Monday, February 20, 2012

Happy Birthday to me!!!

In less then 4 hours I will be 35 years old...WOW!  I don't think as young girl growing I ever imagined what I would be doing with my life at 35 years old.  However, I am here, and I cannot help but smile knowing that I am definetly blessed.  I have had a wonderful 35 years.  I sat back for a few moments thinking what have I done to constitute a good fulfilling life, and this is what I came up with....
I was raised in American Samoa with wonderful supportive parents lived there for 14 years, moved to Utah to further my education at the University of Utah with an academic scholarship and working at UPS throughout college, and 3 years later graduated with a BA.  Fell in love,  I was an apartment manager living independantly on my own.  I bought my very own Plymouth Sundace while attending college.  I married my best friend in the whole world Peter Esera.  We flew to Hawaii in one year 47 times, we travelled for 6 years before Peter quit Delta so we could start a family.  I was a basketball coach for young woman in my salt lake ward at we went all the way to regionals.  We watched fireworks sitting on the U on the mountainside.  We went on 3 honeymoons, Hawaii, California and then on a Baja Mexico Cruise.  I worked for State office of Polynesian affairs, Utah county Substance abuse office, convinced a company to give me a $400,000.00 credit, wrote a booklet on how to get out of college quick, Swam naked.  Cared for my mom for 9 months while she was in the hospital, caught a fun bus with my mom and aunties to go gamble, went to over 1000 football games, enjoyed universal studios, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Lagoon, Seaworld planned our Pili Family reunion, watched a movie while swimming in waikiki, been to UB40, Inner Cirle, Ziggy Marley, MC hammer, Boyz II Men, Destiny CHilds, Tom Jones, Pat Boone, Rod Stewart, Fiji, Kapena's, and more concerts, wrote my name on the inside on the Statue of liberty, went to Lion King, Phantom of the opera, RiverDance broadway shows.  Visited graceland, mississippi river, caught a ride from a stranger, walked the river walk in san antonio, pigged out at Rudys, made love in a park, got stuck in a water slide, shook President Hinkleys hand, made a gift basket for senator bennet, removed my gallbladder, joined the utah daughters of pioneers, owned 2 rabbits, tried wine, Burried my mom, saved 3 baby birds from my dryer vent, learned how to drain a sink, watched a porno, lost 2,000.00 dollars, bit by centipede, devoted my single adult life to my neices and nephews, gained alot of weight, bought my brother his first crappy car, run PIDC, saw Hotel California, served as primary teacher, primary chorister, young woman advisor, camp director, relief society presidency, bought a house, been to a rodeo, had uterine cancer, paid cash for a new car, cried when i dropped my son off to kindergarten, cried when i dropped my son off to first grade, files my own taxes, drove to Las Vegas with just me and my kids, learned how to make Puligi, sold a clock on ebay for 300.00, became a Mommy to Siale and Kuulei, won season tickets to the UofU football, rented a boat in Catalina, had a taratula crawl on my arm, walked on Redondo beach, watched the Rock at WWF Smackdown! ate crab at Fishermans warf, was a groupy to husband while he was in a band, started a wine collection, was a volunteer for best buddies, a member of the utah democratic party, sealed my family in the temple, volunteered to be room mom for my son's first grade class so I can be close to him, voted for Obama and Clinton, took my kids to the circus, attended 2002 Salt Lake Olympic festivities, took a picture with David Tua, in the car when my husband hit a herd of sheep, read the book of mormon, created a preschool for my baby girl, jumped for joy when my son scored his first soccer goal, and much much more...Wow...this is just small portion of my life....what a life I've had so far and it indeed as been fulfilling, I love my life!  My Heavenly Father has blessed me with so much I am so looking forward to the next 35 years of my life!!!!  Thank you Lord for my life and for what you've done for me!!!!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

BFF for Kuulei

Me and My BFF Kuulei
OK so I picked up Kuulei from school last week and she was so quiet and a little down, I asked her what was going and she just continued to look out the window ignoring me.  Finally when we got home, I asked her if something happened in school.  She started to cry and told me that her BFF of 4 whole months told her she did not want to be her friend  anymore.  My first response was who cares about that girl, she is an evil, demonic child anyways, but before I let those words come out of my mouth, I grabbed Kuulei and gave her a big hug and told her that she was the most important little girl in the world and that she does not need friends to define who she is, WOW am I MOM of the year or what?  To my dismay, those words I uttered meant nothing to my little baby girl.  All she felt was that she lost her friend.  So in attempt to remedy the situation I went to her school the next day and sat in the observation booth and watched her interact with various kids in her class as well as her ex BFF, it was very clear that she was not engaging in any interaction with anyone, and she was basically being ignored by the 4 different teachers.  I watched what the student teachers were not doing to make my baby girl feel better.  I was fustrated and dissappointed I basically wanted to head into her classroom and pull my daughter out and then just beat the sh*t out of them.  Thank goodness I had a very quick and distinct visit from the Holy Ghost telling me, calm your bad self down and re-evaluate the situation and here is what I came up with

1.  Kuulei is my daughter not the student teachers.
2.  We as parents have the responsibility to teach our children to feel confident
3.   We as parents need to prioritize our time- focusing on our children and their needs
4.  Don't be so quick to judge the teacher- yes teachers are there to help teach our children, however, we   are the ones who teach our children first, we are the ones who implement our teaching as well as theirs.
5.  My daughter is 4 years old, she developing her own coping skills with various situations.
6.  I cannot control how other kids are, but I can control how I want my kids to be.
7.  I am not quite in the physical condition I would need to be if I even thought about kicking the sh*t out of someone, I probablly would have to pause in the middle..haha
8.  I need to spend more quality time with my daughter to let her know that her first and foremost BFF is her Mama!

So after sitting in the observation booth for over a week now, I just so happened to run into that little girls mom, I saw her sitting there and I was trying not to make eye contact with her, however, she came up to me and told me that here daughter came home from school last week and was really sad because Kuulei did not want to be her friend anymore....she wanted know if we could plan a playdate......GO FIGURE!  Wow!!! Just when I think I got everything figured out, someone throws me a curve ball!!!  Conclusion:  I guess I got worked up for nothing!!! Well, now Kuulei knows who her real BFF is .....ME!!!

LOL MOMENT!!!!

I love those moments when you want to LOL but you can't because it's not appropriate.  Well that happened to me, we were recently, kneeling down saying family prayer and my husband Peter was giving the prayer, and my daughter leaned over to me, and quietly said, " Mom, dad is going to be late for work," I asked her why? and she said " his prayer is SOOOOOOOOO long."  LOL!  I love those kinds of comments!!!  I wanted to burst out and laugh!!!! unfortunately I had to wait till he "in the words of my daughter" finished his LONG PRAYER to laugh out loud!!!!!  Matter of fact I am still laughing!!!!

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Does Size Matter?

Does size matter well I will let Siale tell you!  Siale entered his schools Science Fair and he did awesome!!!  His project was on wether the size of a kid's foot determined the distance of a kick.  He was so cute, he came up with his hyothesis, that he Kids with bigger feet kick farther.  His experiment consisted of 4 fellow classmates (cousins), with different size feet, and each took a turn to kick the ball three times.  His hypothesis was right and he was so excited. He was the most popular participant with all his aunties, uncles and cousins.

Siale at his science fair with his project



Does Size Matter? science project




Pproud Mommy and sister








Most Popular science fair participant

Proud participants of Siale's expirement
Siale explaining his project to his classmates
Siale and Uncle Sisi


Siale and Aunty Sonna

Siale and his proud Daddy
We were all so proud of son Siale.
Siale and his classmates
Siale and his proud Mommy
Siale and Aunty Paula, Isaiah and Isaac
Siale and Aunty Penny

To have a pet a pet or Not that is the question??

One thing I remember growing up in Samoa, there were always these malnourished looking dogs and cats roaming the streets.  We always had pets, cats and dogs that were once cute and  i guess turned out to be more like stray animals that would not leave our house after a while.  For a while I loved animals and even thought that I would one day be a veternarian, I guess after puberty I realized there were more important things than animals, since then I have not been so fond of animals other than seeing them at the zoo or on tv.  However, now that I have children, the topic of having a pet keeps coming up especially since my sister Scilla's kids just got a dog.  Siale was really adament until I took him on a special trip to the park to go dog watching, we watched as a dog so effortlessly took a dump near a tree and the owner of the dog beant down almost with disgust to pick it up.  Soon after another dog does his business and the cycle continues.  After careful consideration Siale realized he did not want a dog after all. 

Unfortunately the same approach did not work on Ms. Kuulei, she embraced the idea and promised she could clean up their mess.  The truth of the matter was, Sorry Kuulei mommy was not ready to have this responsibility.  So imagine my excitement when I saw a sign up sheet at her preschool asking parents to petsit their school pets for the weekend.  So, so far we have signed up three times, two times to watch a pet taratula and a pet bunny.  The best part of this adventure was, well, you guessed it, we always get to take it back....
Kuulei and Webby the Tarantula


Kuulei and SnowFlake Bacon


Who needs to go out to dance.....

As Peter was getting ready to work out last night, he decided to try out his new workout playlist on the stereo, right when the kids heard the music bumping, they ran into the living room and we soon had our own little dance party going on.  The kids would not let Peter go until we made it through 4 songs, after which Siale decides he wants to make his very own Big Oh But tutorial, we all could not stop laughing....check it out here....

Saturday, February 4, 2012

It's Great to be Eight

 Today my beautiful neice Seini Hailiopua got baptized and she looked so clean and pure dressed in her big white princess dress.  She bore her sweet testimony and sang a beautiful duet with her mom.  This will definetly be a day that she will never forget.  As I sat there and watched Sisi baptize and confirm Seini, I could see myself being immersed in water and changing into my beautiful blue and white striped dress my mom bought for me and I quickly came back from memory lane when my son came and sat on my lap amd I could not help but think in less then 9 months away my big baby boy Siale will be baptized.  I already know I will be an emotional wreck.  He is growing up so fast.