Reunion with U'i

Saturday, 20 September 2008

Skipped yoga this morning because I overslept and my back is still tender. Chris, however, was up at 7 am to feed Chase breakfast and was out of the house by 8 am. He was going to meet his bike buddies for a morning hike. He took Chase and his hiking backpack up to the Kuli'ou'ou trail.

This meant I got to sleep in...for the first time. And, boy did I...until 9 am! WOW!

I ran some errands, and they returned in time for a late lunch. I took Chase for the afternoon. We went to meet my good high school friend U'i and her two sons. I recently found her on Facebook, and am so glad that I did. We were really close in high school, yet we haven't seen each other since practically high school/early college years. Now, we're both married with kids. We found out that both of our parents (her mom who raised her and my dad who raised me) passed away last year from tragic illnesses. We enjoyed lunch, catching up on our lives, and we walked around the mall, stopping to look at the koi fish and shopping for makeup. She tried to get me to wear makeup by taking me to the MAC counter. While her sons read the books I gave them, and us mommies got our faces made up, Chase had fun looking at his reflection in the walls and dancing to the loud pop music playing in MAC counter area. He didn't even care that we were there for over half an hour. U'i's boys though (3 and 7) started to get a bit antsy. Guess they just don't know how to boogie to the music.

We promised to keep in touch and get together again. Hopefully next time, Chase wouldn't be so clingy to me (as he was having a bit of the stranger danger with U'i and wouldn't really warm up to her), though he did enjoy looking at the fish and walking around Ala Moana.

Chris met us around dinner time. We went to Build-A-Bear for the first time ever. As novice bear makers, we had no idea how to go through the store and choose a bear and fill it, etc. Chase was a bit too young to have any sort of preference for a stuffed animal. We both went through the many choices with him several times. But, even after his hugs with certain stuffed animals, we weren't sure if we could just leave the choice up to him. So, we decided on an elephant for him. After all, that is his favorite animal at the zoo. We didn't buy a sound for it. I mean, you can't put a different animal sound with an elephant. No, we didn't fluff the bear, or elephant. He kissed the heart before the gal put it in and sewed the elephant up. But, I highly doubt he'll remember the heart being in there. We didn't buy clothes for it. Clothes for an elephant? No, that's just too weird. We didn't even know you're supposed to name it and go to the computer to get a birth certificate for it. But, eh, Chase won't care. I did decide to get the baby elephant as well. It was more Chase's size because he could hold it in his hand. Besides, by the time we had gotten to the cashier, he had already sucked on its tail.

Eh, so we're novices at the whole Build-A-Bear Workshop thing. I mean, we didn't even come out with a bear. We came out with two elephants. But, we had a gift card from his birthday. Besides, he'll probably be more interested in the process when he's older and can actually have more input into the whole "building" thing.