Happy Birthday Sesi!

Sesi turned one on the first of December. After all that happened during Thanksgiving weekend, we were still in recovery mode the following week. (Actually, I think I'm just getting back into the swing of things) I didn't take much pictures. Ini and I took the kids to the swimming pool earlier in the day and they loved it!! I wish I had an extra hand to take pics of them in the pool. Sesi didn't like it too much, he was too tired to enjoy it (we skipped a nap). His cousins came over for cupcakes and ice cream. We love you Sesi. We are soo happy to have you in our family!!

These are my oldest sisters' 3 kids. Sai, Lina and Telesa.

26!

I'm 26 yrs old! Unbelievable, I was barely getting used to saying I was 25. I gave my husband a hard time for not remembering his age, but it's pretty sad that I still tell people sometimes that I'm 24. Not because I care about my age, but I can't remember the last time someone has asked me how old I was. It stopped at 24. I think. Once your married and have kids I don't think it comes up much. At least not in conversations that I've had with other married couples. When I was single, all the time, now, not so much. It makes me nervous for when I hit my thirties.. Now I can see why women "fib" about their age. MEMORY LOSS. :) Who's keeping track, anyway?

It was a fun day, it felt like it lasted the whole week. It probably did. We started it off on Monday, my bday fell on a Wednesday, I wanted to take Ke'ala and Leva to see Mega Mind. We didn't realize that it was in 3D until we got to the theater. It was fun, we had the whole room to ourselves and at the end of the movie, one of Michael Jackson's songs came on and Leva went crazy dancing in the aisle. Ke'ala seemed like she was into her popcorn and M&M's more than she was into the movie. She kept her eye's on the screen, but would NOT let her supply of popcorn get low. When she realized her M&M's were gone she kept bugging me for more. I'll need to take a bigger bag the next time we go.

Leva loves the movie theater. He was so excited, it reminded me of when I was a kid and we got to do things with my parents. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it was like Christmas! I'm happy I spent my pre-birthday with my little family.

This is the only picture I took on my actual birthday. It was a relaxing day. Ini and Moli pampered me with mani-pedi's and lunch. My amazing husband got sick the night before my birthday and STILL watched the kids while they took me out for the day. I offered to stay (or at least I THINK I did.. :( oops!) but he let me go and enjoy my special day. Later that evening, Moli's husband wanted to take me and Ini out for dinner to celebrate our bdays, her birthday falls 3 days after mine, so he took us to Lucille's. Later that night as I was getting ready to shut my eyes, literally, Jesse finally gave me his gift. He got me a camera and was pretty smooth about giving it to me. This is the picture I took with my camera.

Thanksgiving Extravaganza

This year we had Thanksgiving at my oldest sister's house and it was a fun weekend. Two of my sisters came in from Arizona, Lusi and Siu. We had a blast!! I didn't take much pics because it was too crazy, these are random one's that I took on different days.
We stayed up waaay past our bedtime. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that our husbands are so understanding and deal with our craziness, and let us hang out like we don't have kids. haha! ( it doesn't happen all the time, but it was a holiday and I don't think they could've stopped us if they wanted to ;p )
We had enough food to feed an army. We had turkey, ham, prime rib, ota and poke (polynesian dishes), rolls, salad, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, rice, apple pie, pumpkin pie, banana bread,mac and cheese, funeral potatoes.. that's all I can remember. It was like we celebrated the holidays for the next two years! After all that cooking, we divided the cooking between us, we've decided that for Christmas we're making it easier on ourselves and we're going out to eat so someone else can do the cooking and cleaning!! My sister invited another family over and her 2 brother inlaws. There was at least 30 of us all together.
Ela flew in from Hawaii to get her dental work done to finish up her papers to serve a mission. I wish my bro and parents could've made it along with my other Arizona sister, but we can't always get what we want. It's been a while since we've all been together but after Thanksgiving I'm hoping that it'll happen sooner than later!




The only picture I took of us, from left to right- Siu, Lusi, Ini, Moli, Me and Ela

Halloween 2010

My nieces Telesa and Lina

Tonga Jr

Thanks to Gigi and her obsession with matching everything, the kids Halloween costumes turned out really well. I loved it, I was tired and done with everything after the move that I didn't care about coordinating our kids' costumes like I wanted to in the first place. We did a Pirate theme for Halloween. Jesse drew a beard on Leva's face and stitches on Sesi's eye, it was icing on the cake. Ke'ala wouldn't hold still for a second and we were super duper tired from driving for 4 days straight that we just gave up on her. She had nappy hair and that was good enough for me, I messed it up a little more, just like a real pirate. ha!


Leva loved his little knife, he kept thrusting it out whenever someone would walk towards him.


My sister Ini and her son, Tonga boi, he was 4 months in this picture


Sesi and Grady, Kelly's son (Jesse's younger sis) They got him an octopus costume which worked out well because together they made the Pirates of the Caribbean! We weren't even trying to do the movie but it ended up working out that way.

From the movie, Elizabeth-Ala, Jack Sparrow- Leva, Will-Sesi, cause I really don't know any of the other characters names in the movie, and the Kraken- Grady

Recap

These pictures were taken in October, Sesi was 10 months and my 2 older kids are helping uncle Jeremy mow the lawn.
I just love Sesi's silly faces, makes me laugh everytime! Anytime I catch a glimpse of him, guarantee he has a silly look on his face.




So much has happened within the past month. Our family has picked up and moved, AGAIN, we've "re-relocated" haha.. to Las Vegas, Nevada. We left Florida in the last wk of October and got to Vegas on the 29th or 30th. These were the last pictures I took in Florida. I'm glad we got to spend time with uncles and aunts, gigi and papa, basically all of Jesse's family. I miss it but it is nice to be with my family and old friends. Jesse and I had been praying about it and to our SHOCK, SURPRISE, whatever you want to call it, we received answers to our prayers that it was the next step for our family. It was definitely a bittersweet moment, we loved Florida and the friends we've made there, it was an experience that we NEEDED and it was more than GREAT!! I cannot say enough about our friends (and when I say friends, that includes our families) and what a difference they've made in our lives. Everywhere we've been, Heavenly Father has blessed us with good friends. A great group of people that was just what or who we needed, whether we knew it or not at the time. I am grateful for friendship. I am grateful that Heavenly Father knows our needs and answers our prayers in His way. I am grateful that we can find a friend in anyone and be a friend in return. I'm grateful for my sisters for being the BEST friends that I could have. I'm so thankful that it only starts with them and that the possibilities are endless. We are excited to be in Vegas and to continue to move forward with the plan that Heavenly Father has in store for us!

Palm Coast kids

This was our Primary class in Florida. We taught the 8 yr olds and they were a fun bunch to be with. There are 2 kids missing in this picture. I miss them, there was never a dull moment, we looked forward to every Sunday because of these kids. It was such a blessing to have the opportunity to teach them. We had almost every personality in the room out of just the 6 or 7 of them.




I took a nice picture and a funny picture but there are three posted because David, the boy on the far right, took a funny picture in the nice one and a nice one in the funny picture. He was kind of upset about it so I took a third picture. Like I said, it was a fun class!

These are the Babysitting Swap kids!! Jesse and I went in with 2 other couples in the ward to do a Babysitting Swap. I can easily say that it was one of the best decisions that we made together. Ha ha. Each couple was assigned to one Saturday evening of the month to babysit the kids in the group for 3 hrs, leaving the other couples to go out on a date or to spend 3 hrs together alone, without kids. I loved it. It really pushed us to make an effort to spend time together, even when we were too lazy to do it. I can admit that sometimes we were too tired to drop our kids off at the end of the day because of all we did before hand. But our kids loved to go and never forgot a Saturday. They'd ask if it was time to go their friends house and we'd feel too bad to tell them we were too tired, so we got our butts up and took them to go play, but it was always so nice afterward for Jesse and I. They made really good friends in Florida.

Maile and Ke'ala. Both 2 yrs old. Sometimes their personalities were a bit much for each other.

Grant and Jackson, Leva loved these two.

The gang. From left to right, by age, 3,2,7,4,3,11 months,6, 10 months, and Ke'ala would be another 2 yr old. But she was on the side line crying with daddy.

Princess Preserve Park

The day before Ke'alas birthday we went to the Creekside Festival at the Princess Preserve Park. It was a beautiful park and, even better, a beautiful day. Ke'ala loved to look out at the water, she didn't want to leave the dock. We are going to have to go back there, there's so much to do. Camp, kayak or canoe on the lake, bbq, picnic, ride horses, trees and trees for miles, which means shaded grassy areas, my kind of park!

Rocker

Sesi cracks me up. He is such a happy, smiley boy. If you look at him and smile, he laughs and smiles. He loves to climb. He'd climb on everything if he could. One of the things he likes to climb on in the living room is the rocking chair. He'll climb on it, stand on it, scoot all the way back to rock in it, it's hilarious because it's so darn big and he's so small. The best part is the look of accomplishment once he climbs, turns around and sits in the chair. He loves to play on the rocking chair. I love watching him.





Waving "bye" for the first time!!

Johnny Tractor

We borrowed books from the library last month and one of the books came with a cake pan. How cool is that? Since Leva is into tractor's, and because he is, Ke'ala has to be, too, I borrowed this one. They loved this book so much that I couldn't wait to return it and have it out of the house. They fought over the book, they wanted it read to them over and over, again and again. But it was fun to see their expressions. I thought the cake turned out well. I baked it, of course, and jesse did the icing...pretty impressive, aye? haha I let the kids pick the parts that they wanted to eat. Why didn't it surprise me that Leva picked the big wheel? Oh well, he didn't finish it, but he had fun trying to take it down!