Back on the scene but barely...

Hi friends. Thanks for all your well-wishes, I am slowly recovering, and I made it back to work today, but wow, I'm kinda wishing I was still at home. This one was a doozy! I won't go into the details, but I will do a whole post on why I got sick and what it might mean. Just wait! You'll see. Check back on...Monday maybe. So, for today, I am responding to being tagged again. (Thanks Mel). I might have done this one before, but oh well!

4 Jobs I've Held
1. Pizza Factory Waitress
2. Recreation Therapist @ Shriners Hospital for Children
3. Skills Trainer (w/a little handicapped girl)
4. Office Administrator (zzzzzzzzz)
4 Movies I can Watch Over & Over
1. Dumb and Dumber
2. Any of the Pirates of the Caribbean (love Johnny!)
3. The Notebook
4. Esplin Fam Home Movies
4 Places I Have Lived
1. Sunny St. George, UT
2. Orem/Provo, UT
3. Georgia & Alabama (mission)
4. Honolulu, HI
5 T.V. Shows I LOVE
1. So You Think You Can Dance
2. Grey's Anatomy
3. LOST
4. Prison Break
5. The Office
4 Places I Have Been on Vacation
1. Kauai, Big Island,& Maui, HI
2. Europe
3. Orlando/Jacksonville, FL
4. NYC
4 Favorite Foods
1. Papa John's Pizza
2. California Pizza Kitchen Pizza
3. Cold Stone Ice Cream
4. Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup
4 Websites I Visit Daily
1. Yahoo Mail
2. All the lovely Blogs
3. Ebay
4. Mountain America Credit Union
4 Places I Want to Visit
1. St. George, UT ALWAYS!
2. Victoria BC
3. New Zealand
4. South America

I'm tagging Camie, Emma (no camera, she needs an excuse!) Heidi, Lara, Alisha, and Hallie.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE!!

The 10-way Phone Call

My little brother, Eric, left the MTC this morning, and called us at 7:30 a.m. Well, actually, he called home at 7:30 (Utah) time. Cell phones are so great. He called my mom's phone, who put my dad on 3-way, who called Tara, who called Kimmy's phone, who called my phone, I called Jonny's phone, he called Krystal in Florida, who called my cousin Monique in Orem. I didn't count up everyone, but it was so cool to have our whole entire family on the phone while Eric told us goodbye (again) from the SLC airport. (Sidenote: 7:30 a.m. is 3:30 a.m. in Hawaii, but hey, we won't talk to him again until Christmas!) He is doing great, and is already in San Diego as I write this. We had him speak some Spanish to us, and we were way impressed, especially me and Samuel, who were the only ones who understood what he was saying, but it's incredible that missionaries can learn that much in 9 weeks. I'd forgotten. The gift of tongues is amazing.

In other news, I'm home sick for the second day in a row, if you didn't guess from my cartoon avatar there on the right. I got a blessing Sunday night, so I know I'm on the mend...but it's a sinus infection, and they don't go away as fast as I wish they would. Oh well. I am grateful for the extra sleep, even though I feel kinda guilty at the $$$ I'm not earning. I get paid by the hour, so I just don't get paid for days I'm not there. We're really trying to save up for when I quit. Anyway, I'm glad I have your blogs to help me get through the boring days.

Baby Shower!!

Saturday night was so fun, I just have to thank my friends for the greatest baby shower ever. It was so much fun, and I couldn't believe all the stuff they gave us for our baby girl, she is going to be STYLIN!! I haven't bought hardly any clothes (it's been hard) but we got darling things, in all sizes, and some other very needed items. I am so grateful! Here's a group picture:
So, remember I mentioned about all the young couples in our ward? These are a lot of the gals, aren't they beautiful? If you look close you'll see my red eyes. This was the end of the shower, and I had to tell them all how much I love them and how much they mean to me, and how they've been like sisters to me, offering advice and support and love, and I was pretty much bawling. Thanks to Melody, front row on the right, who headed the whole thing up. I know you can't tell, but she's 4 1/2 months pregnant (with a girl, a friend for my baby!) and has been an amazing support to me as well. She's a regular blogger too, if you want some great "discipline rules" for kids, check out her recent post here.
And here's a little glimpse of the cute clothes (and other stuff). I'm now way TOO excited to get this baby out here and try on some clothes! :)

North Shore Campfire

I don' t know if I've mentioned this, but we live about a mile away from the University of Hawaii. So, lucky for us, we have a lot of married couples in our ward who are going to school. We have had the best time with all these friends, everybody gets along so well and we get together all the time. Some of the couples have kids, and others don't, and right now we fall into both categories! About a month ago we drove to the north shore (about an hour away) and did a temple session with two other couples, the Olsons and the Moultons. Afterwards we went to a beach and had hot dogs and s'mores. The guys were so cute, doing their "hunting/gathering" thing and building the fire, roasting everything for us (I think they felt pretty good taking care of the women-folk) and we all had a blast until about midnight. (I'm enjoying these things, since staying out with friends til midnight might not be happening in the near future.) Anyway, we are grateful for good friends, it makes it so much easier to be so far away from family.

Big Island Pictures

Here's a few pictures of the Big Island. History lesson: This island is the "youngest" of all the islands, and it's the one with an active volcano that still oozes lava every day. Most of the island is covered in hardened lava (as you can see from the picture in the bottom-left.) Like all the islands, it has a "dry" side and a "rainy" side, and the rainy side is the garden-like lush land of waterfalls and tropical flowers. Now, here are some very bad pictures of me and Samuel. There's your proof that we are not very photogenic. :) This waterfall is called Akaka falls:

Then this is a picture of us looking tired after playing all day in a different waterfall, called Pe'e Pe'e falls, yes, take out the apostrophes and its Peepee falls. Anyway, they pronounce it like Peh-eh Peh-eh. We have some pictures on a waterproof camera that are getting developed.
So we ate at this Mexican restaurant, and the service was soooo bad, I started to wonder if we were on Candid camera, and they wanted to see our reactions...turns out the service was just horrible, food, not too bad.
Then we went to sleep. Comfy huh. Don't you love it when you have friends who catch you in moments like this? Yeah, that double chin is like an inch thick. Maternal fat stores?

Burn Baby Burn

Well, we really did have a great time on the Big Island, but we are paying for it now. Our last day there (Monday) we went kayaking, it was my first time, and it was really fun, we kayaked in this beautiful bay, stopped and snorkled for awhile, then kayaked some more. I put all kinds of sunblock on my arms, shoulders, and face, but I didn't put any on my legs, because I don't mind if they have some color, plus, they take longer, ya know?? Samuel only put sunblock on his face and back. Well, our friends wanted to finish sooner than we did, and drive down the road to another spot. We decided that they would drive and meet us there, and we would kayak there. We thought it was just the next bay over. We were wrong. It was like, 10 bays over, and we were in way over our heads. We just kept paddling and paddling, and still, the bay wasn't there. It was so discouraging, and we started praying for either a boat to come save us or superpower strength to keep going, or we were going to die. (That sounds dramatic, but I started to worry that we were going to get tossed by a wave and be left in the middle of the ocean to fend for ourselves. And I get tired so fast, I'd be the first to go.) Well, anyway, long story short, after about 4 hours (total) kayaking (and some superpower-strength from above), we saw the bay. I was in tears that it was there, and not 10 more bays away. Our friend took a picture of us kayaking in, (we tried to cover up as best we could, and I even had my legs covered for part of the way, but not my feet :( Do we look totally exhausted?)
For now, all we have to show for it is the most painful sunburn we've EVER had, on our legs and especially our poor feet. I wish the pictures showed how lobster red we are, but it barely captures it. Oh well. My feet are so burned that all the skin around it is swollen so that I can't flex my foot, and it feels like needles are permanently embedded in them. See?? No ankle bones!! Pudgy feet!!

We tried aloe, we tried lidocaine, we even got desperate and started spraying with vinegar every 4 hours (that actually helped the most.) It's been a miserable 24 hours. We got a laugh out of this one though, Samuel came home from work and took off his shoes and socks, and it turns out his socks are light compression socks, so they kept all the swelling out of his ankles, then the swelling ballooned out at the top of where the socks were. Talk about chicken legs huh!!! So go ahead and laugh with us and I'll post better pictures of the Big Island later.

I couldn't resist

Have you ever caught yourself thinking? I know that's a funny question, cause I know we're pretty much always thinking, if we're not talking...but today I caught myself having a funny self-conversation, which led to an important self-discovery...



I was walking home from work to have lunch, it's only about a 4 minute walk, and I had just been looking at blogs, and I saw the new baby girl that Jessica Thomas had, and I was thinking how darling the baby was, and how she has SO much hair! Then I thought about how she was born just the perfect size, not too big, not too small, which immediately led to me thinking about how big my baby is going to be, I'm pretty sure she's going to be a little bigger (they keep telling me that at my ultrasounds), so yes, that worries me a tad, that she'll be too big to squeeze out, then I think, it's because I eat so much! Then I tell myself, I don't eat THAT much, it seems like I eat about the same as before I was pregnant, with a few extra allowances here and there, (like cinnamelts), then I realized, I eat pizza from Papa Johns...just about once a week.


As SOON as the word "pizza" entered my mind, my mouth watered, and I knew I had to have it for lunch. I mean, HAD to have it. I couldn't stop thinking about it. That's when I realized I was having so many RANDOM thoughts, I had to laugh at myself, but I did think it was interesting how my thoughts had led me to pizza. I think FOOD is like, the center of my universe, everything leads back to it. Then I realized I think about food a lot, I guess that's how cravings work, as if there was a science behind it.


So, I couldn't resist, I had to put up one more ultrasound picture, this is a good shot of Baby Bigler...looking incredibly bored (can't blame her, can ya?) We just thought it was cute how she seemed to rest her head in her hand. Well, there's another post about nothing.