Burns, Blisters, Bandages, Embarrassment!

So Thursday, August, 13th, 2009 was a bad...bad night. It all started out innocently enough with a plan to cook hamburgers on the grill and deep fry some french fries for dinner. Well, I waited for Nate to get home from work and then sent him down to the grill to cook the burgers. We live on the 12th (top) floor of our complex and the bbq/recreation area is down on the 1st floor. So Nate took Zak outside with him so he could run around while Nate grilled and I stayed up planning on frying us up some french fries. Mind you, we hardly ever have french fries and even more rarely do we fry them. We always bake. But, I'd been craving fries so I wanted to treat myself and fry them. I did work fast food all through high school so I knew exactly how to go about doing it...or so I thought. Well, I was warming up some crisco (another new thing for me...I always use just oil) and just as I went to check on it to make sure it was all melted and put the fries in...the whole pan of crisco burst into flames. It was the biggest kitchen fire I'd seen. For the life of me, I could not think what to do. I knew water was not for grease fires but I could not think of one alternate method to put a fire out. Our microwave is above the stove so I picked up the pan to move it because I didn't want it ruining the microwave or catching our cabinets on fire. So I set it on the floor because it's tile and try calling Nate a few times to ask him how to put out the fire. In the meantime, the fire is getting more ferocious and Nate's not realizing his phone is vibrating. So I start panicking even more and decide to just fill the bathtub up with water and drop the whole pan in the bathtub. Even though I knew you weren't supposed to us water with a grease fire, I didn't know why...and I figure if the whole this was just totally submerged it could only be a good thing. So as I'm walking my flaming pan to the bathroom...the motion of walking with the pan out in front of me or something makes the fire shoot up my arms. I drop the pan and run out of the apartment not knowing if our apartment is on fire or what. Luckily it wasn't. Although I did suffer some 2nd degree burns and our apartment will now need to be re-carpeted..all is well here at the Hogg home. I go to the doctor daily to get my bandages changed and my wounds cleaned so I'm just getting better and better. My wonderful husband stayed home Friday and Monday from work and is doing SO much to help. He's now going to work, has to do dishes (my right hand can't get wet and i'm right handed), bathes Zak, changes most diapers, has been making meals, etc. I can't get my arms wet at all, so I have to bathe keeping my arms out of the water while Nate washes my hair, etc. He's been working like crazy to make things easier on me. Thanks for everything Nate! You're the best husband ever!

Misc. pictures

Pearl Harbor a couple months ago

Nates first blog!

Hello everyone that reads our blog. I am very happy to have the priviledge of making our blog post. We are happy here in Hawaii. We have officially moved to our new and hopefully permenant residence for Hawaii. We enjoy the swimming pool, work out rooms and BBQ patio area. We like the new quiet neighborhood that we live in (except for the freeway). We live 3 blocks from the church, the grocery store, and the local park, which is pretty nice. So everthing for everyday living is close, however we did purchase a car. It is a '99 Nissan Altima. It has a little less than 60,000 miles on it. Sweet ride.

We also got a calling in our ward being primary workers. The class we are assigned to at the moment is the Valiant 11-12 year olds. They are a great group of kids.
This past while I found out that I recieved my Graduate Assistantship which will pay for my school tuition and plus living cost....which makes living in Honolulu affordable. Without it we would probably be shacking up with our parents again in the Fall. Which wouldn't be all that bad, but unfortunately doesn't get us any closer to being real life grown-ups.

Z-man...he is the coolest little boy ever! He is trying to talk more, but unfortunately his efforts end in a language called Babel; which only mom and dad can understand 50% of the time, well actually mom understands 90% of it. We took him to Target this week and we bought him a new corvette car that was $5 and plays the NASCAR electric guitar intro. Another sweet ride.

We also went and scoped out the Premiere Outlet Malls here in Hawaii. Having a car turned about to be more expensive than I had anticipated. Lol. Amber got a few items, a dress, some sandles and a pair of white shorts. Zak got a couple of things also. The outlet malls are really awesome here, and cheap.

We made it to Hawaii!!

Yes, we're finally here in beautiful Hawaii! We got here at the end of May and are enjoying all the new scenery, environment, culture...everything. I had a bit of a slow start enjoying my time here, but it's getting better and better all the time. It's not that I wasn't loving the ocean and the views and stuff...I think it was just hard knowing how far away I was from anyone I knew and not knowing how to get around very well, especially on the crazy buses. Nate's loved it here since day 1. I also took a little longer getting used to the humidity and things.
Nate's working at the John A. Burns School of Medicine doing research on fertility type stuff and is really liking his work and the people he works with. The hardest part of his job (i think) is that his boss is Japanese and then the other 2 people in his lab are Chinese and Japanese. The can speak english....but are still pretty hard to understand. He's excited because he was officially asked to continue working in the fall which will qualify him for a tuition waiver which is what we were hoping for! Yeah Nate!! He's also taking a Kaplan course to help him study for the MCAT which he'll take....sometime. He goes to work 2-2.5 hours early everyday to study so he can still have his evenings free to spend with Zak and me...isn't that sweet?? We're so proud of him for getting the job in the fall and for all the hard work he does! We're also really excited for his kaplan course to be done!...at least i am!
Zak and I spend our days doing....whatever we want! =) We were living in Waikiki the first month we were here so the beach was just a couple blocks away. Zak is still a little hesitant with the ocean (because of the waves) and started off hating the sand (which he has since gotten used to). We'd go to the beach or just go walk around Waikiki checking things out, go swimming, go to the park, go to the store, go meet Nate for lunch, etc. Some of Zak's favorite things to do here are CHASE BIRDS, check out all the police cars/ambulances/fire trucks, and swim (in the hot tub). He's the only kid at the beach that would rather chase the birds than swim. We hear SOOO many sirens here and every time we have to run out to the lanai (balcony) and see if we can see where it's coming from and he laughs his head off. He's picking up a lot more words and has a big new fake laugh he does and also is 'swimming' really well. He'll let us plug his nose and put him under water, he jumps off the edge to us...we can't take our eyes off him b/c he'll jump if we're not looking too, and tries to swim under water.
Some of our adventures here have been hanging out at Waikiki Beach, taking a drive around the whole island to check it out, going to Waimanalo (sp?) Beach, going to the Pan-Pacific Festival, going to King Kamehameha Parade, going to Pearl Harbor and visiting the USS Arizona Memorial, Ala Moana Shopping Center (HUGE), snorkeling, boogie boarding. We've seen crazy Japanese drummers, Hawaiian dancers, awesome fish and birds and flowers..
Ok, I'll end this it's getting super long

sorry, I don't know why the captions to my slide show are so freaking huge!