The David Family Summer Excursions "What no Hawaii!" Contest

No this is not an official contest but we do need your help in planning our family summer excursions. Sad to say, this summer, we decided not to do our annual summer trip to Hawaii. No, Mike and I didn't fall and hit our heads - however, possibly suffering from momentary insanity (but that's another story). Our motivation for staying local is that several months from now, we will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary and would like to do something BIG.

So here is what we need from you - suggestions of local (Northern Cali - no further than 4 hours from the Bay Area.) activities, places to see, food to conquer, etc.

Here are our planned excursions already:

Fairyland in Oakland http://www.fairyland.org/ Gilroy Family Gardens http://www.gilroygardens.org, Chabot Observatory, Discovery Kingdom, San Francisco Tourist Spots: Pier 39, Golden Gate Bridge, Zoo, etc, Rutherford Grill (our personal favorite restaurant), Espetus Brazilian Churrascaria http://www.espetus.com/ , Sanora (hunting for gold), and Monterey.

Prize: If we decide to go on your suggested excursions, you will:

1. Be highlighted on our blog

2. Receive a souvenir

3. Come with us!!!

No purchase - I mean - no suggestions necessary. If you would like to join us, we would love for you to come!!!

"I Will Give You Rest"

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30)

"Close mama, close."

Praise God! Keaolani's skin has been improving. In fact her skin right now is the smoothest its been since she was 4 months old (when she started to get skin problems). We attribute it of course to answered prayer. We are just holding our breathe right now. Has God just given her a break beacause we have only given her formula, or is she growing out of it? Either way we give God the glory because today she looks great, is not scratching much and is very happy.

One day while Bessie was dressing Keaolani, she put shorts on her. Keaolani looked down at her exposed legs and said, "Close mama, close." She was trying to push down the pant legs on the shorts. Keaolani has not worn shorts, or had her legs exposed in over a year. She was not used to it. The only time she exposed her legs was to scratch it and we scold her everytime as we do not want her to get another infection. She even allowed us to place a clip in her hair and my personal favorite, flip flops! Thankfully she has nice toes like dada. Here she is with her friends from church. She just loves to share her food.

Sunset(s) Week(s) 18-24

I know that I haven't posted sunsets in a while. Many have asked why. Allow me to answer everyone at the same time. Call it procrastination, laziness, or great weather so I have been outside instead of in, but I have been taking some pics. So here, forgive me that it is all on the same posts. Many are from my latest trips, including Hawaii and Oregon. I forsaw that I may have "lean" sunset weeks so I thought I would fill them in with these. Again I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I did taking them.
This picture was taken in Hawaii, O'ahu, Sharks Cove. I love how the rays reflect off the ocean.
Here I totally missed the sun. We saw a great sunset. I told Scott to stop the car. It took only 30 seconds for him to stop and us to get out of the car. Yet it was already gone. There was no Hawaiian time for this sun. It slipped away too fast for us. It was taken again in Hawaii, Kaanapali Maui.
We did a better job of parking the car for this sunset, but I had to walk about 250 yards to get close enough to take ths picture. I know the measurements because it was a football field and then a soccer field, and then a basketball court I had to cross. (Mind you I had to carry Keaolani th whole time too! I was trying to work off some of the delicious ono foods we pigged out on in Hawaii. Especially the Luau that Bessie and I made for the Harris'.
This cool pic was taken on the famous North Shore. Can you believe that I just stuck the camera out of the car to take this pic. I was on a mission to take many sunset pics. Everyone was cool with it, at least to my face. The light on the retaining wall is not the sunset, it is the car next to us with his headlights on. But the one coming from the sun is fo reel brah.
This is an Oregonian sunset, actually sunrise. I am a sucker for the sun rays to shine through the trees. I like the dramatic effect.
This picture I took today in Bodega Bay. I had a conference to go to for work for the weekend. The facilities were pretty spread out and you needed good walking shoes because you had to literally hike from the conference hall to the dining area. Doing that I was able to get this shot. Again it is the sun rays shining through the trees.
I thought that I was done for taking sunset pics this weekend but while going to a birthday party (a really cool one I must say.) There was a fire in the Napa hills and the sun was engulfed with smoke. Kind of erie...By my count I have 24 sunsets posted I need to be at 26 by the end of this week. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Praise Be to God - An Answered Prayer

It's about 3 am and I find myself unable to sleep- perhaps it's because I have a lot on my mind, perhaps it's because I haven't been able to exercise in the past week and feeling the ramifications of it, or perhaps it's to give God the glory for what He has so gracious done in the past week. I suspect it is much to do with the latter.

To make a very long story short, about a month ago, Keao had another appointment with her allergist; seeing that her skin wasn't getting any better, she prescribed a step down treatment of 2 weeks with DermaSoft, 2 weeks of a topical cream (Elocon), and another 2 weeks of another cream - it was either that or take an oral steroid.

The first medication did not work - matter-of-fact, she reacted to it. I felt discouraged and pessimistic that the other creams wouldn't work. A week later, her doctor called to check up on her and decided to start the 2nd treatment after only a week. The first morning I noticed a change in the integrity of her skin - a good change. However, I've learned not to get my hopes up too prematurely and decided to wait for an allergic reaction; I continued to apply it nonetheless. By the 3rd day, her skin was close to being perfect - it was soft, not peeling off as previous, and, apart from the scars of her November incident, her skin looked perfect.

Well, it's been a week and I stopped giving her the cream about 3 days ago; she's still doing well. She is no longer constantly itching; we stopped swaddling her but need to keep her braces on just as a precaution. She's actually been able to wear shorts - which is an added blessing since the weather has been in the upper 90's this week.

I'm convinced that the reason for my lack of sleepiness is to give God the praise; no words can describe the joy, gratitude, humility that I feel, as I see, not only my daughter's skin healing, but her continuance and attitude convey of complete happiness (and shall I say, relief). I am grateful that God has allowed us to go thru this trial and taken us out of it as it has taught me to continually be at His throne pleading for my daughter. Not only that, but it has taught me humility as I know I don't deserve anything but the holy judgement of God. Yet He spared not His only Son, but gave Him to die on my behalf and bring me to a reconciliation to God, my Father. As I hear about my other friend's children suffering from medical conditions, I can't help think that it could have been worse and yet, God graciously spare Keao from all that. He gave us only what we were and are able to handle (1 Corinthian 10:13).

But our constant pleading for our daughter does not stop here for there is a more urgent plea that needs to be made - a plea for her salvation. A plea for the severe condition of her heart that currently has enmity with God - a heart made of stone. May God save her and save her young so that she may use more of her years here on this earth to serve her King and Savior.

A Vacation From the Weekend

Have you ever had a weekend that you felt you just need a vacation from because there was so much that happened. Lo, this past weekend was one of those weekends. Our whole family is feeling the ramifications and is in desperate need of sleep.

On Friday, since CORE is meeting on Thursdays for the summer, we meet up with our dear friends Eugene, Leilani, and their daughter Bella for dinner. Mike and I always look forward to hanging out with them; do you ever have friends that you don't get to hang out with too often but when you do, it's sweet, encouraging, not to mention fun!! Well, that's the Alfaros for you. I especially love the fellowship; we always find ourselves discussing "deep" and not so deep issues - managing to pick each others brains. They are truly one of our closes and dearest friends. Since they live about an hour away, we decided to meet half way in San Ramon; Lei found a nice Mediterranean Restaurant called "Esin Cafe." (Yeah, we cracked a lot of jokes about the name.) We had such a great time that we decided to extend our hanging out at Barnes and Nobles in Dublin. Leilani and I hung out at B&N's Starbucks while the dad's took Kaykay and Bella to the kids section. Kaykay came back with a stuff duck (something she's been attracted to lately) and being the softies we are, we gave in and bought it for her. We didn't get home until past midnight.

Taking some pictures in front of the restaurant.

Saturday, Mike and I spent our day at separate activities. He and Kaykay attended Charis' 1st birthday party. I heard it was a blast as multitudes of kids turned the Tolentino's backyard into a mud pit.

Since Kaykay doesn't like the water too much, she opt to sit on the sidelines and play with a ball.

I spent the day in Monterey with about 28 COV & CORE members on our annual bike trip. This year was A LOT easier compared to previous years; we only did about 3 miles compared to the 10+ we usually do. At our half way point, we stopped at the beach near Asilimar and had lunch, hung out, and even got a chance to see the biggest jelly fish I've ever seen wash up on the beach. Here are some pictures taken in Monterey:

Here are the guys arranging the bikes on the back of my dad's truck. Didn't know you can fit 8 mountain bikes back there but thanks to Amel, Mike L, and Archie, we were able to.

Hanging out and having lunch on the beach

More hanging out (was experimenting with the color accent mode)

And that's all she wrote!!

Sunday was Father's day. I mentioned in my previous entry that I had something special set up for Mike and since he knows about it now, I have the liberty to share it with you. About 3 years ago, Mike gave me our home office and library to conduct my business. Since then, I've recently decided to take a break from event planning; I wanted to turn my home office into OUR home office. I turned out my U-shaped desk and converted it to an L-shape layout so that Mike has space to work right next to me. I knew Mike needed a place to study as he is currently teaching on the book of Colossians at CORE- the dinning table was not suffice to continue in his studies. I even bought him a charging valet to keep all his personal effects organized.

Charging Valet to keep all his personal effects.

Kaykay checking out some Disney stuff online

Then on Sunday night, our dear friend Angelo graduated from The Cornerstone Seminary; what an amazing night!!! The worship, the message, and seeing Angelo receive his degree was just God glorifying. We praise Him for what He has done in Angelo's (and Chan's) life and excited to see what God is going to do thru this dear couple. The night ended with a dessert banquet to honor the 3 graduates.

This is just a glimpse of the weekend we had. My assumption is that this is just the beginning as summer opens it's big arms and allows us to experience all that it has to offer.

Photoshop Novice

It's been awhile that Mike and I have been able to post anything; it's just been a busy week - especially for Mike as this is the last week, actually today is the last day of school for the students. Yesterday was a big day at Franklin as it was their graduation day; Mike was even able to get the Mayor as the guest speaker. Although most of Mike's staff's last day is tomorrow (or shall I say today), Mike will still have the rest of June to take care of logistics - then he'll be home with us for 1 month. (Praise God!!!!)

In the meantime, I've been getting Mike's father's day gift ready (I'll post after father's day since he can read this - love you babe!) and dabbling in some photo editing. I haven't had much time but today I was able to figure out "blurring." Below was taken, obviously, on our wedding day. I learned how to blur out the background.

and "hue/saturation" manipulation. I still can't believe that this was taken almost 10 years ago.

We do have a perfect marriage - Mike takes the pictures and I can give them a more artistic flare. (Sooo corn-knee!!!)

She's Growing Up!

Can't believe how fast Kaykay is growing up; not only has her confidence and independence grown, but also her vocabulary. I can't even keep up in logging her vocabulary bec she's picking up words every second. I think she's picked up reading as well.....

She's also quite the socialite as she attended yet another wedding this weekend. It was my cousin's wedding and boy did she have fun with her Papa and Mama (my parents). But, she is still daddy's little girl. (Of course!)