Nate, Amber, Zak and Cole: January 2011

Quick Catch up on Us

So I haven't blogged in forever like usual but a lot is going on lately. December was busy with our anniversary and Christmas and starting to really focus on potty training Zak. January has been busy with Zak's birthday, lots of changes and things going on at church with the new year and my being in the primary presidency, Nate preparing and presenting his masters proposal (and passsing with flying colors, I might add), we're in the process of moving to a bigger apartment, and I'm 9 months pregnant, so we'll be expecting our second little boy any day now. We're busy, we're happy, and doing well! This pregnancy has been quite a bit different than my pregnancy with Zak...but no major problems or concerns so that's awesome. Although I may need to post a picture of my feet...if you can even call them that. They're huge. Swollen. Balloons. Zak has done awesome with his potty training and it has been a fairly unfrustrating process. I think I waited long enough to potty train him that by the time we really started working on it, he was ready and although not super willing at first, came around very quickly and was old enough to understand when I just told him point blank that we ran out of diapers and don't have anymore. When he started asking me to go to the store to buy some more so he could #2, I knew a boy old enough to ask his mother to go to the store to buy diapers was old enough to learn to use the potty. He's done awesome. He loves wrestling and playing basketball with Dad. He also loves to characterize everything into boys and/or girls. Like if he and Nate are playing basketball he tells me to watch out so they don't get me, because basketball is for boys. And he's always looking and my jewelery and nail polish telling me it's for girls. Tonight he told me girls eat salad and boys eat goldfish. Boys run and girls walk. Boys have big muscles. And every once in awhile we'll be in the car when a song comes on the radio that is being sung by a girl, and he asks me to change it to a boy song, which is any song that has a boy singing. He cracks us up most the time and knows how to push our buttons the other times. He's excited to be a big brother and always tells us that he's going to share his toys with the baby. We'll see what happens! I haven't uploaded pictures from his birthday yet...but I will get on that soon!..hopefully. But this post is carazy long anyway so I will cut this part off here!

Aloha Oe to the Garners!

This is Zak and his good friend Julien saying farewell. Julien's family moved to Utah while we were visiting our families in Idaho over Thanksgiving. This was the night we were flying out. We were so sad to come back to a Garner-less Hawaii. We miss chilling with them and Zak sure does miss his buddy!

Trip to Idaho in November

On November 17th...my 26th birthday! Woa I'm getting old! ...we flew to Idaho to visit our families for Thanksgiving. Nate hadn't really left the island since we've been in Hawaii (year and a half) and needed a break from work. We had a lot of fun catching up with family and relaxing Idaho style. We got to see Nate's little bro, Steph, who'd just gotten home from a mission, meet Nate's little brother, Jeff's girlfriend, Alyssa. And see pretty much all our siblings except Parker and Sarah who live in St. Louis and Steele and Kiersten who live here in Hawaii.

Zak got much better acquainted with all his cousins on both sides and loved playing with his grandparents toys and in the snow. He got to see cows, horses, tractors, trailors, etc. All the things he loves to look at out the window while we'd drive.

Nate also got the opportunity to interview at the University of Utah for medical school while we were home. He drove through a crazy snow storm to get there on the 28th...interviewed the 29th and drove back to Boise and then we flew back to Honolulu on the 30th. We're so proud of him for getting an interview and hope to hear good news in the next few months!

Playing basketball with Grandpa Berg at McDonald's playland. Hawaii's fast food places do not have play lands so Zak thought it was pretty sweet.

We got to ride on a train to the North Pole and visit Santa Claus. Zak loved it. Trains + Snow + Santa = one happy boy!

Snow at the North Pole

On Santa's sled

Picture out the window on the train ride up to the North Pole.

1st snow ball of the trip!

One tired boy!

Checking out the cows with his cuz, Heston.

Helping Grandma make her famous popcorn!

Christmas 2010

I took hardly any pictures at Christmas...but here are a few. Christmas Eve we had a marvelous prime rib dinner with our neighbors Heber and Olya and Nate's brother Steele and his wife Kiersten. It was a great time! Then we drove downtown Honolulu to check out Christmas lights. Then we went to our friend Mark and Marty's to have dessert with them for Mark's birthday. We then went home and read the Christmas story out of the Bible as a family and opened one gift and put Zak to bed. Nate and I had a great time wrapping and setting up for the morning. Christmas morning we got up and did Santa stuff... and then Heber and Olya came over again and we had breakfast and did presents from each other and family. The rest of the day we just relaxed and then did Christmas dinner with our friends the Moss's who just had a new baby a few days before. We spent the evening with them and had a great time. It was a very relaxing holiday for us!

4th Anniversary

Nate and I celebrated our 4th Anniversary on Dec. 23rd. I didn't think Nate was really even thinking about our anniversary...especially because he'd been having a super busy month at work and hadn't even been able to put too much thought into Christmas. I was kinda planning a back up plan for him in case he didn't get around to planning anything. So I talked to a friend about maybe babysitting and thought we'd just go out to dinner or something and maybe do some Christmas shopping. We take turns planning our anniversaries...this is why I was trying to not take over! haha Anyway, Nate totally surprised me with tickets for a sunset dinner cruise in Waikiki on the Star of Honolulu. I was excited to be doing something that sounded so romantic as well as relaxing and kind of quiet. I was also a little worried that the food would be too fancy for my tastebuds but everything ended up being really good!

The buildings with green roofs in this picture are where Nate spends his days. He works there and also has had some classes here. It's the John A. Burns school of medicine.