aso fanau

I had my 24th birthday on the 4th of July. I had all these plans with my mom but I ended up staying in Palmyra when we came to New York for my cousin's graduation. So Finau and I spent my birthday with my favorite relatives. We went up to Lake Ontario and just cruised around having a little feed and watching people swimming. It was fun to just relax and spend time with family and not have a big thing this year. It was weird being away from my family but my dad was at scout camp and Filipo had to work so I guess it was all good in the end that we were here. We didn't go to watch fireworks that night but stayed at home watching movies.


















Since the pageant is going on right now there's a lot of people coming out to Palmyra so EVERYONE is having garage sales. I haven't been out to garage sales in forever so it was fun to go with my aunt and cousin. We hit up a ton of them but I'm really tight with my money so I just spent $11 the two days we went. I did get some good stuff though. Finau got a brand new London Fog coat for the winter, a remote controlled race track thing with two cars (which all the older kids have been fighting for since we brought it home), an awesome book called "My little red toolbox" by Stephen T. Johnson (seriously the BEST book EVER), a little house trinket thing for my grandma, some baseball stuff that I'm giving Finau for his birthday, and an iPOD for Filipo.

Finau Lahi

[[sad that the only image I have here in New York is one that has Paula & Mote in it...hahahha]]

Filipo's parents have been sick on and off for about a year now. Sometimes it would be his dad and sometimes it was his mom. Last June 2010 we went to Tonga for a month. We spent most of the time in Vava'u with Filipo's parents and older sisters. It was the first time anyone had seen Finau and they absolutely loved him to death. Finau Leka had so much fun over there with all the kids.

It was so cute when we'd come outside and see Finau Lahi & Finau Leka sitting together trying to squeeze into the door frame eating watermelons and watching the cows in the backyard. They were too cute but everybody that knows Finau knows that last year he was such a little bugger and he wouldn't go to anybody when he was in one of his moods so moments like that only happened once in a while.

We left Tonga and both of my in-laws were doing okay. Then in November they came to Hawaii for two months with my sister-in-law Kalo and spent some time with Finau Leka & Filipo. I haven't seen Filipo at home so much in ages but he loved spending time with his family and talking story for hours. While Finau Lahi was in Hawaii near the end of his trip he wasn't eating very much at all. He'd have a little bit of cocoa rice and bread but not really anything else.

We've been calling back and forth with the family in Vava'u for the last few months and found out a few things. Finau had this thing growing on his neck and everyone thought it was some little thing that a lot of older people get and it wouldn't be a problem. It turned out once they went to the doctor on the main island that Finau had cancer in his throat. It was hard because nobody knew how long he would live not even the doctors so in April we flew Filipo's parents back to Vava'u just in case. His older sister called a few weeks ago and told him if he could make it he needed to come out.

His brothers had finished digging the grave and the doctor took him off life support so he had a short time to get home. Filipo flew out in the middle of June for two weeks. He spent every day in the house with his dad. Some days were better than others but when his two weeks were up and he needed to get home his dad was still alive. My sister-in-law Kalina called last Wednesday night and said Finau finally passed away. It's been weird because Filipo's at home by himself in Virginia while Finau and I are in New York. I'm glad Filipo got to see his father before he passed away and that Finau Leka had the chance to know his namesake and spend time together. I know it's hard for everybody to be so far apart especially since Filipo's the baby of the family and it's hard since they're not members of the LDS church. Hopefully things will work out but for now we're just taking one day at a time and trying to get back home.

Love you long time Finau Lahi...

Easter

Mum & Dad put together a little Easter egg hunt for Finau. They actually put on a little party for his nursery class a few weeks ago but we didn't take any pictures so I only have this one photo from somebody that came.


The older kids "hid" the eggs for the little kids which basically means they ate them all until an adult came down to supervise them. When the little kids started to look for eggs everyone else went to one side and Finau went by himself to the other side. He didn't get what was happening and he's not big on candy so he didn't care that he only got a few eggs.

The other photos are from Finau's egg hunt on Easter morning. Mom & Dad put one together for him and got Filipo & I baskets too. It was really nice. He was super funny because he spotted a bunny on the floor and then started screaming when he kept finding them.









My dad teaches the 12/13 year old boys at church and they were at our house to get some plants for a service project. My dad took this photo when they were swinging so it's kind of blurry but the kid on the right sitting next to Finau is one of his best friends at church. He's the bishops son and he loves Finau to death. They're all really good to Finau and take care of him and Finau loves having them over to the house.

new.new.new

These past few weeks we've spent every spare minute with mum & dad working on our new house. The missionaries have been living there for the last three years. It's been good but we finally decided we wanted our own space so they found a new home and now we're fixing it up, painting, and getting ready to move in. It's a 2 bed, 2 bath place with a super nice kitchen and we also have an extra huge playroom for Finau which he loves.

My mum gets all these different southern living & martha stewart living magazines with heaps of design ideas so I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in Finau's room and around the house. I guess we'll just have to wait until we move into a real house to do all the things I wanna do cos right now I just wanna do it simple and not spend heaps of money.

I love hgtv and they did a room in one of their dream houses with striped walls. I love blue and so I decided to go in that direction with Finau's room. I meant to take pictures before, during and after but forgot so these are only from after. It took literally minimum six hours to tape all the walls and I made my poor mum help me when she was sick as one day but it turned out okay. I just have to do some touch ups when I find some time. I just repainted some old army bunk beds we had and that's about it for now.

I couldn't decide between doing a cars/trucks theme or a spiderman theme in his room so he has cars/trucks sheets and a spiderman comforter. My dad was super good to us and he went and bought a new mattress for finau after the other one was giving me allergy problems so once I have that on the bed he'll have two beds made up. I also have these awesome photos from new york city taken by one of my favorite photographers so as soon as I print those off I'm gonna hang them on his wall.

I always laugh when dad says Finau has too many toys and clothes but then I went to hang all his clothes and could only fit the shirts....yea he's spoiled for sure.



Not much going on anywhere else cos I'm still cleaning and deciding what I'm gonna do but at least we finally have our own space since it looks like our plans have changed and we'll be here for a while. There's some other random pictures on here of the kitchen and the living room just so my famz can see. The playroom is so messy right now cos we had some kids over and our room is still getting put together so no pics of that right now.

shoots

I am so bad about blogging for so many reasons but lately it's because our internet here in VA stinks big time and I never get on the computer any more. We've been here almost one month. I guess I should give a run down of everything that happened since we were super busy.

- Mum & Dad came from VA to Hawaii for Filipo's grad
-Filipo graduated finally
-We moved out of TVA & into Turtle Bay [[thanks heaps to mum & dad for helping with all the cleaning!!]]
-We went swimming constantly
-Spent basically a whole week all day, every day packing our shipping crate for Tonga....irrits...but another story for another time
-Spent heaps of time with Filipo's famz before they went back to Tonga
-Packed our stuff & left Hawaii
-Settled into our new home & Finau getting so spoiled by Mum & Dad
-Had a little family reunion with my favorite Aunt & Uncle and Cuzzie from Palmyra, NY / Aunt & Cuzzies from F'burg
-Celebrated the OLD, OLD, OLD Man's (FILIPO) Birthday
-Spent the last three weeks looking for jobs and not finding anything so spending heaps of time at the movies, library, mall, and every other place in Stafford.....man i hate the boonies.....
-Oh yeah Filipo spent last weekend camping in -15 degree weather with my dad and all his scouts from the ward hahahahaha.....

Heaps of changes and I just can't wait to get our stuff over with in Tonga so we can come back already. Love being with family and friends and even the stinky missionaries in the basement but let's hope we get jobs soon so we can start saving the money and move on to bigger and better things.

Our internet is taking ages so no photos but I'll get on that later in the week...fa laiaaa