Milestones

Hmmmm....New Year's Eve, not even the first day of New Year yet and already I am running around again like a crazed loon doing New Year's stuff. I haven't even started on my resolution yet either yet I am already in the New Year mode. What am I talking about?

Ok, I just realized that this year I have five milestones, or better yet, my kids have milestones. You see this weekend, Sunday (fast Sunday), my son #3 is turning eight and getting baptized. Yes, his birthday is on the 4th of Jan which is this Sunday and he is adamant that he be baptized on HIS birthday, not any other day. I know that what's most people do but not in our family. I usually have them baptized on a seperate day than their birthdays. So as you can see I have already begun my 2009 duties. I am actually proud of myself because I've already given out the assignments needed for the baptism and I even have the program made/printed up, I just need to go and make copies for the attendees. So that's one down.

Other milestones? you ask. Son #1 is turning 14 at the end of January and will be moving up to being a teacher. At least with this one I have at least a few weeks to wait.

Come April, son #2 will be 12....on to Young Men, Boys Scout and of course to becoming a deacon. He can hardly wait. This is gonna a little pain for me in Primary because he will actually be the oldest kid in Primary this year and he would actually be sitting on pins and needles just to get out of there. This is the son who is very affectionate. I love that I am his favorite person in the world and I hope that I stay that way for him even when he gets older.

In July, daughter #2 will be turning 16, sweet 16. I dread that day. I don't know what kinds of demands she would insist we fulfill on that day. Again, it is definitely a good thing that I don't have to worry about that til the time comes which will be halfway through the year.

Finally, on October, daughter #1 will be turning eighteen. For some reason, I feel this overwhelming sadness whenever I think about the my oldest daughter finishing high school and moving out of our home. I suppose since I was practically a baby when I had her, I've developed some special bond with her. Everything I learned in regards to motherhood started with her. All of the firsts I've learned, I've learned through her. I am not saying that I don't bond well with my other kids. It just that this one kid seem to understand me better, sometimes she even know my thoughts better than me.

Well, even with a little separation sadness, I am actually looking forward to the New Year. With that said, I will be signing off. We {my kids & I} are going over to Swirl's house to bring some chaos to her....it's been too peaceful at her house...lol.

BTW....Cheers for a Happy New Year!!

Remembering Childhood Christmases...

It's Christmas Eve and as I was sitting here thinking about all those gifts I have to wrapped for my kids, I started reminiscing on the Christmases I had as a child. Christmas has always been a favorite of mine, not because of the presents I get.

Growing up on a small island and poor, our Christmases weren't spent going from store to store looking for gifts on a child's list. I remember the only times I got presents as a child was from our school gifts exchange and from church. If ever I get a present from my mom it would be something she made and I always treasured those.

You see, FOOD was the main part of my childhood Christmases. During Christmas {and New Year}, you can find all kinds of food and all the different ways a woman prepares them. This is the time where a woman shows off her talent for cooking. My mom, God rest her soul, was one of the best cook I know. Right around this time, Christmas Eve, she would be making the final gathering of the ingredients for the many dishes she would make and make preparations for some. My dad would be out at sea with my uncles or one of my brothers fishing to add to the list of food. Whichever brothers remain on land would prepping a pig for umu, and climbing coconut tree to get the coconuts for drinking and cooking.

My mom would spent all day Christmas Eve and the night before Christmas making tons and tons of different kinds of food....taro, banana, yam, other starch, fish, pork, beef, chicken and all the different ways you can cook them. I remember staying up to help out and to be her food taster. Just sampling the different dishes was a delightful thing to do.

Finally Christmas morn would come and she would have all the food laid out, practically taken all of our living room spaces with all the different food and then she would fill up these huge basins with different food, usually one for my her mom, one for her in-laws, and then other ones for my sisters-in-law to take to their parents. {Our island Christmas tradition is that the grown children/adults would make the food and take a portion to their parents and/or older siblings. And they (the siblings) would race to see who would reach the parents first.) So my mom would wake us kids, I usually stayed up most of the night helping her so I get to pick whose house I would deliver food to, and to us, the best place to deliver food to was my maternal grandmother's house. Because she lives with my doctor uncle, there were always advantages; grandma always gave out the best treats and of course she always had a gift for the kids who were the food deliverer. Once this is done, we would spent all of Christmas day enjoying each other's company and stuff ourselves with food. It is the one day where chores were ignored and the object of the day was fun, games and food.

Looking back, those times were the best part of my childhood. I have always loved my mom's cooking but Christmas has always been the best because she always made a point to go all out and see her kids enjoy her hard work. I loved everything she made because I know she did all of it out of pure love and joy for her family.

Now that I am married with kids, I try to implement some of that tradition into our home. I am not as good a cook as my mom was but I try. Since my husband also had his own tradition for Christmas, I try to rotate our Christmases. One year, we do it his style and the next year we do mine. For this year, since we would be spending Christmas with friends and pretty do close to what my Christmas was like as a child, we are going to spend our Christmas Eve the way my hubby did it growing up.

With that in mind, I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Since I am living in Hawaii, I will wish you all Hawaiian way...

Mele Kalikimaka Haoli Makaiki Hou!!!

Totally chilling....

Today I am just hanging out at home enjoying my hectic-free day. After the last week of running around like a chicken with the head cut off, I am totally basking in this relaxed day I am having today at home. Oh don't get me wrong, I have chores to do at home but it's ok since I decide when and how long I want to spend on any particular chore so it's not that stressful. Whenever I have pressing matters to attend to outside the home, it completely throws me off my household schedule so I ended up having tons of unfinished things piled up at home. So now that I have no other meetings or appointments or activities outside the home today, I am just chilling at home enjoying my time with my toddler {and blogging, of course}.


Yesterday, Swirl, myself and BT finally finished up all the play houses she posted a little while back and of course she mentioned that in her post yesterday, eight houses total. Ok, I admit, I was a little skeptical when she first called me and told me about her idea about making the houses and if I can take my sewing machine over so we can get started on her great idea. {If you know me and her, we can't sew...I mean we can sew straight lines and probably mend a little tear here or there but to make something completely from scratch? Now that's a differnt story.} But I can't help myself, I was curious and of course she sounded so enthusiastic, how can I shoot her idea down? After three session, we finally completed all eight houses and I can honestly say that those houses are ADOOOOOORABLE!! You hear that Swirl, they are adorable, ok? LOL. I am really proud of our accomplishments....thanks Laura for sticking to your gun.

I am surprise that she didn't post the finished products so I've decided {with some nudging from her of course} to post about the little house I got from the project. I've decided to give my two year old home-made gifts this year since she loves that house when we made the first sample.

Here's the little house, one of the cute ones, we made {ahem, Laura made this one and I love the color so that's why I picked this one.} Isn't it cute? The colors are beaautiful...I love it!!!



I took the house and add two windows and a door, using Liquid Applique.


This window is in the back and those on the side of the window are supposed to be shutters.




This one just have a plain window on one end.



And here's the door at the front of the house.


This is what it looks like when it's open. I still haven't make up my mind yet if I want to add images on the inside.




And here is the recipient of this adorable gift that was made with lots of love.




She's only two years old but loves playing with dolls. All I need to do now is to buy some miniature dolls to put them in the house for her but now that she's got that house in her hand, I'm not going to be able to take the dollhouse away from her long enough to wrap it and put under the tree. As I'm sitting here blogging she's keeping herself busy playing house.








Ok, I need to get off and see what I can do about lunch. I am famished....Tada!!

Blame it on the rain!

Last night was terrible. The road got blocked because of a pole that got knocked down and the traffic was held up on both side of the road all night...well almost all night.

Because of that, I totally missed out on the Willie K concert and my daughter didn't get to perform in that concert.

Ok, I know I didn't sound like I care about attending the concert in my last post but you see, I got involved in the set up so I figured if I'm gonna get involved, I might as well enjoy myself.

I went to Turtle Bay at three in the afternoon to decorate the stage, well at least part of the stage, so it looks Christmas-y. I spent almost two hours to get that done even with help from one of the other moms. The kids in the choir were suppose to be performing the opening numbers for the concert so after I finished decorating, I came back to the house to pick up my daughter {they (the choir) were suppose to meet at Turtle Bay at five to go over the sound check since the concert starts at seven} and when I got home, it was already five. She quickly grabbed what she needs for the concert and on the way out, that's when I saw the cars. {We live really close to the highway, I can see the road from my dining room window/back door.} It took us a whole hour to drive a from our house to a store two blocks away. We were literally sitting in the long line of cars for a whole hour.

One of the pole on the road further down the road by one of the beach parks here in Hauula had been knocked down with a wire laying in the middle of the rain. At that moment, there was also heavy rain, thunder and lightning. It was so bad that they wouldn't let either traffic from either side of the road to go through. To make matters worse, the power was out.

Well, after sitting in traffic for a whole hour, we decided to go home since there was no way we will be able to get through. Several of the cars before had already turned around to back the other way. The people who were coming from the opposite directions got out of their cars and walked if they wanted to keep going.

Sad to say, we missed the whole thing, the concert I mean. All that preparation (on my daughter's part) and the money spent on the tickets just went down the drain. I was a little disappointed, I really wanted to see Willie K. Sorry thing about it is that just before I finished decorating, Willie K. showed up, to do some last minute prep on his part. I didn't even get my autograph thinking I have plenty of time after the concert to do it. {How was I to know that there would be problem later?} Oh well................

I tell you, when it rains, it sure does pour. I fervently hope the rain would let up soon and I mean stop completely.

My "almost" swamped weeknights...

I don't know what's going on.....all of a sudden this week, my evening/nights were booked with one thing or another. Usually weeknights around here are pretty tame, from around 7 p.m. and on, everyone's winding down from a long day and is spent quietly at home. If there ever was any activities or events that either the family or I do, it usually happen only once or at the most twice a night during the week. But for some reason, from Monday this week up to this Saturday, I have been attending meetings/activities one after the other.

Monday night, I know it's FHE night, but I have to attend a mandatory meeting at the high school for my oldest daughter who is a senior year. The meeting was suppose to finalize everything that the seniors need to do and what parents need to take care of before the seniors graduate in June. {I don't recall my High School doing something like this when I was a Senior, but then again, being from a small island, I guess things are done differently than here.}

Tuesday night, of course, was our Ward Temple night which I attended with my husband. And I posted a post about it on the last post.

Wednesday night was another Parent Meeting for the children's choir, which my second daughter is a part of. This was also another meeting to try finalize things for their Christmas Concert coming up and find out how much money each kids still need to pay into the tour they're taking this summer. Interesting meeting.....this was actually a meeting I went to a little miffed at and walked out still a little miffed. Oh well...at least that's done with.

Thursday night, which was last night, I was suppose to go to Cub Scout Roundtable Banquet. I was assigned to bring a main dish for the banquet. I was feeling pretty tired of going to all this meetings. Because of the rain today, that banquet was cancelled. I did however had to leave the house around five to go help with the Achievement Day Girls to make Christmas Cards. We were suppose to meet at one of the girls' house but because of the rain, the girl's grandparents' home was flooded so their family had to go help clean up. The Achievement Day leader wanted to cancel the activity but the girls didn't want to so we decided to go to the chapel. Because of my husband's calling, he had access to the gate and chapel so I went home to get his keys. By this time, the rain was back and I tell you, it was crazy. A little scary driving over bridges with water all over the road and water rising under the bridge and rain coming down from all sides that I can hardly see my way around. When I got back to the chapel, we stood out in the rain trying every key my husband has on his key chain but none of the keys would open the gate lock. Talk about frustration. But the girls, they were the model of patience, just stood there in the rain making jokes and having the time of their lives. Well, we finally gave up trying to unlock the gate, and decided to go home and postpone their activity til next week.

Friday night, which is tonight, my husband and I will be attending a concert at Turtle Bay Hilton by Willie K & Raiatea Helm...our very own local famous singers. Turtle Bay or whoever is in charge of this concert has helped to set up the children choir to sell tickets for the concert as a way of fundraising to help toward their trip to carneige hall this summer. So that is why my husband and I are going to a concert, we have to buy to tickets to help support our daughter. Plus, the children choir will be performing the opening numbers.

Notice that pattern here....I have been running around these last few nights attending to meetings and events that were solely for my family/kids. It's not like this is the first time I've done something like this for my kids but it's just that it is the first time I actually was kept busy with one meeting to the next the whole week, especially at seven o'clock at night. I am totally exhausted, I don't know how all the other moms who do this on a daily basis do it.

Which is why I am soooo looking forward to Saturday night. Now, that is a night that is specifically for me...our ladies card exchange night. Since I have actually been good this whole week doing things for my family, it is only fair that I will claim Saturday night to myself and will enjoy myself immensely.

I wonder what next week has in store for me. Hopefully it will not be a repeat of this week. Actually, knowing my husband, who usually wait til last minute to do Christmas Shopping, that's probably what he'll keep me busy doing, in the evening I might add. To be honest, I am not really looking forward to shopping for Christmas....I would much prefer to order everything online.

SIGH

On the plus side, the rain stopped. It looks like it's going to be good day today. With the amount of rain we had yesterday, the island was on flash flood warning. Hauula did not suffer much from flooding like previous years, but Laie seemed to have gotten the worse of it. Check out this blog
for some serious flooding pictures. Other parts of Oahu had flooding and power outage. Hopefully everything will clear up and back to normal soon.

Now I'm off....looks like I've got my hands full today, will be driving around all over the place doing this and that.

One of those days, I guess....

I just got home from attending our last Ward Temple night of the year. I hardly ever made it out to our previous Ward Temple nights because there always seemed to some reason that kept me from attending our Ward Night. I suppose mostly I prefer going to Ward Temple night if my husband can attend too but him having to commute to work in Town, he was never able to get home in time for us to attend the temple with our Ward.

You see, the Laie Temple is going to be closed at the end of this month and will be closed for eighteen months for renovations. So when our Bishop announced on Sunday that tonight is our last temple night and will be the last one til the temple opens back up eighteen months from now, my husband immediately suggested we go. We were to attend the six o'clock session and he came home twenty minutes past five. I was a little worried, didn't want to be late and have to wait for the next session hour.

Well, we did make it there ten minutes before the hour but luckily they said we still can make the six o'clock session. Now the amazing thing about it was that when we got there, the temple worker asked us to be the witnessing couple. That was such a relief for me because since they've assigned us that, they wouls have to wait for us.

A few things happened to me while I was there, first off when I rented temple clothing, the cashier gave me a way too big dress for me, I was actually swimming in it....so I had to sit in my little stall (in my slip) and waited for one of the workers to exchange the dress and get me the right size.

Then when we were in the session, and this is sooooo embarrassing, I fell asleep near the beginning that the lady worker had to wake me up for the ordinance.

Then when the session was over, I went to change my clothes, I wasn't paying attention, I went to open my locker only to find out the key did not work.....that was when I notice that I was in the wrong aisle and wrong stall with the wrong locker....sheesh.

(This whole incident reminds me of a similar embarrassing experience I had last December. Swirl, myself and three other friends decided to go to a Saturday morning session and I guess we must be excited about being able to go together for the first time we got a little too noisy for the temple that we were reprimanded by one of the temple worker. Yeah, Swirl will swear on her new little houses that it was me who made all the noises which is totally untrue since it was my idea for us to attend the session in the first place.)

Well, once I was nudged awake by the temple worker, I managed stay awake for the rest of the session. We had a nice potlock afterward. And even though I had some embarrassing moment tonight, I was really happy that I was able to go to the temple tonight with my husband. We haven't gone together for a long time; I usually just go with one of my friends.

Yowser!!

I've been bitten...ouch!!!! I swear the new obsession over the Twilight movie has caused me almost a whole week of vampire-ish dunking. That movie has stirred up something in me and lead me to read all four books this past week that I've practically ignored everything. But I'm glad to say that I'm sooooo over it, now that I've read all four books. Now moving on to something else.....

My last post, I mention something about a Christmas Demo for our ladies card exchange night. I've finally made some samples: I have three projects so I'm happy to say that I've actually able to at least focus enough to make the samples. Hopefully the ladies would love these projects.

Here's the first one:

(Isn't this cute?) I use eight of the circles here, glued them together to make this ornament.

Here's the second project:

This is a clear glass ball ornament. I decorate this with the

the images from this rub-ons to

make this! Cute, uh?


And then this last project: This is suppose to be a little album slash ornament. This is what it looks like as a book. Open it up a little ways and it looks like
this. (I didn't put any pictures in it yet, will do that soon.) Then it opens up all the way to look like

this. Viola!


Of course, on our ladies card night, we'll be exchanging ornaments, that's why I'm demonstrating ornaments, the different ways to make ornaments.

Here's my ornaments I made that I will be exchanging that night. It's basically just beautiful background/craft papers cut up in strips and made into this;



Can't wait to see all the different kinds of ornaments that ladies will be exchanging that night, next week Saturday to be exact. The lady who will be hosting our night is a really cool lady. Everyone in our group are always excited to go to this lady's home when her time comes to host because she always goes out on her hosting....the food was always great and the decorations..wow. I'm going to make sure I remember to bring my camera with me this time.

Well, now that I've finished with Twilight and my prep for our ladies card night, I will cruise a little on the blogging world for a little and then get off and try and do some mundane things like laundry..yuck.

Tada!!