good, better, BEST

After this mornings 6am jogging class, I was completely finish with undergraduate assignments, FOR-EV-VER (sandlot). It's crazy, but at the same time not really, since I've had an easy going last semester. However looking back to when my college experience first started when my Mom said her goodbye's at my good ole' Heritage Halls dorm, living on my own, walking my butt everywhere IN THE SNOW, budgeting every crumb of my meals, coming home for summer vacay & being swept off my feet by my husband, transferring to BYU-Hawaii, getting married, living in TVA, full-time student+part-time working+full term pregnant, giving birth, and now graduating with my little one tearing my house down around me....and moving, wow, that ALL seems more amazing than an actual degree. Life is interesting.

I thought I wouldn't marry until 23, I'd finish at BYU-Provo and head on to Law or Grad School, travel the world inside and out, dress absolutely flawless everyday, never even THINKING about children and basically staying far far away from Laie.

And well, I got a BETTER deal.
Thanks Heavenly Father. For allowing me to be in the right place at the right time to meet James, and to allow us to create the lives we have so far. For Mahie...who drives me nuts and has taught me QUICKLY that I wasn't born with patience ;)

1st camera pic I sent to my parents!

Me & my roommate Bryn (who has a little boy now)

She was so nice, fun, sporty, and frickin weird it cracked me up that I became friends with her. After about 4 days being in Provo with my Mom and Aunty Linda, my Mom finally forced me to start taking things over to my dorm. It was cool checking in, getting my own key (& BYU rape whistle)....but as soon as I opened my door, I was like "what the hell?" There were pictures of pirates everywhere on the wall, bed, desk opposite me. I didn't mind the Johnny Depp ones, but I told my Mom that I wasn't staying there. Haha, Bryn and I made the best pair out of all the roommates in our dorm apartment. I remember knocking her out with my pillow because she kept farting one night, and then I got scared and poured water on her face. I introduced her to Rated R movies, lol, the good ones though aka The Patriot and 300, lol. We LOVED the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I hated her older brother and she knew I wanted to kill him, lol. I made her dye her hair goth black. She had my back when I told off our immature Relief Society President. She truly kept me active in Church, and taught me the difference between jam and jelly.

 ROAD TRIPPING!

One thing why I always encourage anyone to go to school on the mainland, well, its because its on the mainland hello! For me, home will always be home....so take advantage of experiencing what's out there. Once I realized that I was my own Boss out there in Utah, I was definitely out and about. I truly experienced a fun and full two years of mainland college life. And if one thing, haoles know how to plan activities and they always have one right after another.

(Paramore Concert in VEGAS) Tammy, Claire & Bryn

Me & Amanda heading to her house in Camarillo, CA

Jesse & Me heading out to reggae concerts all over Utah

Me & Tara Thanksgiving break at her home in Rancho Cucamonga, CA

Sophomore Year "Campu Plaza" Roomies, Kaui, Sipopo, Me & Katie (LA Temple)

 Meeting awesome people & traveling the world

I loved that college (at both BYU's) offers you experiences to travel, FOR FREE! And you also learn more of the world, issues, differences out there.

(Paraguay-Argentia Trip) Tessi, Me, Steph & Kapua (Crystal)

Catching the Metro in DC (Political Science/Public Policy Trip) Samantha, Me & Chelly w/baby Javhan

Night Show Life

I'm glad I danced at Night Show. I made some of the best of friends there, who are now all Wifey's or Mommy's and live around the world. I learned to enjoy dancing other cultures, learning from the best & sharing the stage with the best. I danced both "Horizons" & "Ha", but miss all the girls from Horizons. I originally wanted to dance Canoe Show but didn't make the cut. In fact I was later told that I didn't get it because the girl auditioning didn't like me (WTF). I waited a week, nervously auditioned for Night Show and got it! (Better dancers get hired at Night Show anyways, lol)I became a makeup addict and hoarder! I got to meet the Prophet, majority of the Apostles, celebrities & traveling performance groups. I learned to manage school and work aka reviewing terms onstage in my head and running straight to the testing center before it closed. I also learned the definition of a "diva", how "politics" have a BIG influence on who gets hired/not hired, good/crappy costumes, front row/sand pit (lol), the itchy people that sleep around, the broke okole's who steal, and the fun ones who make me miss dancing. If I didn't do Night Show, I would've been a loner at BYU-H.

Getting Hitched!

Dating-Engaged-Married-TVA (lol) & Mahie

I'm glad I found my James Aspinall!

Studying & working while pregnant, while battling postpartum, while nursing, while your daughter is tearing the house upside down.

 lastly, ALWAYS being surrounded by the Gospel. 

Some members have a hard time having both Church and Education together. I found that the only time I didn't like the two together, was when I wasn't living my life correctly. I'm proud to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I'm grateful that my faith provided for my education, housing and college experience. I'm glad I attended BYU, however I will ALWAYS be a Cougar Fan :)

Like I said, I got the BETTER deal.
Wouldn't change a thing.
Looking forward to what the future brings.....BRING IT ON!

the low down

It's crazy how so many events have gone by and EVERY TIME I feel like blog-sharin' but come home too late or too tired, and then still recovering the morning after but then the morning-after-responsibilities remind me I gotta hurry up and run to class then work all day. And then when you know it, another exciting blog worthy event pops up and I'm BACK to putting it off. (Like now I'm tired) However, I'm pretty sure that the majority of my blog subscribers are also friends with me on Facebook, so you've seen my status updates (My most recent being I busted some random weirdo smoking & about to pee in my parent's front yard) and mobile uploads of Mahie. Well, as of right NOW, here's the low down:

Today we celebrated Mahie's first Easter Sunday, and as our family tradition, she woke up to a new pair of church clothes. I only knew of one other friend (Renny) who's family also practiced this growing up. I'm surprised she didn't scratch at her tights. She looked like a fluffy little polka-dot cupcake. As you can see above, eggs didn't interest her at all. With all the craziness we didn't get her an Easter basket, she wouldn't have appreciated anyways I guess, but Grandma got her a new toy and we let her munch on a mini kitkat.

We also celebrated my Mom's birthday. Hands down to Safeway bakery for making yummy moist cakes, pretty impressed. She also got a new bike for her morning exercise. She was totally surprised and excited when we sang to her after dinner. It was nice relaxing with my whole family home and laughing at Mahie pulling everything off the shelves. Happy 52 Mom!! (Her birthday was actually April 3rd)

Earlier in the week, before all the rain and clouds, Kiana was off from the airlines so we hit the beach. Mahie is darker than the both of us, and freaked us out by darting straight to the water. Not afraid at all! I'm enjoying the fact that she is becoming more interactive. I asked her to help me dig a hole and showed her what to do, and she understood and helped clear the sand. She is such a smart girl. Too smart at times that we can't trick her anymore with certain things. And can I just say it's been hard lately trying to enjoy my OWN plate of food, because she'll drop whatever she's doing to get a piece of what you got. lol. Mahie loves to eat. I say she's like her father because she'll keep eating if there's food in front of her.

 Friday morning I took Mahie to say "to fa soifua" to my FOURTH and LAST semester of Gagana Samoa. I can't believe I made it to the highest level (with TONS of studying and help). First semester: Interested, but didn't take it seriously. Second semester: slightly dreaded but sat myself down and fully studied/embraced the language and culture. Third semester: Half confident, half dreading class, glad there's only one more semester. Fourth semester: Walk in my first day totally unprepared for fluent Samoan, with a different teacher, smaller class of students FROM SAMOA. I was so nervous, I forgot how to introduce myself in Samoan. Well, it being my last and required class for graduation, I told James I was gonna push myself, and I did. Perfect attendance for a 7:30am class. Since I took tons of notes in class and studied my brains out for tests, I can brag and say I usually scored the highest on all the tests. I learned my Mother-in-law's entire fa'alupega for her village Vailoa in Aleipata....went a day early than everyone else's speeches and was the ONLY one who scored perfect in memorization, pronunciation, and knowledge of what I was saying. Shabooya!! All in all, I learned alot, but THANK GOODNESS I'm pau. FYI I'm proud to be Hawaiian :) He Hawaii au mau a mau!!!!

That Friday night James and I went to my Graduation dinner for ICS graduates. My hair was totally not the business since it was raining hard outside. A total waste of hot rollers. Hmmm....ICS needs to step up their game, lol. I could've gone without attending, seriously. As soon as we got there, we wanted to leave. I should've been in charge of planning that dinner. As always though, it's the thought that counts right!

We've been passing out invites for Mahie's 1st birthday, booking things to entertain the kiddies, gathering decorations, etc. I'm sad that some of my close friends won't be there to enjoy it. Hopefully it will be fun, lol. I'm still waiting for school to GET OUT OF THE WAY and then I'll fully wrap my head around the party.

And school....will be officially done this Saturday morning at graduation. We have a busy week of filing out important school, mail, health insurance, change of address, alumni papers. Deciding what to sell, throw and pack. Upcoming deadlines, appointments, papers. Our house is a cluttered mess. It's basically crunch time, but I'll save the crunching for tomorrow morning. Our move isn't that stressful since it's a temporary stay at my parents. I feel sorry for our TVA neighbors who have to get rid of everything and move to the mainland. I'll miss the friends we made here.

A reminder in our lives:

"As I think about your schedules and the pressures you face at this time in your lives, I can understand why scripture study can so easily be neglected. You have many demands pulling at you. In some cases, just maintaining your social life is a full-time occupation. But I plead with you to make time for immersing yourselves in the scriptures. Couple scripture study with your prayers. Half an hour each morning privately studying, pondering, and communicating with your Heavenly Father can make an amazing difference in your lives. It will give increased success in your daily activities. It will bring increased alertness to your minds. It will give you comfort and rock-steady assurance when the storms of life descend upon you." -Elder Ballard


Good night Easter bunny.

ER Sunday

Our Sunday started at 3? 4 this morning? I'm not sure, all I know is that we left the Emergency Room in Kahuku around 5:30am, two tired parents and one feverish sleepy baby. Since Friday Mahie was having some high fevers off and on, a runny nose at times too, but since she was always drooling, we assumed it was from teething starting up again. In the middle of the night I heard her moaning and getting restless, and then she started to shake all over and breath quickly. That scared me the most because it took me back to the delivery room when the nurses snatched her from my arms and put her on a breathing machine. We piled into the car like zombies....it couldve been nothing, it couldve been anything too...we didn't want to take any chances and regret things later.

The nurse and doctor on duty were very welcoming for it being the middle of the night. In fact, they were funny, especially the nurse who started to play with Mahie as she checked her in. Their humor caused me to relax, and it also helped with Mahie's fever, shakes, etc, to drop quickly, weird. It was also surprising to see how good a patient Mahie was. Usually if someone she doesn't know touches her, she whacks their hand or pushes away. She let the nurse and doctor do their thing, and kept yawning as if to say HURRY UP. lol. That's what made the staff laugh the most. That is, until the Doctor tried to open her mouth with a popsickle stick, and she tried to bite it (of course she's teething), and instead she gagged and up came her last bottle all over herself, James, the Doctor, the bed and the floor. Lol, the Nurse went off at the Doctor and helped to clean Mahie up right away getting towels and wiping her down. It might be a viral infection, but the Doctor said her body just needs to let it pass, but to bring her in if the symptoms get worse or continue.

Mahie doze off right away as they discharged her, while James and I dragged our feet back to our TVA apartment. I feel bad for my husband right now, as we were both suppose to give a talk in sacrament on, "The Blessings of Giving". We had our talks ready and everything, but our poor baby needed our attention more. So we decided James would go & I'd stay with Mahie since I was starting to not feel so good either.

That's our Sunday so far. I feel so groggy from sleeping and then waking up on an off schedule because of Mahie being uncomfortable, and now being surrounded by a messy house is not putting me in a good mood either. But, I need to be grateful that our daughter is okay. She just went down for another nap. Happy Sunday.

hulahula overload

For a while I didn't have anything to blog about, well I did, and thought THOSE ideas would be better for upcoming posts....and then I got lazy......and then midterm projects kicked in.....and then all that heavy rain & storms......and then I stayed lazy. But today we got up and headed to town, just for Mahie. Since January I've had her first birthday at the back of my mind, along with a ton of jumbled ideas. Thank goodness by the time my birthday came in February, I decided on a theme. It's not really a theme theme, like a movie, Disney princess or cartoon....I just always adored dancing hula, and hula girls for that matter and thought, hmmm "a hula girl theme" would be cute. What's a hula girl theme? Well I'm making it up as I go. Everyday I've been finding inspiration, so the Swapmeet for sure supplied all those crafty ideas in my head. Anyways, I'm trying to keep myself as far away from stressing out as possible....why does all this planning seem so similar to my reception, weird. Hard to explain. And then some days I feel like 'Super Mom Party Planner' ready to tackle anything, and other days I could care less and would rather pay my Mom or Sister to do it all, lol. Really. We're still deciding if it will be at our local stake center or at Kualoa Ranch since my brother Eric can get it for free, woohoo. All in all, I need to remind myself to keep things simple. What's a party if the Mom's a hot mess? lol. But I think stress is just a natural part of me, geez.

So we went to the Swapmeet for some decorations and such....a really nice chinese lady sold me some "hula girl skirt kits" lol, for cheap, and I think it'll be cute to hang it somewhere at the party. My Mom of course put it on Mahie as soon as we got home, but NO, NEVER, would I let my daughter wear that forreals in public, no matter what age. It was funny though, until she started to chew on everything.

I also started to work on goodie bag ideas. I've had a ton of brown lunch bags in storage since I worked for Laie Summer Fun a couple years ago, and thought it was time to use them up. My Mom always has all sorts of crafts from collecting cheap from garage sales and also because she's been Primary President. She had some green sparkly tissue paper and zigzag scissors. We decided to make simple "hula girl" bags. On Pinterest I saw that a lot of Mom's had used brown lunch bags too (thank goodness not just ME being thrifty) and just folded the top with a secured laundry pin. So at the Swapmeet I bought a ton of those clip fake flowers to secure the top of the bags. I didn't expect how cute they'd turn out. Simple, but totally cute. And the boys can just give their clips to their sisters or Moms, lol. They look better in person, especially the "grass skirts".

The 'mahalo' stickers were leftover from my reception. In a few days we're going to look at hula dancer balloons. Hula this, hula that.

And now here's the reason why Mahie was so fussy and OVER tired....finally rolling over and knocking out because of all the sugar she had today! Shave Ice and my Mc Donald's parfait.

I've got a lot on my plate for the next couple of weeks: A power-point presentation ALLLLLLL in SAAAAMOAN, my sewing final that's due first week of April that I've been procrastinating on (I hate necklines), getting rid of things to move out, Senior deadlines for Graduation, work to keep finances running, internship paper to get credit, all of Mahie's birthday stuff......and just some other random stuff that will pop into my head right when I start to doze off for the night. To top it all off, I'm starting to not feel well. Tomorrow is Sunday, and I'm ready to rest! I'm glad James made dinner tonight: Shoyu Chicken and yummmmy potato salad.

bundled in hawaii nei

Here is Mahie ready to leave with Grandma to the playground just outside our TVA apartment. By the look of her clothes, you'd think it was FREEZING outside. Well, by "Hawaii standards" it has been totally freezing the past few days. Heavy rain, strong wind, yucky weather....causing cold little feet and toes crawling around our apartment floor. Good thing no sniffles have come home with any of us. However, it hasn't been all that bad. Some days it makes the bed, couch, pillows and warm fuzzy blankets that much cozier. (And also leaving to work a little harder.) It has also inspired a variety of hot and hearty dinner meals that have satisfied and warmed the belly before bed. Trini Kaopuiki says to expect more rainy days to come with this storm passing through. Well, at least we aren't getting poured down with hail like on Big Island.

Weekend with The Lorax

A very rainy, but relaxing weekend. And I've welcomed the chilly breeze blowing through our bedroom windows. Since we've been seeing that short, fuzzy orange cartoon online and on tv, we thought we'd take Mahie to see The Lorax in Mililani, and then fill up on house goods at Walmart after. That movie is a definite must see! Of course, since its by the same producers of Despicable Me. We were surprised that Mahie sat up and watched the entire movie AND ENJOYED IT! Clapping her hands, and laughing, lol, even waving and blowing kisses to the screen. She loved that it was also a musical and started dancing when the characters would sing.

Here she is at Target chilling out. We think she's happier because we bought her a 'big girl' forward-facing car seat. You can also see a quick second on how bad I 'impulse shop', as I toss things into the cart and move on to the next aisle, lol.

 I hope the rain cancels jogging tomorrow since we're schedule to run the bike path, I'm gonna freeze!

What's the Current?

....well as of this past week, and 1/2 of yesterday, and all of today...James and I have made it through half the house: getting rid of junk, selling things & packing/sorting the lucky few. If you read my Facebook status yesterday, I was blown away when it came to Mahie's clothes! She has tooooooo many. And it doesn't help that they ALL are cute. Hopefully I have a little girl for baby#2. Anyways, we know whatever we can't get rid of (actually we know we don't really NEED to get rid of a lot)...we'll give to my parents. The true test will come when the international move comes. Until then, de-clutter!

We're thinking, The Lorax tonight??
Aloha Rainy Friday

10 Months-Mahie

Our little girl is 10 months....and turns our house upside down everyday! She is everywhere and in everything. I should've seen this coming, as she was a very active baby while in my tummy.
Doc. Schlacter stat's:
20.16 lbs (didn't really gain weight, however it made up in her height!)
31 1/2 inches tall! She has really long legs, and she uses them when her hands can't reach, lol.
Hair is still growing like a weed.
The drool has made its return, so we may be expecting a tooth or two soon. Hopefull not 4 at once like last time.

Mahie is very smart. She points at things she wants or is interested in and mumbles at it. When we answer her, she mumbles back in response, its cute. After a while though, she points at a million things! She drinks tons of water and baby apple juice from her Nuby. We still give her bottles when we need her to calm down or knock out (like in a movie). She is always standing up against something, hence all of our lower shelves are empty because we are tired of putting things back. She has a little cushion giraffe friend, and so when she's tired she'll crawl over and sleep on him.We also bought her one of those infamous Sophie the Giraffe 6-senses teething toy, but it freaked her out with its loud squeaker. Considering how expensive it was, James wanted to return it but maybe next baby will enjoy it.

My Aunty works for Alu Like and they were awarded a grant to send their workers to homes of Hawaiian keiki to "encourage parents to use daily activities and play to help their children be successful before school starts." Not only is it awesome, but free, and the Alu Like workers bring toys, visuals, everything! You don't have to leave your house. It's pretty interesting since we as adults ignore our child's perspective of the world from their level. It's usually for 1-3 year olds, but since my Aunty is in charge, well Mahie was the exception, haha. Some of the best toys/activities for great cognitive learning & interaction: blocks & peek-a-boo.....and yes, allowing Mahie to take things off the shelves, but also helping her to put them back on. Mahie loves her blocks. While we were at Whole Foods at Kahala Mall, we stopped by Thinker Toys and loved their selection of 'learning toys'.

One more thing, hide your food from Mahie. She'll want whatever you put in front of her and whatever is on your plate. She is constantly snacking, but never gains anything! Thats the life! haha. We love you Mahie, not so much your stinky diapers, pre-tantrums, or when you try to crawl away from us under the table....but we love you nonetheless! 10 months & counting the single steps she takes on her own before tumbling down!