Our latest Offspring!!

Brent Ephraim Maikeli Haines was born on the 16th of November. Surprisingly, this was also my father's birthday. Only difference is he's a day older and my dad is 54 :)I told dad that 54 is the new 21 :). Brent is originally a missionary's name who came down to Fiji. My uncle then decided to name one of his sons, Brent. So when we first got married and started our new family in Hawaii, Brent (my cousin) was stationed there too as a Marine and he became part of our first family unit. We were always looking forward to weekends as this is the day he comes by and visits us. Not only then but whenever he could. He became very speacial in our lives and when we found out we were having a boy, there was no doubt in our minds that we were going to name our son after him. The name Ephraim came about when we were going through the bible and came across the 12 tribes of Israel, one of which was Ephraim. We fell inlove with the name and decided to add that on. Maikeli, is actually michael The Archangel but fijianise. He was and still is a very influential spirit being. We love Michael and thought to Fijianise it as we want all our kids to have a fijian name too.
So here is a picture of Brand New Brent!!

William's Apron

So i decided to make an apron for my son who likes to imitate everything i do in the kitchen. As much as i want to do things very quickly without a hassel of this kid,i realised this is a learning stage for him.So everything we do, we'd include him in it as long as its no danger to him. But he's preety smart too. He's dad and him were putting together this bookshelf one day thus using a hammer a couple times. Jacob gives him his own toy hammer and nail while he used the real one. William turned to his dad and gave him his toy tools while he picked up the real ones and started hammering. We burst out laughing.
Anyway,so heres his apron made from an old BDU ( his dads old air force uniform). I had difficulties trying to get his measurements so i ended up using Elmo. Yes Elmo the toy :) Basically i just needed his chest and height and i added 2 inches to it. Through the processs of sewing, i reaslised that i had ran out of thread on the bobin. It was late in the night and i had totally forgotten how to thread a bobin. Thanks to Youtube., my memory came back after seeing one of their threading videos.














Dancing with his Apron (We all have our dance moves, The mommy dance, The daddy dance and this is The sonny dance.) A one line song..Go-whoever from us is dancing..in this case was William known as sonny to our families.

Our 4th of July

Just in case you are wondering what 4th of July means, it's America's birthday. On July 4th 1776 , America gained Independence from Britian and democracy was born.

So we celebrated our 4th of July with food, rides and later on fireworks in the evening.


Fireworks


more firworks


William's first car ride

Lake Gelterswoog

The Gelterswoog with the city Kaiserslautern in the Pfalz is an artificial lake, which was put on in the Middle Ages artificially as Woog by accumulating smaller brooks for breeding by fish.The Gelterswoog, which has its overflow to the Aschbach, is scarcely 1 km long, up to 500 m broad and has a surface of over 13 hectars. At the northern part of the Woogs there is an open-rir swimming pool with 300 m to long sand beach and rowing boat rental business, while in the south a hotel restaurant with sea-terrace is. Neighbouring is also a camping site. Few kilometers far away to the Moosalb lies the nature-left Karl valley reminding of a jungle.
So we made lunch and decided to go spend the day at the lake.We had so much fun especially since it was Williams first trip to the lake.He absolutely loved it there. Infact he didin't want to get out of the water.

Trip to the Japanese Garden

The Japanese Garden was opened in Kaiserslautern in April 2000, belongs to the largest gardens of its kind in Europe. Carefully selected plants, ponds, waterfalls, fishes, lantern lights and stone arrangements create on atmosphere of the Far East - and body and soul come to rest.

William gets introduced to paint, crayons and a paper.

I first introduced writing and drawing to him when he was 12 moths 2 weeks.This was the first ever picture he drew and i am definetly going to store it in his album. Something he can look back too when he grows older.

Beyond what i could handle.

As you may know,we are expecting our second baby due November 30th. We are super excited and according to Jacob, more hands to help around the house :).I had been suffering from a cold last week and seems like this week it has taken its toll.I can barely keep anything in and is very choosy with what i drink.Head hurts from time to time and they say i can only take tylernol.
Jacob has been gone as of last week and we know how much he hates been away from his family. Everyone at work tells me all about it and sometimes they would even joke about it.

So this morning as much as how sick i was to go to base,i had to. William was running low on wipes and milk and i needed to buy a pluger for our clogged sink.With these, we had to go cancel appointments. We got to the BX and it was time for William to have lunch so i figured feeding him in the car would be easier.This was around 11.

After we were done,i carried him out together with our diaper bag.Bought the pluger and didn't want to make another trip to the commisary(grocery store) so i just ended up buying the milk from the Shoppett around the corner.

Walking back to our car, the rain started drizziling.When we got to the car,i looked for the keys and they weren't where i thought it was.I looked everywhere in the diaper bag as well as the trolley. Decided to take a peak inside the car and saw it laying beside William's car seat.Oh how i was so devastated. Pulling every door handle wishing one would unlock,such was impossible.

Walked back inside to customer service hoping they would help.They called the sp's( cops) and they said that they could only help if a child was inside.So they called this german company of base ADAC (something like locksmiths) and they said that i should be a member in oder for them to help me. So i asked the customer service people if there was anyone around to help me but according to them no one was available.I would have called Jacobs work but everyone was on the same tdy as he was.

I walked out thinking what am i going to do.This is something i don't really know anything about. Looked in the diaper bag, there was a pair of loop earings.Got it out, bend it and started messing the keyhole with it. This was around 12ish which was lunch time for most people so no one would wanna waste their time for a hungry belly. Someone told me to call the cops, someone said call ADAC, someone said go to customer service. This was pretty much everything i had done. A lady told me as she was driving by to get a black hair pin. What she forgot to tell me was what to do with it. I figured messing with the keyhole was it. Another lady told me, u need to get a hangar and hook it up in there. Again,hook it up where or how. I had made 3 trips to the BX by this time,the rain started to pour .Tried my best to cover my son. Of cause both of us was starting to get wet.
Being a person who hates quitting,i kept going. William started to fuss so i took him off the trolley and held him in one arm and kept working on the car. Keep in mind,i didn't have a clue on what i was doing but i kept trying to be doing something.
With William in one hand , it was difficult working. At this point, i hit the spot.I just cried.As much has how strong i wanted to be, i couldn't hold it anymore. My mind started to wonder. Missing my husband started to kick in.How he would really love to help and be here in a heartbeat. I know i have always told him to have faith and seek strength.At this time,i was almost hearing him tell me the same exact thing.I said a quick prayer and began working again. I looked at William and he was dozing off to sleep. My son was actually sleeping in the rain :( My heart started to feel heavy again.

Around 2 was when a man rushing to his car saw me from a distant and yelled out, Mam can i help you? I told him i had locked my keys in the car. He came over and told us to go sit in his car.We were both wet by then but he didn't mind. I layed William in the car over a backpack and covered him with the mans jacket.I quickly went back to see if he needed any help.We used up every single hangar we could. Mind you these were the soft type plastic hangars.They didn't have the metal ones anymore so it made it difficult to try and hook up the button to unlock. We would have just gone home and left the car there until Jacob got back since he has the other spare key but our housekey was hooked up with the car key.And our neighbour who would have helped open our house was in Denmark.Everything was going downhill.


Anyway,4 o'clock came and i said i was ready to break the window. After all i had already broken the rubber tubes. But he said he'll keep trying.I have never been so grateful for a person who went out of his way to help us.Around 5 was when i went to check back on William who was sleeping and could hear him yelling , i got it. I was so happy and at the same time humbled with this mans patience.I could only pray for blessings upon him and his family.As i was thanking him,i saw his name tag McGray and realised that we hadn't introduce ourselves. He was a god given angel to help us.

Through this experience,i am able to see myself as a better mother and a wife. Knowing that i would do what i can for my family with or without my husband.This doesn't change the fact on how i see the military nor lessen the pride i have for it. I am proud of what my husband does and will continually support him no matter what the circumstances may be. We are a family, a pack that will never be disrupted.
I have learnt that sometimes someone else comes and carries your burden.Tells you exactly what you need to hear.In this case,as he was trying to pull the unlock button and was unsuccesful..i could hear him saying to himself...so close yet so far but my faith is still burning. Also another great act of patience. I had given up on my car but he helped me gained that virtue back.

Spending St Patricks Day At The Park

William walking

William actually started taking steps when he was 11months. The day he turned 1, he took the most steps he's ever done which was 6 steps right infront of his dad and i .Three weeks later, Jacob came home and saw his son walking towards him. It was that wonderful milestone that we were always looking forward too. As i called it the ''Grand Finale".Jacob was so excited , surprised and also touched that he's son who was always crawling has now begun to walk. I definetly felt the same way but alittle too emotional as my baby is no longer a baby anymore but a big boy now.

Hahn Air Base

We made a trip to Kirchberg in the Hunsruck region(Germany) where once an American F-16 Air Force base(1953-1991) was located now civil and is used as an annexed airport by Frankfurt. This trip was very special as my father in law was stationed here 40 years ago and we wanted to see for ourselves what the base looked like now.
All we could see was abandoned buildings . Jacob walked into the dorms and noticed iron bars, broken windows and even cracked walls. As we looked around we could see a tennis court and a commisary sign.We drove up to the commisary and once we got there ,we realised that we had just droven past the main gate.That was how bad everything was.You could recognised the structure of the buildings and the paint they use but the condition was not as close to that of today.It was totaly a sad sight.Below is a few pictures from our trip.

27th February 2010

This was the day William came into the world a year ago.I remember Jacob holding up his son and saying ''HAPPY BIRTHDAY sonny ,now what did God tell you to tell us".This was a very special day for us.William was so tiny but a very long baby.He gave us joy like no one else had given. He was everything perfect and more. So a year as passed and we celebrated with him his special day even though he wasn't feeling well. Jacob and i baked a spongebob cake.Alot of work but we had so much fun.When William finally had a glimpse of his cake, he was so excited. The day ended as we made a visit to the emergency room as William started running a high fever..:( The last time we were both at the emergency room was when we were expecting William,now one year later..we were back there. Anyway, the doctor ran some tests, had x-rays done and we were good to leave. We are planning to give him a traditional birthday party @ my cousins house mid April.

Its all in the Family

Trip to Luxembourg

Luxembourg was a 2hr drive from where we stay so we had been wanting to go there for a long time.Eventually a friend and his family were going there to see the christmas markets so they invited us to accompany them.As we were all getting in the cars..everyone checked their passports.Here in Europe some countries do check for passports as you are entering their country.Guess it was one of their normal procedures.Anyway..we remembered that we had forgotten ours at home so we had to all drive towards the direction of our house which is like 30-40 mins away from our friends.Got our passports and we were good to go.Luxembourg to my understanding was a very small country and you could actually walk from one end of the city to another in a day.Of cause i had to see this for myself.We got there @ about 3pm. Seems like some things were written in French while others were in German.We found out they these were the official languages of Luxembourg.The spoken language of the majority of the population was Luxembourgish.
We enjoyed ourselves walking around their christmas markets.Some of the things were really interesting like boiled wine.Dress styles were not that different from that of Germany.

Transitioning from his baby car seat to a big boy one

A friend of ours gave us their carseat to use as they were planning to buy a booster one for their daughter who apparently was way too old for the one they had.This car seat was too fancy for us as it was made in Japan and had all these buttons everywhere. As of today i still get confused with what to do with them.It would have helped if the instructions were in english or if i knew Japanese.Of cause thats why you have husbands around.Seems like this was his field to me. Moving on,William loved the carseat.He was all smiling..he even pushed his old car seat away..i think he was playing but we saw it as a way of growing up. He was definetly ready for the big one.