Clara's Second Portrait Sitting

Today we had our follow-up ultrasound and thought we'd post a few glamour shots of our little miss. First off, a little profile action. Note the hand and arm in front of her face; she had her dukes up during most of the ultrasound.


A full face view...the scary Skeletor shot:


A little hand...


And what is destined to be a not-so-little foot.


(A note - I can't make these as pretty as Oliver can, the html genius. Oh well.)

Pictures from Hawai'i

So, I thought I'd post some pictures from Hawai'i. We had a wonderful time - thanks to Jeff for the wonderful trip - and enjoyed relaxing and playing with Kristin's family.

This is the view from our condo. The island seen out to the right is Moloka'i.

On the beach at Haleakala National Park just south of Hana.

The sunset, as seen from the docks in Lahaina, on our last night in Hawai'i .

Mahalo.

We're on our way to Hawai'i for a vacation with Kristin's family. We are flying Hawai'ian airlines and just landed in Honolulu. We have a brief lay-over before we fly on to Maui. We're in the interisland terminal and every annoucement over the intercom system is ending with "Mahalo!", the Hawai'ian word for 'thank you'.

I'm feeling like this is a total gimmick. Do normal Hawai'ians say mahalo instead of thank you? Or is this some touristy thing that the airline does to 'get you in the island spirit'?

Well guess what? My point was just proven. I went up to talk to one of the gate people, she asked me for something, I handed it to her and she said "Thank you." Not mahalo. Thank you.

IT IS A SHAM. NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T SAY MAHALO.

So I am convinved.

Hawaii Trip - Day 1

Today we started our trip to Hawaii. Our friend David drove us to the airport for a 7am flight. The lines were long. As we were waiting in line Kristin suddenly turns to me and says, "Oh, I forgot!" digging into her purse she pulls out a tube of hand sanitizer. She quickly slipped it the suitcase. No gels.

The first leg of our flight was from Dulles Airport to Denver. The plan had monitors in the back of the seats. I watched The Sentinel, some secret service movie that was marginal. The flight was long and the pregnant one had a hard time sitting through it. To make matters worse, United started boarding the flight an hour before take-off then we taxied for 20 minutes when we landed in Denver. We were very glad to get off that plane.

While in Denver I called Sara (she lives in Lakewood) to say hello and that we didn't like her airport. She told us a five minute taxi is common but that a twenty minute one seemed a little long.

Our flight from Denver to Portland was also long. Kristin was a good sport and survived it. Once we landed Debbie picked us up and took us back to their place. We visited with her and Dirk until they had to leave for a weekend trip they had already planned. It was nice to be able to relax Friday night and recuperate from the flights that day.