A trip to Hawaii

In our efforts to turn Lauren into a world traveler we took her to Hawaii last week during Lars' spring break. We went to Honolulu and stayed on Waikiki beach. For those of you on my mailing list, I sent out an email with a link to the pictures along with pics from my father's funeral services, my cousin Hal's visit, and from a photo shoot I did with Lauren to pick out a passport picture for her. If you didn't get an email from me, let me know and I can invite you to view the pictures.

Our trip to Hawaii was relatively quick. It was a 4 day/3 night trip. Partly because it was only our second trip with Lauren, we didn't want to risk anything longer. Lauren survived the flights with only a minimal of screaming and crying (only during the time before take-off). To us that's really good, considering the possibilities and the fact she screamed most of the flight back from Vegas over New Years.

As usual Lauren was a hit with everyone who thought she was the cutest thing they'd ever seen. She's gotten better with strangers and does okay as long as no one tries to pick her up.

We got to spend time on the beach, as well as take a drive around Oahu. Lauren seemed completely unfazed by all of it and had fun, with one exception. Lauren wasn't too enthused about the beach. She disliked the texture of sand and the cold ocean water wasn't too pleasing either. She did eventually settle down and play in the sand, to the point of eating some, but that's not an experience I'd like her to repeat.

Sometime in the last two weeks, Lauren's become quite the shopper. It's impossible to take her in a store without her grabbing and picking up everything in sight. The side effect of this is that you go through a store pretty quick when she's in a stroller reaching for every little thing on the shelf. She also has gotten really good at rolling over. She's been able to roll-over for over a month, but now she realizes how easy it is, she does it all the time. When she's sleeping, when you're changing her diaper, etc. Mostly it's when it's most inconvenient for her care-giver!

Lauren returned to day-care on Friday, and this morning as well. Surprisingly even after a week of missed day-care, she was unfazed when I left her this morning, quite happy to hang on to the walk-rail in the crawling room she's in. At our day-care children are grouped according to their abilities. Lauren started out in the crawling room since she was mobile when we enrolled her. It's right next to the non-crawling baby room. When she starts walking she'll get bumped to the walkers room. I imagine that'll be any day now. She's beginning to let go when she's standing up and she can stand without assistance now for a few seconds at a time.

This past Sunday marked the 4 week anniversary of my dad's passing. We went to temple to pray for my dad and to the gods, as we have been doing each past Sunday and visited the grave site in Oak Hill. The grave site, has been cleaned up, and all the flowers that were left the day of the services have been removed. At this point it's just a patch of dirt, at some point in the future the maintenance crews at the cemetery will cover it with sod. We also ordered a headstone last week. The company is awaiting artwork from us for the Chinese characters and then they will get us a proof to review. It takes about 3 months after that to get the headstone and then have it installed.

For those of you unfamiliar with Buddhist tradition, we will continue to go to temple to pray for another 3 weeks (the last one being the seventh seven day interval since my dad's passing).