hau'oli la hanau, birthday boy

happy 2nd birthday to ahonui today...

i don't have much (actually, i don't have ANYTHING) planned for today. he woke up this morning looking like this:



so i'm thinking that after the past few day's events, he would probably prefer to just chill out at home...or would that just be me?

our new year's eve celebration was chock full of fireworks. my in-laws kept ahonui while i attempted to clean our apartment after i got off of work. but a bunch of our neighbors were having loud block parties just outside of my front yard so it was hard for me to focus on scrubbing & washing. i ended up wanting to be near my family so i made a quick visit to my mom's and then went to hang out in kahuku with the kahaialiis.

my in-laws got the guitar hero world tour set for christmas so everyone was gathered in the living room by the time i got there. when the boys went outside to get some fireworks/firecrackers business done, i was given my chance to show off my (not so great) skills on the guitar and drums. i had so much fun on the instruments that i almost forgot that i had to pick up brandon at pcc!

it ended up to be a smoky, sparkly, partly rainy, and very loud new years celebration. but i'm thankful that we can still experience these kinds of celebrations before hawaii state law decides to ban all the fun.

yesterday we had an early morning start, heading to kapolei so we could finally submit brandon's hawaiian homestead application. the appointment to get this done has been on my long-term to do list forEeEVERRRR, so you can imagine my relief knowing that i could finally cross it off. on the flip side, we were informed that "the list" we were just put on could have more than 9,000 names on it. yowza! oh well, at least i can now hold on to the hope that in ten years or so we could have our own brand new, air-conditioned home an hour away from my real home. nice...

after some shopping errands at costco and walmart, we headed back to the country. brandon had to go in to work, while ahonui & i went to hazel's baby amelia (who was a week early!) shower. it was wonderful to "ooh" and "aah" over hazel's precious gift and also to get back in touch with my kahuku class of '99 homegirls.

after the shower, ahonui & i surprised brandon at work...and ended up watching the entire night show! i have to admit that with the changes to the beginning and the ending of the show, as well as not having any dancer friends to watch, it just wasn't the same as it used to be. but i do always appreciate brandon performing...no matter where it is.

so, i think ahonui as well as myself, would enjoy a little downtime. besides, he's already had his share of birthday parties. namely, the one on national television. i think a little cold stone cake will suffice.