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

big changes

Well the surprise we got on Thanksgiving was my dad giving us an early Christmas present by telling us he was going to pay for our tickets to fly to Virginia. That was so much stress for us because we wanted to move to F'burg to save money on rent but we didn't have a way to get there so we were just going to stay in Hawaii for six months until Filipo works out his green card stuff. Now we're heading to the cold and snow and I'm super happy about it because Finau gets to spend time with his grandparents and we get to save some more money before we move over to Tonga.

An old picture of home but still miss it....

I think it will be good but at the same time I know Filipo's going to miss Hawaii and all of the Poly's around here. He's gonna be one of the only ones but oh well....So big changes ahead but looking forward to whatever comes our way.

thanksgiving & black friday

We were supposed to get a pig for Thanksgiving but they went up $100 from when the boys went and first asked about it so the night before Filipo decided we were gonna go get all this food to cook. We woke up on Thanksgiving and I attempted to cook the food. Even though Filipo never likes to admit it I'm a pretty good cook but I've never cooked Thanksgiving food before so it was very interesting. About 1/2 hour before the food was finished my next door neighbor brought over 5 pans of food. I think she knew I didn't know how to cook all that food and felt sorry for us. She's a bomb cook though. We sat down to eat and even I ended up just eating her food. It was so good. She always makes the best food. Anyway we had a nice feed and then spent the afternoon sleeping and playing card games. We also got a nice surprise when we were talking to my parents but that's another post altogether....






On Black Friday we were going to wake up early to go to the store but I never set the alarm so we didn't even leave until 7:00 a.m. which for most people is too late to get anything. The only reason we went is because this summer Filipo's laptop he got last Christmas broke and so Best Buy gave him a gift card refund with $750 on it. We went to Best Buy looking for a new video camera and nothing else really but we ended up spending forever there trying to decide which one to buy. We ended up getting a few things but we still didn't spend all the money. Anyway it was a good day but poor Finau was so tired so as soon as we got to the car he knocked out all the way home.

finau [lahi's] birthday

Finau Leka waiting to blow out the candles

All that hard work and nobody even realised this said "Finau"

Since we have Filipo's parents here with us we were able to celebrate Finau's 77th Birthday with him. We made him a chocolate cake and that was about it. Birthday's aren't a big deal in Tonga like they are in the U.S. and so Finau was kind of weirded out about it. Later Filipo told me he acted so weird because he's never had a cake or had anyone sing Happy Birthday to him his ENTIRE LIFE, EVER. Wow....It was all good though and I'm glad he finally got one cake. I felt kinda weird singing and being the only one so that's why you pretty much only hear Filipo in the video.

lately

A few weeks ago our friends invited us over for dinner. They are seriously one of the nicest family I've met ever here at BYU-Hawaii and they are so humble. They're both from Fiji and they just had a little boy that's almost five months old. Finau was really sick but he loved playing with the baby.



The following week we had to go to town to get Finau's teeth checked out so the picture was of him playing at the Dentist office. The building where the dentist office is located was so shady looking and I was really scared to go in but inside it's super nice and the dentist is really friendly and helpful. They even have all these play stations for the kids and a movie playing all the time. He finally went back this week to get his teeth fixed so he has his caps on. He was such a trooper while they put them on and he's finally getting over being sick from the operation and all the medicines he had to take.

A couple weeks back when he was originially suppose to get the operation he hadn't eaten anything for a while since he was sick and we didn't have any food so we ran to macca's and got some burgers and Finau was just finishing them all off even though we bought him the chicken nuggets. He still ate his nuggets and 1 1/2 burgers. He cracks me up sometimes.




On Sunday we finally put Finau in his taovala from Aunty Pina. I was surprised he kept it on so long. The only reason it finally came off was because he was so active in nursery that I went to tighten it and just decided to take it off him.



This picture was taken a couple nights ago. I was trying to get one of his teeth but he didn't want to open his mouth because he was exhausted and still in pain. He still has a little bit of his chubby cheeks but he is loosing all his baby fat. When he was nine months he wore 2+ age clothing. Now he's back into wearing all those 2 year old clothes. He's getting skinnier by the second. The plus side is at least we won't have to buy him clothes for the next 4 or 5 years since we usually buy everything larger for him so now he can use it for a while.


None of the pictures are the best but that's as good as it gets with a cell phone camera and an active little man. I'll try and put up more pics this week because tomorrow is the Laie Hawaii Temple Re-dedication and I am so looking forward to it and going inside for the first time since it re-opens! I watched some of the "cultural celebration" on t.v. and I hate to say it but I thought it was so very, very boring. For the hour and a half I watched they only did Hawaiian/Asian dances and so I didn't really enjoy it. I thought the Tongan Temple celebration a couple years back was much better. Anyway I'm still excited and can't wait to go to the dedication tomorrow!