Cell Phone Pictures

I know this may surprise some of you but I've only had a cell phone that takes pictures for the last 10 months! I never really understood the excitement of having a camera on your cell phone until I became a mom. I realized that you really never do have a camera handy when you need one and the camera on my cell phone certainly does come in handy!

Recently my 10 month old cell phone has experienced some minor damage at the hands of our little toddler. Olivia loves to talk on the phone and I'm sure you can imagine some of the creative things that Olivia has done to my cell phone over the last couple of months. It's been buried in our sandbox, left in the bottom of the toy box, thrown down the stairs, and recently dropped in a toilet (in an airport bathroom, YUCK!). To be honest I'm shocked that it lasted as long as it did! Anyways my cell phone has finally been retired and I received my replacement cell phone (thank goodness for warranties) in the mail yesterday. I had to download the pictures from my old cell phone so they weren't lost forever. I realized I've taken quite a random assortment of pictures with my little cell phone. There are way too many to post today but I'll try and share a couple of them with you each week.

What pictures do you have on your cell phone?

We had taken Olivia to the play area in the mall and she literally played herself to sleep. She was exhausted!Before I went back to work mornings were my favorite time with Olivia. She wakes up so happy and ready for the day! I told her to go to the kitchen and get ready for breakfast so she went into the kitchen and pulled down the tray of her highchair and sat on it. Ready for breakfast! Even Mr. Big thinks that she's crazy but she's so proud of herself!

The big T-W-O

I can't believe that Olivia is already two years old! We were in Hawaii on her actual birthday so we celebrated this past weekend. We had some friends over for birthday cake on Saturday then we took Olivia to Charlie's Safari to play on their giant inflatables on Sunday.

This weekend we also converted Olivia's crib into a toddler bed and so far she's doing great! I was really hesitant to move her out of her crib but Olivia seems very proud of her big girl bed. She climbs into her bed but so far I don't think that she's discovered that she can climb out all by herself too. We'll see how long that lasts.

And the Baby is....

Thanks for voting. So far the results are close, most people think it's a girl but only by 2 votes! We had our second ultrasound yesterday and the baby looks happy and healthy. Mike and I had been going back and forth about weather or not we wanted to find out the sex of the baby and we've decided that we just aren't ready to find out yet. We don't know if it's a boy or a girl so the poll is still open. I'll try and post some of the new ultrasound pictures soon.

Hawaii Trip Highlights

We had a great time in Hawaii. Some of the highlights include:

• Olivia's behavior on the plane. This was the first time we had to purchase a seperate seat for Olivia and she was very well behaved on the 6 hour flights there and back!
• The weather. We're still not used to the cold Seattle weather so we all really enjoyed the hot, humid weather in Hawaii!
• Our hotel. The first night the air conditioning wasn't working well in our room so they moved us to an ocean front mini-suite with a beautiful ocean view!
• The pool in the hotel was very nice. There was a sandy kids play area made to resemble the beach which Olivia loved. There was also a huge 2 story slide into the pool which Mike and I enjoyed and then a little mini slide that Olivia enjoyed.
• The beach. While our hotel wasn't right on the beach we really enjoyed visiting several different types of beaches on the big island including beaches for snorkling, state parks, and a black sand beach (which was quite the experience, it merits a whole seperate blog post later)
• The Manta Rays at the hotel. The Manta Rays would feed in the ocean right outside the hotel and we could see them from our room. They were huge and it was amazing to watch them floating around.
• Our trip to the Volcanoes National Park and our hike through a lava tube.

While we had a great time I certainly don't want you to think that every aspect of our trip was perfect I'll also share some of the not so plesant moments:

• We discovered that Olivia gets car sick. This happened quite a bit on our drive from New Orleans to Seattle but I (never having been car sick before) dismissed it as a stomach bug. Now that I'm 6 months pregnant I think that my stomach is a little more sensitive and I noticed that I was feeling a little queasy and I looked back into the back seat just in time to see Olivia start throwing up all over her car seat. Without going into more detail by the end of our drive every member of the Leiva family had "lost their breakfast," Olivia and I because we were car sick and Mike because he had to clean up the vomit from all over the rental car and rented car seat.
• The weather wasn't constantly sunny. It turns out that for the last 2 years the area we were staying in has tended to be a little hazy because of all the smoke from the volcano. While we did have a few nice days we were a little disapointed.
• The first night in the hotel was miserable. When we initally got to our room it was a little warm but we just thought that was because the air hadn't been turned on so we cranked it up and decided to head to the pool. By the time we returned Olivia was exhausted so we put her down for bed but the room was even warmer than before so a maintnence man was sent to investigate. The ac was broken and the hotel offered to move us to a different room right away but we had finally just gotten Olivia down to sleep and I'd unpacked everything so we decided to try and tough it out for a night. Some of you may remember that during my last pregnancy I had central ac installed in our home (in Colorado) so me pregnant without ac in Hawaii is obviously much worse.....

Overall we did have a fantastic time and we all agree that the best part was being able to spend some quality time together without any distractions--no tv, no cell phones, no email!

We've shared more of our photos through shutterfly, please check them out at:

share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=1AcNWTRm5ZsWGK

In the mean time Olivia LOVED the beach, she would try to run into the ocean. Our child had no fear, meanwhile I was terrified that she'd somehow be washed out to sea or something. Here's a clip of her enjoying the sand (and waves)