jungle boy finds a surfboard

We've been out to the north shore a lot this Winter. The surf has been fun for Christian and it's one of our favorite places to hang out. So yes, we do have a lot of beach pictures on this blog, but I guess that's what we do here! We can't help ourselves. So here you go, more pictures from the beach.

This boy has been making us laugh a lot lately. He really is such a ham and I think that he soaks up all of the attention he gets from mom and dad and loves to entertain. Just a couple of funny things he did last week for the books: While roaming around nude, exploring the bushes, I turn my back on him and let him do his thing back there. About 5 minutes later we hear, "Hiiiiiiii". We turn around and this is what we see:

Our naked boy saddled up on a dog. He was so proud of himself and excited to show us what he had done. What a sweet little dog for putting up with such behavior.

Dad intervenes and helps him down.

And shows him the proper way to treat a dog.

A bit later, (we were at the beach for 6 hours total that day! I don't know how we did it.) Tristan stumbled across this wooden board in the bushes and dragged it out. Remembering that his Dad carries a long stick around and rides it in the water, he knew exactly what to do with it.

Tristan is thrilled with his find and is excited to try it out.

He makes his way over to his Mom first to show her what he discovered. We were so impressed with how he carried it like a surfboard.

He says his goodbyes and charges towards the giant north shore waves.

"byyeeee".

Christian said that he looked pretty nervous as he walked closer to the water. He even walked into the water and got nailed by a wave, but he kept going until Christian had to stop him. Apparently he was determined to get out there and impress his parents.

Christian laid the board down for him and told him this was as far as he was going.

Later on when Christian and Uncle Gavin were ready to go out again, Tristan ran to grab his board and was excited to finally paddle out with the boys. Christian said it was actually really sad to watch him because he was so serious and thought that it was time. I ended up having to drag a really sad boy in as we waved goodbye to his Dad.

It's really fun for us to watch his personality develop and we realized after this that we have a pretty cool kid. So happy, silly and adventurous (and can handle extreme lengths of time at the beach). So excited to get out there with dad and surf. That makes dad happy too.

Tristan and Bentley

It's really fun watching T develop his circle of friends. Little ones that he recognizes and gets so excited to see. Bentley is one of them. They play so well together and I think it's because they are both crazy, crazy kids. I had the chance to capture these really cute pictures of the little boogers when we were at the beach with his parents a couple of weekends ago. Oh so cute. Please note that Bentley is a full year older than Tristan and they measure at different ends on the scale. But that doesn't stop them from being BFFs!

christmas happenings

Our Christmas tree has been up for a couple of weeks now. It's real! I love the smell it brings to our living room. Tristan has been really good about not yanking on the tree or ornaments. In fact, when he had a friend over last week, he brought her over to the tree and pointed his finger at it and said, "no no no!". I guess he's remembering what Mom and Dad have told him.

He wasn't that stoked on Santa. "Mom, Dad, who is this man?

"Seriously mom, are you going to do something about this?"

"Really? A candy cane? That's the best you've got?"

"Please don't touch me".

"I'm done here, and I feel a little queasy now ". After he hopped down from his lap, he handed the candy cane back to him.

Later that night, the boys frosted the sugar cookies.

Tristan got creative and used his licked finger to help spread the frosting on the cookie.

Multi-tasking! I hope that those of you who ate our cookies enjoyed them!

sugar

a lot of Christmas baking = a lot of uncontrolled sugar intake = a toddler on speed = ten o'clock bed time = frustrated and tired parents.

Halona Beach Cove

Also known as "Cockroach Cove". I'm not sure why, there are no roaches here. We had a lot of fun at this place. It may look familiar because this is where they shot the scene from "50 First Dates" with Adam Sandler and Drew B. I think that this was one of Tristans favorite beaches so far. He had plenty of small rocks to climb on and feel cool because he could do it all by himself. He could play in small pools of water and be sheltered from the big shore breaks. It would be fun to hang out at this place more often.

This photo was stolen from the web.

We went with the Ward Family. Tristan and Ava love each other.

This boy was in heaven.

Sports Illustrated cover shot.

It makes me wonder what he's thinking about in this picture. "I love rocks, and water, and sand, and mama, and dada. I'm so happy".

Exploring the tide pools with his Dad.

Some sort of sea urchin is discovered. It's really gross because all of those wormy things in the middle suck on you when you put it on your hand. It hurt a little!

Rock jumping.

I made this photo a little bigger so you could see how funny it was. His head looks like it's been photoshopped on to his body, like it's floating a little. No photoshopping here! We had a good laugh.

Tristan ended up jumping from the rocks a few times. Anything to be like his Dad.

temple open house

The Laie Temple is back! It's been closed for two years for heavy renovation and it just recently re-opened last month. We had the opportunity to attend the open house and view some of the changes inside the temple. Beautiful. We had our little stinker with us which was a total embarrassment and probably ruined the experience for everyone on the tour with us. I don't understand, there were other little ones on the tour with us, but they were perfect angels. Tristan was being so rowdy and wanted to jump on the new furniture and make a lot of noise. It got to the point where Christian had to squeeze his lips closed (really hard) to make him stop talking! Note to self, get a sitter next time. Anyways, we are so excited that the temple is open again and we hope to come and visit it often.

Trying to stop this boy from jumping into the water. This pool is definitely not meant for swimming.

It was really cute because when we all walked into the visitors center, we were greeted with this beautiful statue of Christ, and Tristan immediately saw him and starting pointing and yelling, "Jesus!! Jesus!!.....Jesus!!!" This place is usually peaceful and quiet so we had to quickly cover his mouth. It's interesting how Tristan recognizes Jesus in all shapes and form. Tristan always knows exactly who it is, no matter how different each painting is of Him. Very cool.

Don't you love it when you ask bystanders to take a photo of your family and they get it all wrong. It's almost like they heard you say, "Can you please take a picture of our family in front of the temple, but don't get any of the temple in the picture. We mostly want our feet and try and capture a lot of the concrete ground. Thank you!"

This boy still had his eyes on that water. Thank goodness we packed our beach bags and we were off to Gas Chambers. If you drive all the way out to the North Shore, you've got to make a beach day out of it.

Exhausted. He swam his little arms off.