. I could certainly have added more, but I think this is a pretty good start.