For he's a jolly good fellow......

I just realized that I've overlooked a couple of things from last month. My oldest son Chris had a birthday and yes, we did celebrate it but I forgot to post it. He turned 15 and I don't know, it seems like he just shot up in a few weeks. He went from being a small and short boy to being the tallest among the kids and oh my gosh, his voice is deeper than I remembered. How the heck did he go and grow up on me overnight without me noticing?

Like I've mentioned before, we don't do an all-out birthday party unless it's one of those milestone birthdays. As a tradition we started after kid number five come into the picture was that they get to pick their favorite food and mom prepared a special dinner for them. And it has to be something that we don't eat on a regular basis. Of course the rule was, once a kid requested a type of food, let's say meatloaf, which is a favorite of all of theirs, the next kid cannot request that for his or her birthday in the same year. (A little clever clause mom put in there so she gets to eat practically all the food she likes to eat for the year...LOL.)

So for Chris' special dinner, he asked me to pick it our for him and I chose pot roast, with all the trimmings. And of course, the special dinner would absolutely don't turn out good without Steph's homemade creation of a cake. (She's the baker in the family.) Chris spent the day before his birthday, hanging out at the mall with his friends and on his birthday, he was dubbed King for the day. Which means, he's excused from any chores and he gets to do whatever he wants for the day and everyone can wait on him. (Cool deal uh?)

Here he is on his special day...

See his cake? Yep, his sister made him his cake and it's shaped in the form of a football. Creative girl that one. It's a message to Chris that his next move now that he's tried canoe paddling, would be to try out for football. (Hmmm, if I'm not mistaken, I'm thinking big sister is trying to get little brother to follow in her footsteps.)

We had a couple of unexpected visitors that night. Yep, the missionaries showed up and mom pulled them in to the be entertainment people that night...LOL. Oh yeah, don't pay attention to the back of that head in the picture...that was Step trying to see the reaction on Chris' face to see how he liked his cake. All in all, it was a great day...the roast turned out great and everyone had indigestion that night....ahahah, kidding.

Two nights before that...my son Joey participated in our Ward annual Cub Scout Derby Race. I tell ya, he was soo excited to be in the race that everyday after school for two weeks, that was all he talked about and as soon as Kev gets home from work, Joey's pulling out the door so they can go into the garage to build his car. (I think dad had more fun making the car himself.) They worked really hard to make the car just the way they wanted.

I took a lot of pictures that night but I'm not going to post all of them on here today, we'll be here all day. I put the last four races on here...first, the final four, then the final three and then the final two. My son's car is the white one that's leading the race.Here is his car again...in first place, again. Look at it go!
Now, it's down to the last two, it's a bit of a close race but as you can see my son's car is first, again! Yes, I do sound like I'm bragging and I'm not going to be ashamed to admit that. He and his dad worked really hard on his car, he even fell asleep a couple of times in the garage from his exhaustion...eheh. (I wish I had thought to take picture of him sleeping in there, it was soo cute. And no, we didn't leave him in there all night.)


Here they are...the whole troop from our ward.The three squatting are the first, second and third place winner...from left to right. Look how happy they are. So my son's car came in first, the boy in the middle's came in second and the boy with the red shorts' car came in third. (Notice how my son is not wearing his uniform and not all the boys' uniforms are in coordination? LOL...that's how we roll here in Hawaii..anything goes...no care the uniform brah, we go wear the slippahs and we do good, yeah! LOL. I am so not good at this slang.)
Here's the winner! Now he gets to go to the Makaiki derby that will be coming up in the next few months where all the troops from Hawaii get to compete. Last year, he won second place from our ward and he went to the Makaiki and competed...his car won first place for our district. Anyways, he looks really anxious to dig into his bag of goodies in this picture so I will let him go for now...lol.

Anyways, I am just so proud of my boys. Even when they are pushing my buttons, trying to see how far they can push mom to her lose her temper, they sure add meaning to my life. I hope y'all enjoy this little bit of bragging I feel for my boys.

I ♥ you, Chris and Joey!! Thanks for being part of my family. And thanks y'all for reading....hope you're day is a good one. God bless!!

A Birthday Tribute to the cleverest DUMMY

Guess what peeps? My most favorite of all time DUMMY is having a birthday today. Peeps, I have to tell you a little bit about her. I knew her from when we were both residents of the married student housing at BYUH. Ok, so I knew her through a friend..and she and her hubby were our resident parents of the year or something like that. Hey, it's been over ten years already so sue me!!

She's married to one of the best looking jock slash nerd(as in smart, aight?) with four of the most beautiful and handsome offsprings a dummy can ask for. But of course that's to be expected since both her and her hubby look absolutely gorgeous together. Does this sound like I'm in lub with the dummy from all the praises? Hmmmmm...of course I am (not in the sick way, aight, please get those minds out of the gutter....sheesh).

I wanted to pay this tribute to her because she's one of those bloggers whose great wit and funny posts that keep me logging on everyday and because of her great sense of humor and ability to turn everyday living to something funny that I just had to read her every posts she writes. Let's face it, everyone needs a laugh now and then...I need a laugh everyday. I find when I don't feel like laughing or finding the sense of humor in life, all I have to do is log on and read her post and I got me a good doze of laughter. She's smart and funny. I guess you could say I am addicted to her or her writing..whichever floats your boat. No, don't get me wrong, I love every single one of the blogs I follow...each of them has their own unique qualities.

Anyways, today is Crash's (I like to call her dummy, not that she's a dummy by any means whatsoever, she's actually one of the smartest person I know) birthday so I just want to give a shout-out in her honor. I've been trying to come up with something witty or cleverish like a poem or something..she's an Enlish Professor at BYUH...to gift her with but alas, I am soooo not a poet and I can't come up with things that rhyme or some smart limericks so I'm going to borrow something from a show I saw on Gosby way back when......so here goes!!

What's older than the DUMMY?
*EARTH is older than the DUMMY.
*The SUN and the rest of the planets in the galaxy is older than the DUMMY.
*The GROUND is older than the DUMMY.
*HAWAII is older than the DUMMY.
*BYUH is older than the DUMMY.
*The OCEAN is older than the DUMMY.
And my favorite
*The MOUNTAIN and the DEW on greens are older than the DUMMY.

There Crash, this is for all the laughs I get on your blog. May you forever be funny and older and wiser than ME...lol, ok I know, sounds kinda lame but hey, at least I did try, no?

Ok peeps, you can hop on over to her blog and poke her in the eye. She love a good poke in the eye so if you do that to her, not only will lub you but she will literally stand on her comment box and bust-a-move-and-shake-her-groove thang for ya. She's good I tell ya, you don't want to miss it. If you've never read her blog before, then you definitely don't want to pass up this chance to check her out. You will not be disappointed at all.

Happy Birthday Crash!!!

Happy Birthday, Son!!

Meet my son #2, Jonathan. Yesterday, we celebrated his 12Th birthday. Because it can be very costly to have seven birthday parties each year for all seven kids, we've started a tradition in our family. That is on each kids' birthday, the b-day kid gets to pick out his/her favorite food to eat and mom(me) have to prepare it to have as a special birthday dinner. I think it's the most clever and best idea ever because the kids completely love it and totally jumped at idea. As soon as we finish celebrating New Year, the kids started thinking about what they would have for their special birthday dinner. Of course, if it happens to be a Milestone birthday, then that particular kid gets to pick out what he/she wants to do..either a party, a day out with friends with dinner and movie, or go shopping or he/she picks out a place to go to hang out for fun, like Ice Palace or something, places we normally don't go to all the time.

So for Jonathan's birthday, he chose to have chili and rice...I know, I was surprise he would pick that for his special dinner. I guess it is her favorite dish or something so that's what we have for his b-day dinner. I baked the cake, no the cake wasn't made from scratch, and her sister Steph decorated it. She's the baker in our family so the birthday cakes usually falls on her to make.


Here's Jonathan's cake made with love by his mom and sister...awwww!!


So we had dinner and after that, we sang him the birthday song and presented him with his cake. He was one happy camper..lol.

Here he is with his cake just before he blew out the candles . Don't ask me what he did his shirt. Halfway through the whole thing, I realized that he's been shirtless throughout the whole time. Part of his 12Th birthday deal is he gets to pick a place or an activity he wants to do. He hasn't told us what he wants to do yet but I'm sure he'd like to invite several of his friends over for a party or go to Ice Palace. I'm going to leave that totally up to him.

I've decided that this Sunday I'm going to really make a very special dinner, something I'll pick out that I know he loves too because he will be advancing from Primary to the Young Men program. He will also be sustained as a Deacon. I get totally emotional when I think about my little boy all grown up and passing sacrament with his older brother in church.

Before I end this post, lemme tell you a little about this son of mine. He's in sixth grade now and will be attending Kahuku High and Inter. School next year as a seventh grader...he's really anxious to be going to school where the older kids are..lol.

I've mentioned this son in one of my posts before. He is the kind of person who takes things very seriously and he takes any one's words literally. If you tell him a joke, it'll take him a long time to figure out that he's just heard a joke. When he was little, he would tell me that when he grows up, he will marry me and buy me a big house..lol and take care of me. Whenever anyone would ask him who his girlfriend was, the answer was always "my mom". Adorable, uh? He's very loving and he is not ashamed to show affection in public especially to his mom. That makes some of my friends a little envious because their sons who are my son's friends and age do not like to be seen with their moms in public and to show affection in public? That's a no no.

He's such a good big brother and he caters to his baby sister's every whim. It's been a real privilege having this son and raising him. Even though he's always the last one to get the joke, he's always making us laugh with his remarks. Even without thinking it, he says the darnedest and funniest things so right there you know you can never be bored hanging out with him.

So in honor of his birthday I want send a shout out to my son Jonathan. Happy Birthday, son!! It's been a real privilege having you for a son.