random ramblings...

almost had a breakdown at work today. had to fight back the tears. recently posted pix on facebook just brought a flood of emotions.

i.miss.my.aunty.

it doesn't help that its my own mother's birthday today. i called her this morning. she's in hawai'i...anxiously awaiting her "cheat day" breakfast cooked by my sister...while i'm here in utah...driving to work. *eyeroll*. being away from my "park place" 'ohana really sucks right about now.

my sister tells me how they've been having dinner down the road at aunty's every night since she returned to our Father. i flashback 15 years ago. when it was OUR house everyone was convening at. our community has lost a great woman. i luv u aunty *tear*

june.

i can't believe how fast june came and went. its ridiculous! i would always look forward to this month because it usually means end of school, beach days, graduation parties = da BOMB food, king kamehameha day (lol), and the best day of the whole year...the anniversary of my day of birth. lol.

so what did you bring me this year june? end of school? not for me since i'm not in school anymore. beach days? ugh...no! they've turned into pool days though. lol. graduation parties? YES please!!! and along with those came a few extra pounds...NO thank you. king kamehameha day? do utah celebrations count? haha. birthday? of course! thank you ladies.

i love graduation season...the smell of fresh flower leis...the excitement of a loved one transitioning into a new stage of their life...and of course...he mea 'ai ono!!!! this year three of my lil cousins graduated. graduations here in utah are sooooo different from the ones back home. tropical flowers aren't easily accessible here, so everyone makes due with what they can when it comes to leis. one the major differences i saw was the lack of signage for graduates. my SIL made awesome signs for the cuzzies...and we soon realized we were one of the few. ummm...hello...how else you gonna find your graduate if they don't have letter markers for them to stand under??? but it was fun seeing their faces when they saw their sign. it definitely had my racing with ideas for when my nephew graduates next year. watch out westlake!!!

me and HG with this years graduates lolo and eve..just missing damien

but my dear dear june...you had me riding that emotional roller coaster like it was nobody's business this year!!! still a little dizzy here. the saaga's all went home soon after graduation...so that was pretty depressing. even though i don't see them everyday...it just sucks knowing they're not around if ever i feel like driving down the road to their house. then getting pix of them having fun out there without me?? RUDE. i just wanted to go home.

my lil heartbeats cruisin on the boat with aunty mahea. i shoulda been there damnit!!!

and what made things WORSE...i got sick! blah! so i was in quarantine in my room for almost a whole week! i couldn't even hold my babies!!! irraz. it was even MORE depressing! for a whole week i was l.i.m.b.a. (lying in my bed alone) catching up on sleep....old tv shows i missed...and more sleep. the only good thing that came out of that...i lost 10 pounds (5 of which quickly found me after said sickness...blah!). thus adding to previously mentioned depression.

but the hardest thing of all??? not being with my parentals. dad was diagnosed cancer earlier in may and had a HUGE tumor growing along his left jaw. it caused him a lot of pain, and it hurt to know that there was nothing i could do to help him. especially out here. thanks to my benefits i was able to go and visit him when we initially found out...but due to work commitments i wasn't able to go back since then...and won't be going til the end of THIS month. so father's day was especially emotional this year.

before chemo...

but...the good news is that dad's doing a lot better now. his tumor has gone down significantly, so he is no longer rocking the elephant man look. lol. his second treatment was later in the month (my birthday) and his hair started falling out...but he's taking it like a champ. i don't know what it is about this man but he doesn't let anything bring him down. always smiling and laughing. just.being.him.

after chemo...

aside from the sickness and the worry...it has been a pretty busy month. we found a new place and spent the last few days of the month cleaning and packing up. thanks to the help of our family and "professional" mover friends, we were out of the old house and into the new house within two days!!! woot woot! it has definitely been an adjustment having to move from a humongous 5 bedroom 2 and a half bath home to a 3 bedroom 2 and a half bath town home. really makes you realize how much you own. but we've made it work and i'm loving the easy access to the freeway!!! the 10 extra minutes i get taken off of my commute to the hawaiian cultural center makes a HUGE difference...i LOVE it!

not only are we closer to the freeway...but we're also closer to our cousins...and their pool :) and that's where i spent my birthday. me...the SIL...and the twinkies headed over to cuzzin lena's for a day full of chillin' in da pool. those babies sure do LOVE the water! if only we could put their beds in the water because that seems to be the one place where they just knock out! the rest of the night was spent watching movies and vegging out. it was nice.

twinners chillin in aunty lena's pool

the next night was party time with the girlies. our gno's lately have been nothing but stuffing our faces and cracking up...as always. this time was no different. hahaha. we went to chili's...got harassed for making too much noise...(remind me never to go to orem chili's AGAIN)...and continued to have a good time. my one request for the night was to go karaoke. so we headed over to a local bar in orem that had karaoke every wednesday night. since the other karaoke bars i've been to have been pretty mellow, i thought for sure we would be able to get a few songs in before the night came to an end. WRONG. the bar was packed with crazy drunken white people who were ready to be heard. so we spent a whole two hours or so waiting thru "white noise" til we had our chance to make our debut. but its always fun hanging out with my girls. luv ya ladies!!!

all of us minus vaueli...who was taking the pic

so that was june in a nutshell. *phew* that took a while. i just realized i started writing this post 5 days ago!! yup...it really took me that long to get it all in.