Sickness and Card, oh my....

Our house has been boggled down with sickness. Two weeks ago my son, Jonathan, came down with sore throat and fever and I kept him home from school for three days. Then just as he was getting better, I came down with the sore throat, fever, ache everywhere and had to spent practically a four day weekend in bed. Most frustrating thing about the sore throat was that eventhough it was painful and inflamed, the doctor said there was nothing wrong with my throat. I took a throat culture and when the results came in three days, it was negative, no strep which was a good thing. My throat was hurting for seven days and I was told that I was congested so therefore I was given some congestion medication. As the pain was easing up, the incessant cough started...I practically spent a whole week coughing non-stop. It was ok during the day, but when nighttime fell, it was torture. I think I only have a total of 48 hours of sleep in one week so I spent most of my days, walking around the house like a zombie...nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing got done around here. I was sleep deprived.

While I was still feeling sick, my little girl Kaitlin was sick also, her fever was constantly on a roller coaster ride. Along with that, she was vomitting all over the place and running in and out of our bathroom, she had diarrhea..poor thing. Just as we were getting better, both Joey and Daniel came down with the same thing. Three days after they got better, my hub came inherited everything else everyone has had for past week or so. Gosh, it felt like a never ending cycle. As I'm sitting here writing, my Kaitlin is coughing, she's moved on to coughing while my daughter Stephanie is in here room with the same thing we've had so far. She's been sick all weekend so she's been sleeping most of the time. Oh yeah, for some reason, the sore throat has affected the taste buds of anyone who has contracted it. I think I literally went on a four day fast during the time I had sore throat. I was literally shaking on the fourth day that I decided to make some chicken soup and slurp on the broth. It did the job.

There are still two members of our household who haven't gotten sick for far and I pray they don't get sick too. Seeing how misery seems to love company, they probably might come down with something over the weekend. My son Chris announced last night during FHE that this Friday he's taking a girl to the school dance so I cross my finger he doesn't get sick by then. It's so cute, it is going to be his first official date..awwww.

So yeah, that's what's been happening in our household right now. I'll be glad when everything gets back to normal again.

On a brighter note, being sick sometimes has its advantages. Being sick frees up a person from his/her usual chores or duties for the time being, yet said sick person can still enjoy or do something fun for a change. So that's what I did, I took advantages of my break and play with papers..our card group had our meet last week so I made some cards. I wasn't able to take picture of the card I made for our swap but I made a card for a challenge that I participate every week and had my daughter take picture of it. It's actually going to be my valentine's day card for my hub. So here it is:

I know, that's a lot of red. And it looks simple enough. I love this image..it's become my signature image when it comes to my hub and I. I like using this image when I make a card for my hub...when we were dating, we were poor poor students so most of our dates were either at the beach or ended at the beach.

The next image is the surprise part. Everyone who knows me, especially when it comes to card making, knows I love 3-D or pop up cards. I would say I am obsessed with pop-up card. The picture you see above, that was what the card looks like laid flat. If you look closely, you will see that there's a little indented area where you pull on it and once you pull it, viola!!

It pops up and stands on its own. And of course, there's a greeting that was revealed. I wish I can say that this is all my idea but no...some other very clever and creative person came up with the idea. Like I said, there's a challenge that I participate in each week...the coordinators come up with a technique, give us the instruction on it and then challenge us to create one. I don't usually do all of them. I usually like to tackle the 3-Ds or pop up ones and the complicated the technique the better...as far as I'm concerned.

So there you have it folks. Hope you all are having a good week and that you're all healthy.

God bless and ♥ always,

A Weekend Mishap (Katie's new do...lol)

Look what my daughter did to her beautiful curly hair!! Last night while I was gone with my teens to attend Youth Fireside, my daughter Kaitlin decided to play beauty shop and cropped off the hair on the left side of her head. Apparently she decided she needed a hair cut and since no one was available to give her what she wished, she decided to take that job upon herself. When I came home last night, I thought something didn't look right on her. And that was when I noticed that practically half of the hair on the left side of her head had been cut off.

When I asked her what happened to her hair, she flat out told me the truth, that she cut her hair. Not only did she cut that side off, but she also trimmed off the bottom part of her hair....looks too perfect a cut for a 2 1/2 yr. old to pull that off. I have my suspicions about this hair cut but so far no one has admitted to anything and she was very adamant that she cut it herself.

I know I know, you're looking at me and probably screaming at me about how and where she got the scissors from. I honestly can't say where she got a hold of that thing. I have my stuff put away but I guess it's not really out of her reach. Yeah, that's part of my Neglectful Parent Syndrome confession that I was going to come clean with on Friday but didn't get around to. In my defense I can honestly say that she wasn't on my watch when this happened. I left her in the capable hands of my hubby..the sperm donor...who's supposed to be watching her while I was gone. After all I was only fulfilling another part of my mommy duty by taking my teens to Youth Fireside and attending the fireside as part of my calling.

I'm a bit bummed about this because her hair has finally gotten to the point where I can french braid it and she went and did that. She has such beautiful curls....(sighs deeply). Now my dilemma is trying to figure out how to fix the other side to match the side she cut off but do it in a way that she doesn't come off looking like a boy.

This is what other side looks like. Poor beautiful curls...oh well.



This is a picture of her before her haircut. Her hair was long enough that I could put it in pony tail, braid it and just at the point where I can french braid it.

Here she is again with her lopsided hair-do..lol. Look how proud of herself she is of her accomplishment...ahahah. She doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that her hair looks absolutely ridiculous and lopsided....sheeesh. Now, I'm kinda curious and need some input from any of you...how would you go about fixing this problem? Do I just chop the other side off to make it even or do I just leave her hair the way it is now? I know if I do cut off the other side to match them up, she will come off looking like a boy...can you imagine the stink eye people are going to give me once they see her? Those who know me will think I'm too cruel to do that to my daughter...the ones who don't know me will think I'm one of those weird moms who go around dressing their boys up in girls' clothing..lol.

Anyhooo, this is my little ramble for this beautiful Monday morning. I need to get off now and go outside and sit in the sun for a while...we've been having rainy and cloudy weather more than the usual for Hawaii that I actually miss the sun. But before I go, let me direct you to the Mormon Mommy Blogs for some great give-away prizes. Just click here to take you there or scroll to the very top of this blog and read my directions on how to get you there.

Mahalo and God bless!!

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.

A Brag Post

Meet my daughter Jennifer. She's 15 and is a Freshman in High School. She is the second child born into this family of seven kids. Some of her interests are hanging out on virtual places like MySpace and Facebook, hanging out with friends, talking on the phone and entertaining her family with some creative jokes she may have heard or read somewhere. She's a very mild manner child but very expressive in her opinions. Her absolute favorite thing to do is singing.

In fact, she belongs to a choir called Ko'olauloa Children Choir and their choir will be leaving the island the second week of June to go to Washington, DC to tour there for a couple of days and then on to New York to participate in the Carnegie Hall Festival. There they will be singing their hearts out. It's been a real fun and hard year of fundraising to send these beautiful talented kids to participate in something so special and I'm sure the experience will be memorable one for them.

Anyways, the reason for this post and introduction is because I feel like bragging a little about this daughter of mine. As I'm sure most of you know, this past weekend was General Conference for our church. I love conference because I love listening to all the wonderful speakers with the message that each of them delivered.

And because we live in Hawaii and with the time difference, to watch the Conference live the first session comes on at six o'clock in the morning and then the second one comes on at ten.

I know, too early and I am not a morning person. Well, Jen got up on both days, Saturday and Sunday a little before six and watched both early morning sessions all by herself. I didn't wake up til seven to watch so I missed out on the earlier speakers. I was really impressed with her and so proud of her that I could not pass this moment up to come on here and brag about her.

Usually during conference, I was the one who would get up and roused people out of bed to watch but it's not that way this time around. I just love it when kids do things of their own free will and choice without being told. I think as moms when any of our kids do something out of the ordinary, we feel this overwhelming sense of joy and satisfaction and in some small measure an assurance that we are probably doing the right thing.

This is especially true to me because this daughter and I have been at each other for a while with our difference of opinions. She being a teenager usually thinks I don't know what I am talking about or don't understand anything that is going on when I try to teach her what is right or wrong and try to guide her along the right path. I often feel frustrated with her because I feel that most of the time she just tunes me out when I am trying to talk to her so when she does something like this, it totally blows my mind and makes me all teary about it. It's moment like this that makes being a mommy all worthwhile. I am so very proud of her.

I'm not saying that we will never have any hard times with each other but at least now I know that even if she does appear like she may have been tuning me out when I am giving her advice or scolding her, I know she's listening and paying attention.

So there you go, my little ramblings for the day. Hope y'all are enjoying your week.

God bless!!

My Little Guy's Ocean Animal

Meet my son Danny...He's six years old and in First Grade.

This month his class has been learning about animals in the ocean and the teacher assigned each kid to pick an animal that lives in the ocean to do a research on it and then present it in class. Here's my son with his poster. He picked EEL to do his presentation on.

He did his research all on his own. He loves playing on the computer so getting him to get online to research about his chosen animal wasn't too much trouble on my part. He was suppose to write facts about the animal he picked like what the animal eats, what structures the animal has on its body to survive in the wild, if the animal is a mammal, a fish, a crustacean, or an invertebrate. And everything has to be handwritten. He was to include pictures of his animal and he could get his pictures either by hand drawn, from magazines or books and even off the internet.

So my son did his research with a little help from his older sister. His teacher gave him the pictures and he colored them all by himself. I didn't even help him at all with this project of his. I am so proud of him for doing a good job. His teacher once told me that he loves standing in front of the class to do presentation.

One time they did a little show-how-to do something, my son wanted to show his classmates how to make a homemade card using rubber stamps. {Looks like he's following in his mom's footsteps..lol.} Well, he came home, picked out a favorite stamp, his favorite color combination and asked me to help him make a card. When using two different color ink pad, I always make sure I washed off any ink off the stamp before I use it again in another ink and this son of mine, since he was very little, I used to let him stamp with me, had learned to do the same thing. He was very meticulous. Anyways, his teacher said he did wonderful job teaching his classmates that day. Talk about a proud moment.

As you can see in the picture, he looks like he enjoyed himself. Did I mention I am very proud of him? Because I do.

Anyways, today is Friday, last day of school for the kids then they will be out of school for two weeks for Spring Break. And tomorrow my hubby will be going off island for whole week on business trip and a little visit with his mom. I am going to be totally slave driving my kids these two weeks of their break, poor dears...eheheh. Nah, I'm just kidding. But we do need to do some serious spring cleaning, I can't begin to describe the filth that's accumulating in this house. I'm actually a little scared to go in my boys' room, I can't see the floor.

So have a wonderful weekend everyone.

They are such sponges, I really do need to be more careful

My two year old is like a never filled up sponge. She copies everything everyone says and does around here it gets scary sometimes. And guess who she imitates most? Yep, you guessed it right....ME.

I have this habit of clicking my tongue when I'm impatient or frustrated about something. I've done it so much that even when you're looking at mouth you can't really tell if I was actually doing something with mouth, but you can hear the sound. That is one of things that my sweet little two year old has picked up from me. And when she play house, with her dolls, she would pull her shirt up and nurses her baby dolls like I usually do. It's totally uncanny but she can imitate me so perfectly you would think she was me...LOL.

And of course, she loves imitating her siblings too. And her oldest sister loves to teach her some very poor manners and not so admiring words for a little kid...LOL.

One of things I do, and I am not proud of it by all means, is when I get mad at my kids, I can really swear up a storm....really bad for a mom to use some very unladylike and colorful words in the presence of children. {Don't look at me like that, I am only human and I grew up with six older brothers whose first language is foul language, I am bound to pick up a few words here and there...no?)

So a few days ago, I was in one of those days, where the kids are just not cooperating. I think one of my boys had struck a nerve on me or something because I was stomping over to him yelling, "I'm going to beat!!" and I caught myself just in time and stopped right there with my hand smacked over my mouth, thinking my toddler is toddling after me somewhere. And to my shocking or should I say, embarrassing surprise, I heard this cute little voice finishing up my sentence, "the shit {it sounded like sit} outta you."

You can imagine how I must feel at that moment, right? My mind was racing, trying to figure out exactly when in the past few days or weeks have I said that very thing did she hear me say it and remember that was how to the sentence ends.

That brought back a memory I had of when my teenagers were just little kids. Back when there were the three kids, my oldest girl who five at the time, the second girl who was three and my boy who was eighteen months then. I thought about a specific incident that happened back in 1996. Back then we were living in the student housing at BYUH and I haven't been driving very long so I tend to get nervous when I was driving on unfamiliar roads.

So we were driving home from Honolulu after visiting some friends, just me and the three kids. We were about forty five minutes away from home and had come upon kind of a heavy traffic and of course I was nervous so I was paying really close attention to the road. And suddenly something caught my eye in the rear view mirror and when I looked closely at it, my three year old, Jen, was standing on the seat in the back of the van. Not only did she manage to wiggle her way out of her car seat in the middle row but she had climbed over the seat to the very back row of the van and was standing there looking out the window with total satisfaction of her accomplishment while she was enjoying the view as though we were sight seeing. My heart stopped for minute and the next minute I was ranting and raving like a freaking lunatic and of course some very colorful words were thrown in there with the rantings. It was bad. As soon as I could change lane, I pulled over and strapped her back down in her seat, the whole time scolding her.

All I could think then were 1. if the police see us, we will be in trouble and 2. if I had to suddenly step on the brake, she would go flying. I spent the rest of the drive mumbling to myself. When we finally reached home, I pulled into our parking stall and there was my hubby standing there all happy to see us. I was still trying to make myself calm down. He walked over to the side of the van and helped the kids out of the car and guess what my sweet little Jen blurted out?

"Dad, mom was yelling at me in the car and she said the "F" word", and then she proceeded to imitate my voice and repeated every single word I said even right down to my tone of voice. If my skin color was pale, it would clearly show how red it was because I could feel my face burning from embarrassment. I had to look around the parking lot to see if anyone was around to hear my daughter imitate me like that. I could see that my husband was trying very hard not to crack up from what my daughter was saying and the expression I wore on my face. I wished at that moment that the gravel would open up and swallow me right up. And my sweet little girl was just too happy to keep repeating back what I said since my hubby kept asking her to repeat herself but never, mind you, never did she bother to tell her dad why I used such language. As I stomped away from them, I heard my five year, Steph, defended me saying..

"Dad, it was Jen's fault. She climbed out of her seat and then climbed into the back seat and stood up there while mom was driving."

That was the last thing I heard as I ran up the stairs to our apartment to bury my head in shame.

So now, my sweet little two year old is constantly trailing after me, sponging up everything I do and say and repeating it back.