sawadee ka....

just booked the hotel today....and i'm ready to GO!!!! in less than two weeks i'll be doing this!!!!

SOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!

tita's in town!!!!

since i moved to utah almost two years ago the transition has been easy with my sister and her family...and my brother and his family here. not to mention the *almost* monthly trips back to the rock. but i know that it has been hard for my other brother and other sister back home to be away from all of us...especially me. hahahaha...jk. so whenever they get a chance, they try to take a few weeks off to come up and spend some time with us. more so mahea than aaron...tis the life of a single lady.

so...as leone (oldest sis) and i got ready to pick her up...we joked about the different things mahea would say as soon as we picked her up. here's what we came up with:

"its sooooo coooooold!!!!"

"i'm soooooooooo hungry!!!"

"i HATE utah!!!!"

buahahahaha....you really have to know my sister in order to understand how funny this is. so i guess this is just for my own personal documentation.

so needless to say as soon as she stepped out of that airport...she repeated each phrase almost verbatim! not necessarily in that order. lol. and then there was her FAMOUS line...which she says almost everytime we're driving somewhere NOT in hawai'i...

"WHERE are we?! i don't even know where we are!!!"

never mind she's been here like 5 times already!!!! and she wants me to list her as my companion next year???? hahahaha. omg...i LOVE my tita.

luv my twinkies!!!!

one of the best parts about coming home from a much needed vacay is coming home to this...

this...
this...

and this....

don't forget this....

i was only gone for a week but these two monkeys changed so much while i was gone! they both started crawling...and hili girl's first two teeth broke through!!! ugh...they are growing so fast, and i'm so excited! i can't wait for them to start walking/running around. it's gonna drive their dad NUTS when he comes home to a messy house. hahaha!!!

much needed vacay...

just got back from one of THE best vacays i've had in a while. much of my time was spent relaxing...eating...swimming...more eating...exploring...playing games...talking story...did i mention eating?...and spending quality time with some quality people.

destination: Lake Powell
duration: 7 beautiful days
company: my murr town/long beach 'ohana

i don't know if words could describe the grandeur of lake powell. before i met greg, i've never even heard of lake powell...let alone planned to go there at any point in my life. being the island girl that i am...forever surrounded by the largest body of water there is...the pacific ocean, i never....EVER thought i would be spend time in a...lake...let alone spend 7 days there!!! but it was freakin awesome!!! we spent our entire time there cruising on the dowden's houseboat...and exploring the canyons on their smaller boat and seadoo's.

the dowden's have been going every year for the past 30 or so years...and the murphy's (greg's grandparents) have been going almost every year since the lake opened up back in the 60's! they knew every nook and cranny there! man...i swear i was so luck to be with them, cuz if i ever went by myself i swear i would get lost. every corner looks the same to me. lol.

i'm kicking myself right now for not taking that many pictures. thats wut happens when you go with people with cameras...you're too lazy to take any of your own. but here are the few that i do have.

wahweep marina..the morning i arrived
the other side of the marina...where all the houseboats are docked
the back of castle rock...its HUGE!!!!
the dreamcatcher...my home for the entire trip
rainbow bridge...one of the natural wonders of the world. a 747 can fly thru it. MASSIVE!!

the cliffs by our campsite
hole in the wall (yup thats what its called) an lds historical landmark. you can read about it here.
some indian ruins. if you look closely you'll see the opening to their homes. these guys would scale these cliffs (which are a couple hundred feet high) just to get to their HOUSE! i'm never complaining about my drive to and from work ever again! lol
there were a lot of HUGE cave. if you look closely to the bottom left you'll see greg and josh on the seadoo's...just to give you some perspective of how GARGANTUAN everything was.
i forgot what this was called...but it was another HUGE hole in one of the cliffs. lol
just a shot of the water reflecting on the rocks as we were coming out of one of the canyons. pretty cool huh? and...while i was there i discovered a new app that does some pretty cool effects with your pix. this is the modified version. i call it..."fiyah on the rock"... lol
i thoroughly enjoyed the different colors and lines on all the cliffs.
here's the same pic after its been instagram-ed. i call this one "rawr like tigah...on the rock" lol

the pix really don't do it justice, but i had so much fun just enjoying God's creations. who knew the desert could be so beautiful?! with all the swimming and exploring you can guarantee that i got my tan on! and here's proof...

me and anabunz on our way to rainbow bridge...

this was one of the few pix of myself while there. its been instagram-ed...but it stays true to my color. lol. anyhoo....thats the extent of my trip. i don't know if i'll ever go back again by myself..but if the dowden's extend the invite again...i'm so there!

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.

change is good.....right???

last week i got some surprising news from my roommate. we were being EVICTED!!!!

nah nah nah...just kidding. but we really are moving. the loser who owns the house we currently reside in decided he wanted to move back in once our lease was up. NOT COOL! especially since he's gonna be the ONLY one living there!!! what is one person gonna do with a 5 bedroom house??? oh well.

so here we go...on our house hunt. applications have been submitted...and credits have been checked. we're just waiting for the approval.

but there is one thing i dislike in the world...and that is moving! let me rephrase that...i dislike moving families. since i'm single...i don't really have all that much stuff to drag along from house to house. when i moved from my sisters house to my brothers, i literally grabbed all my clothes out of my closet, my shoes and other misc things, and threw them in my car. that's how i move. i left all the big stuff...or the ONE big thing, my bed, for my nephews to move over. lol.

helping FAMILIES move is a whole other monster. my sister has moved her family over 5 times in a period of 10 years, so we definitely have some experience. but it doesn't mean we like it anymore with each new time. packing room by room...running out of boxes...forgetting things...CLEANING....blah!!! dislike dislike DISLIKE!!!

but change is good....right??? i would love to stay in the same area, so we're not too far from family...but living closer to the freeway would be a lot better. since i'll be working from home (for delta) by the end of this month...i really just want to be somewhere that cuts my commute to the hawaiian cultural center down by maybe 10 minutes. that will definitely make a huge difference.

wish us luck!!!