Lanikai Adventures

Blog time! Sunday is blog day. Kind of like how Sarah and I watch "Sunday movies". Any movie that airs on Sunday, is technically a Sunday movie, right? We'll work on that justification...
This weekend was awesome! Actually, the whole week was awesome! I just took 3 exams so I had nothing new to study for (well, nothing to cram for). Sarah is home for spring break. I finished the needed lab reports, and even spent Friday afternoon into evening doing 4 pages worth of an extra credit write-up that isn't due until next Wednesday. If you know me, you know how difficult that is. For me, the weekend often starts at noon on Friday when I'm out of my last class. But to work until after 6:00 finishing assignments, that is unheard of. The benefit: It freed up Saturday completely!
Before I get into Saturday, I'll talk about Tuesday. I don't have class Tuesday, so Sarah and I took our free day together as an opportunity to go out to the east side of the island to Lanikai, officially my favorite beach right now. The beaches we usually frequent are on the north shore, and for the past few months it's been firing; tons of surf, a few contest were scheduled, and lots of traffic and people. At Lanikai, the water is calm, the stretch of beach is long, and it was just a nice change of pace from our norm. I could keep describing Lanikai, or, you could just see for yourself.

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I didn't expect the pile of sand this guy made to turn into this.

This is my new favorite picture of Sawyer.

Naturally, I wanted to go back. We planned it all out, and decided Saturday would be a great day to do so. It worked out well that 3-5 other couples around us also wanted to go! Then Friday happened. Friday brought with it, an entire day of rain. The type of rain where it was pretty well accepted that it would be extending into Saturday without fail. (The rain is likely the reason I finished assignments). Sure enough, Saturday morning came and the rain continued. One couple dropped out, then another, then another. Our neighbors were forced out of their big run due to the rain, and it was seeming to be a losing battle for us, with the rain being very victorious in taking its captives! Sarah and I still needed to get out in it though. Our car was (and still is), in Kaneohe getting an oil leak fixed; we needed to go get it. Our neighbors had volunteered and they were still down to taking us. We left flirting with the idea that we would venture to the beach despite the rain. There's a lot of detail and rain between leaving our place and ending up at the beach, but suffice it to say we got Donkey Balls Chocolates, our car is not finished, and we almost just headed back home instead of driving the additional 15-20 to Lanikai. Ultimately, we headed to the beach. Low and behold, when we arrived there was no rain!! It still was not sunny, but there was also not any rain! Apparently it hadn't rained much at all on the beach. We set up our half tent for Sawyer, laid out towels, and got our relax on... kind of. A man, who we later knew as Shawn, looked at us and said with a pointed finger, "Who's paddle boarding next?!" This stranger was awesome; immediately welcomed us and said to let him know when we were ready to paddle out, that we could take his board at any time, and THEN he introduced himself. I like that order of events. Each of us paddled out, each of us stood up, and from what I saw no one fell. Sarah even later whispered to me in such a surprised and excited tone, "that was easy!", and then expressed that she wanted to head to Waikiki and finally rent boards to try longboarding. Why rent, and why Waikiki? I don't know or care, I'd just love to get her out there!

The rains eventually came again, and we headed back home. But the fun didn't stop! Our church family was having a barbecue and movie (The Count of Monte Cristo). A huge screen was erected in the courtyard behind our building, and burgers were grilled. A few of us upstairs pulled our couches out of our apartments and hoisted them up on chairs to see better. It just now occurred to me that there was no rain while the grilling and movie were happening, that's pretty awesome! I'm a man of God, and to him I give credit and say, "thank you".

Brian waiting for burgers and movie to be ready.

This was post-movie. 4 couches out of their apartments is a happy sight!

So, that's the weekend. It is now Sunday morning and it's been raining since I woke. I thought on Friday that the rain would put a damper on the weekend but somehow we worked around it and had a great time. Today we'll go to church, tonight we'll likely play games then tuck into bed, and tomorrow we'll look forward to the inevitable question, "How was your weekend?".

Becoming A Runner

First and foremost, SAWYER IS ROLLING BACK TO FRONT!!
For the past few weeks he's been rocking to fetal position, getting stuck on his shoulder just before going belly side down, then crashing again to his back where he started. He just turned 4 months and we weren't really expecting success for another month or so. However, when we found him on his stomach in his crib, after being certain we left him on his back, we knew we needed to start keeping an eye out.
Small tangent... this got me thinking about all that our children ("our" as a people, not just Sarah and I), will experience without our knowing. They will have moments of success, and moments of failure, many of which will occur unbeknownst to the parents. Sawyer had apparently already rolled from back to his stomach, but in his pre and post nap loneliness the experiences were his own. It reminds me that as a parent I can't get down on him about all the times he'll inevitably fail, nor can I beat myself up for missing any of the times he will succeed. Whether in the gospel, school, his role as a big brother, any jobs he may have, or any other role he takes on in life, he'll be racked with not only the success and failure that we will likely be aware of as caretakers, but he'll also have many that are his, and his alone; it is up to him to take his experiences and to learn from them, not for us to praise or reprimand at the close of every experience. That's a somewhat incoherent thought that I could likely expound much more upon, but I'll stop.
Anyway, Sawyer is 4 months and 6 days old, and can repeatedly roll from back to front (video below).

In fitness news, I have just completed 1 week and 1 day of the program I made. In line with my goal to go to the gym 3 days a week and run the other 3 (resting on Sunday), I started at the gym last Wednesday and have followed the program very well. Last night marked my 4th gym day, and tonight marked my 4th run; a friend and I did sprints on a small soccer field, and it brought my weekly total to 11.07 miles completed. I've attached some of the statistics that show myself stacked up against others in the community (according to "Nike+Running"), and I feel pretty excited about what it's showing! I've never considered myself a runner, but when someone asked me today "are you a runner?" I found myself feeling more confident in saying, "Yeah, I run", (still hesitant to call myself a "runner" though). Keep in mind, I literally ran last year maybe 3 times and it was likely a 1-way run where I wasn't "exercising", but rather getting somewhere faster than walking. And that was a normal year; I can safely call that my trend for the past 5 years. The picture I'm trying to paint is that I HATED running; despised it.
Since January 4th though, I've gone on 13 runs and accomplished 38.28 logged miles. I give full credit to Nike+Running. Sarah can vouch for that. Being able to compete against friends, and to see my runs has made all the difference and I recommend it to anyone who wants to run but isn't quite sure how to get started (Nike+Running seems iOS based, but I know there are several droid running apps; I just don't know them).
As far as the gym days, Monday I do triceps/biceps, Wednesday I do legs, and Friday I do chest and back. Each day consists of about 14 exercises, and takes between 45 min to an hour and 45 min so far. I have been sore for a week straight, and for those of you familiar with Tony Horton, "I hate it, but I love it".
Photo update to come. I anticipate I'll take a new picture on a monthly basis to compare with the 1st day photo. But for your enjoyment, I'll add a picture from the horrendous mid-day run I went on with Sawyer that expresses quite well how we each felt afterward.

5-Week Fitness Plan

*Sawyer update at bottom.

Here's a bit of a back story to today's blog:
A couple months ago I asked Sarah, "what would be your ideal fitness goal for me?". She looked me up and down and said with the inflection that comes with a question or uncertainty, "20 pounds of muscle?". I'm a realist, and I understand that she MUST have said that without actually understanding what that would take. Even an increase of 5-10 pounds of muscle could make for a visible difference (assuming it really is muscle gain, ideally accompanied by fat burning). But I figured, what the heck, let's see what I can do. Has anyone out there tracked a fitness regime and found that they gained 20 pounds of muscle? If so, I'd love to see what that looks like. If I'm right in what I know about exercise, fat burning, and muscle development, 20 lbs of muscle is an incredible feat, and to accomplish that along with completing all of my schooling, fatherly, and husband duties would be a miracle.
Now to the purpose of this blog. It's a sunny Saturday morning, and again I find myself needing to head to the library and lab to finish up some work therein. It could be upwards of 6 hours spent on campus, or as little as 3, we'll see how focused I can be. Next weekend doesn't look too promising either as far as getting out and enjoying the sun, as I'll have exams to be studying for. I don't know why I keep needing to use theses Saturdays. Either my work load has increased, or my weekly devotion to school has lessened; likely a combination of both.
What I have done though, to prevent from feeling like a caged animal, is given myself a nightly reward; something that will give me a release at the end of the day IF I have stuck to my daily schedule and completed the assignments due. Thinking back on the conversation I had with Sarah, as well as having the desire to be very health conscious, I decided that reward would be devoted to fitness. Kind of like courtyard rights to the well behaved inmates (I love watching America's Hardest Prisons and other such prison shows). This week I have done well with sticking to my schedule and have exercised those days, but since I got a little bit behind the previous week there's still a bit that needs to be done (hence lab and library today). I expect after next week I will be caught up, sticking to my study schedule, getting my nightly reward, AND having Saturdays freed up (with the exception of test weeks when I'll likely use Saturdays as extra study days).
I want to post the program I created as a means of tracking progress. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will be gym days. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday I'll be running. I use the Nike+Running app and it posts to Facebook when I run. When you like or comment, I get applause in my headphones so be sure to encourage me!
I understand that with running, I risk getting leaner muscle, losing weight, and slimming down. So I intend to incorporate sprints, stairs, beaches, and hills into my runs. (I recently outlined all of this in the skeletal muscle portion of my physiology class, and it is all fascinating!) But as I've done more running, I see it as a vital part of fitness and a necessary evil.

Week 1.

143 lbs.

The shirt I'm wearing in this picture is one of 2 rewards, the other being a plain red one. I bought them from Costco, and although they aren't huge on me, they could use some filling in. I'm treating them as my 10 lb treat. When I stick to my schedule, and reach 10 pounds weight gain (ideally muscle), I'll then treat them as an accepted member of the wardrobe. Until then, they only serve the purpose of tracking growth.

*Sawyer update:

We are incorporating rice milk as of today.

Sawyer's nightly changes have helped quite a bit. He is now able to go from 9:00PM-4:00AM without food, and then Sarah has to feed him because she can't physically go that long without nursing or pumping.

He will still flip himself onto his back, wake himself up, and cry. When we first started this Ferberizing, we would do nothing during those cries, he would cry for what felt like hours and eventually fall asleep. Problem was, we noticed his voice getting hoarse and we felt SO bad. We immediately adjusted, and now will flip him back to his stomach and pat him until he goes back to sleep, which is usually within 5 minutes. As he keeps getting older, we'll push more independence gradually, but for now this is where we are. The added nightly rice milk will help hold him over longer during the night, and hopefully he won't wake enough to flip himself over.

Sawyer's Getting Ferberized

I'll start this with a few pictures. For some they will suffice as an update, for others, the bottom adresses recent parenting adventures.

"Milk coma"

About a 10 minutes walk, behind the temple, 

is this hill that overlooks Laie.

The ocean seen in the distance.

Just hanging out.

We finally made it out to the swap meet at the

Aloha Stadium. After making our rounds we were all tuckered out, 

but only Sawyer had someone who could carry him around.

A quick park visit before I had to disappear

into the library and lab for the night.

On campus is a small museum. Sawyer saw some new animals!

Man, as of late, the stars, moon, satellites, planets, and grains of sand in the ocean and on the beaches have all really got to align in order for me to get any writing in. It seems impossible to put any updates here. Kudos to you, Mrs. Nat The Fat Rat, and other well known bloggers. (Sarah recently said, "I want to be like Nat The Fat Rat", and is now looking for opportunities to instagram, insisting, "well you're already our blogger").
It's been 2 weeks since my last post, and a big recent baby update is responsible for what you now read.
To set this up, Sarah has a great routine for Sawyer:
Around 7:00 or 8:00 she get's him stripped down to "naked Sawyer" as we accurately call him, and gives him a nice bath.
She then bundles him up into his towel with a hood that makes him look like a little ewok or frog or something, and takes him to our bed.
There, she whips out some kind of smelly good lotion and gives him a little baby massage, making sure to hit all his growing muscles.
After the massage she sits down in our rocker and reads him a story.
Post story comes a nice feeding with, not one, but two servings of the goods.
Now he's ready for bed, and in his crib he goes; this occurs fairly consistently between 8:00 and 9:00. At this point he has the understanding that his next interaction will follow several more times in the night when Sarah promptly awakes to his shuffling and grunts telling us he's in need of some form of comforting.
You can imagine how at peace he must feel with this maternal pampering, especially considering his paternal care consists of dive bombing couches and beds, exercising in the form of squats, front to back rolls, and holding his own bottle, as well as enduring pokes, prods, growls, and weird noises that all attempt to invoke a smile or laugh.
To his dismay, we are adjusting everything that happens after 9:00; we are officially limiting his nightly feedings to none. We are taking the initiative to help him established nightly independence so we (Sarah) can begin to get better rest as well as whatever benefits there are for baby. This week marks his 4th month, and some as early as 3 months are sleeping through the night. Our 1st night trying this was very rough. From what I remember, he woke up at least 3 times, and cried for 20+ minutes each time until we eventually caved in and fed him early in the morning. Tonight will be our 4th night of enduring his screams and pleads for attention. Yesterday, his last feeding was at 9:00pm and he didn't eat again until 4:00am when Sarah woke up too sore to hold off any longer. She actually had to wake him up to feed him, which is such a change! Between those 7 hours, he only woke up once but he made sure to scream for at least 20 minutes straight. For those of you who have experienced this, you know how incredibly difficult it is to sit through that. By now you are acquainted with your child's cries. You know one another well enough to ease their suffering quickly, and if not right away, then you have quite the bag of tricks to definitely resolve the issue in a matter of 3 minutes. Our nightly trend is relief in seconds; basically just the time it takes for Sarah to get up and to the crib since all he really ever needs is to eat for a few minutes before falling back to sleep. Instead we now lie there both pretending to sleep. For those of you soon to experience this, I'm not out of the woods yet, so I can't tell you it'll all be worth it, though I'm pretty certain it will.
I'll write again soon to give an update on what comes of this. We have read story after story of how parents felt hopeless, thinking their children would never get over the needed night time attention, but in each of these stories it only took 3 or 4 days of agony, and the babes completely changed, sleeping the night away. Tonight is night 4, and we shall see...

Running With The Zimmermans

What to blog about...
Well there's a start, blog is a noun and a verb. I like words like that. "Pinch". "Wow". "Fancy", which is not only a noun and a verb, but is also an adjective. That is neat.

It's a Sunday morning worthy of a movie, and as such Sarah and I find it appropriate to watch only Sunday movies. Conveniently for us, any movie that is playing on Sunday qualifies as a Sunday movie. Today we find ourselves watching Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. And by "watching", I mean I'm blogging, Sarah is recapping Sawyer's delivery from her perspective for the boy's baby book, and Sawyer is asleep, probably thumb in mouth.

This week marks Sarah's first full week back to work. From what I can see she's happy to be back with her class, while being sad to be away from her very own, which can be expected.
My schedule keeps me away from home Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:00-Noon, and all day Thursday (labs may be the death of me). On those days the cub is with one of our 2 sitters. I don't have class Tuesday, so that's when soy sauce and I cause havoc. You know, clean, study, dishes, laundry, and other things of the like.
The pup is now a little over 3 months (14.5 weeks). He rolls from stomach to back with ease, and wants so badly to roll back onto his stomach, but can't quite get it yet. He no longer has problems with bottles, which as you may know, was the thing that caused us the most anguish and loss of hope in child rearing. My favorite thing with the bottle is that he will grasp my thumb and pinky, on either side of the bottle, and pull my hand, and the bottle, toward him. One day I moved my hand, and he just held the bottle himself. I now try and get him to hold it every time. He's drinking about 5 oz. every 3 hours. Another pupdate (pup update, get it?) is that he recently discovered his thumb; we now have a thumb sucker on our hands.

In parenthood updates, we are still enthralled with our newly enlisted duties. Parenthood is fun, with its challenges, but overall, not much has changed. Sarah still puts random stuff in the refrigerator, and I still get distracted by friends and games. Sarah has been so driven to get back into, and keep, her pre baby body, and I'd say is doing a FINE job at it. Yesterday morning I woke to the sound of the unreasonably fit Canadian lady giving instruction on post baby pilates. She was the same lady who did the pregnancy pilates, and there is no way this lady is a good representative of pre or post delivery individuals. I digress. After that video, Sarah immediately did the P90X Ab Ripper video, a pattern she's been at since being approved by the doctor to work out. All of this, while I decided if I wanted to try and sleep for another 20 minutes. I decided at the start of the year that I wanted to try and be a runner. I got the Nike+ Running app, and it has made all the difference. From January 4th to date I have gone on 8 runs for a total distance of 25.16 miles. My average pace is 9'35"/mile, and my average distance is 3.1 miles, with my fastest mile being 7'27". My longest run was last night. I had the goal to do 10 miles, a goal I set for myself 2 weeks ago when I was running more consistently. 2 weeks ago though, I stopped running, and laziness set in as it often does. How could I, though, not go for a run last night when my neighbor approached me stoked on having just run over 8 miles?! How could I not accept that challenge? I disregarded the fact that I had just had pizza 2 days in a row accompanied by more soda in the last week than I've probably had all year thus far. Nonetheless, I laced up my shoes, tighter than usual, got my app set in order, and with despair I said to Sarah at 9:30, "well... I should be home by 11:00", and started out the door. Long story short: by mile 6 I felt pain in the top of my right foot, by 6.5 it spread as my form got worse, and by 7 I knew I would struggle to finish. I pushed on for as long as I could. I thought a break would help, so there I stood pacing off of Kam highway, in front of the post office. I thought I was ready, but when I began to run, I couldn't. 2 or 3 strides in and I submitted to the discomfort and walked a long slow walk back home.
My success: I remembered to pick up the laundry for my wife before walking in and admitting my defeat.

Sneakin' pictures of Sarah's workout. 

Last night when my run landed me in front of a 

statue in Kahuku, the next town over.

Christmas In Houston

Sarah and I left Hawaii about 2 weeks ago to spend Christmas in Houston with family. From departure to arrival, we were gone 18 days, and in that time I took 177 miscellaneous pictures. That means that about 10 times each day there was some moment that I insisted on capturing. Hearing it that way helps put into perspective the fun we were having. Here is much of our trip:

I had been saving my Chuck E. Cheese's tickets since I was a kid.
Sarah, Amanda, and I went and cashed them out.
I had Sarah keep an eye out for a deserving young chap to whom we would give the lot. She found a mom who was there with her two sons. I approached her, gave the voucher for the amount, and we went on our merry way. Upon leaving, we saw a car on fire at a stop-sign  and the owner trying to frantically put it out with a fire extinguisher. Tragic.

Holland (floor) schooled Brendan and I in the art of climbing at Stone Moves.

Daniel, Ryan, Nik and I went to top Golf one morning.

This place is amazing if you don't know. Ameena eventually joined us too!

(Group below)

 Ashley is Sarah's sister. Jonathan is Ashley's boyfriend. Jonathan has the

sweetest collection of straight razors I've ever seen, and this here is his first one.

He gifted this to me for Christmas, and it has been the greatest shave experience of my life.
Not necessarily in quality of shave (although that's part of it), but rather in the art of shaving; taking time in the morning to clean up and prepare for a day in an old fashioned way. My mom also got me a straight razor, along with a shave brush, and shave soap,

for Christmas and birthday.

Met up with the 2 below, Michael and Jennifer, to eat at Clay's. Afterward, we fed

mints to this horse.

Got to wait in line outside of REI for 2 hours in 32 degrees to partake in their membership garage sale.

Scored this $200 Deuter 65 + 10 pack for $75. It is in mint condition without any found flaw, only in that it was "used". The "65 + 10" denotes that it's a 65 Liter pack, and the grey extension you see is an additional 10 Liters if needed. Now to put all my survival gear in it!

My "Boho" wife lookin' hot in the airport. 

"What's Sawyer doin' under there?" -Kawaii

These are my cousins Kawaii, and Kai.

4 generations, baby! Grandma, and Great Grandma Mamaw.

Caught colds within a day of being home. To ease the congestion the family joined me in the bathroom to breath the steam.

Haven't seen my dad since I was 8. 18 years later we arranged a get-together at my place when people were coming out to catch up and meet Sawyer. Hands down greatest Christmas due to this alone. Seeing him with his grand-baby was very surreal. 

My dad, and my uncle (left) were friends back in the day. It's been 18+ years since they've talked, so it was a fun reunion for them as well.

We used to go to "The Boat". It's a restaurant shaped as a boat that serves seafood.

He wanted to see us one last time before we left and he thought The Boat was a great place to go eat together. It definitely was.

Sawyer and Ashton meeting. (Sarah's cat).

Charlie and Sawyer meeting. (Holland's dog).

He'll hold anything you put in his hands.

One of Sarah's Christmas presents to me was a bundle of Texas shirts. Told her it seemed more

of a gift to her really.

Sawyer met a lot of people, so here's a little collage of his trip and meetings.

 Megan's family had us over for dinner. So much fun hanging with them and meeting the family.

What can I say about this?

We went to Cracker Barrel with a few of Sarah's sorority friends, Audrey, Lauren, and Stacy. I don't have the picture of Sarah with the girls, but seeing as how Sarah loves their fireplace, here's us in front of it. Check out Sawyer's demon eyes.

Grandpa and grandson bonding (Eric, Sarah's dad).

Sarah and BFF, Amanda, whom we got to see a few times.

Holland and Brendan with a nephew handoff.

Seeing Santa like a champ.

Greatest birthday cake I've ever had.

A few videos: