Quick trip to Cali

We went this past weekend on a quick trip to California. We took the kids to the Long Beach Aquarium. This place was Awesome! I am so glad we took the time and went.

It's kind of hard to tell in this pic but the kids are standing in front of a huge fish tank and it has a scuba diver in it. They had 3 or 4 of these tanks with scuba divers. They were feeding the fish and talking to the kids through the tank. It was really neat to see.

They had several places where the kids got to pet baby sharks, sting rays and star fish. They loved it and couldn't get enough of it. This place is a little pricey. It's $25 for adults and $12 for kids to get in. I think it's worth it though. There is so much for the kids to do and see and get to experience. The best part for us was that jetblue is a sponsor and we got in free. yay!

We drove over to the Queen Mary to show the kids. Lloyd told them a story that the hotel Queen Mary is rumored to be haunted. They thought that was pretty cool and want to stay there.

The reason we went to California is for Lloyd's nieces 21st birthday celebration and also his other niece Dinah received her mission call to serve in Scotland. So it was a big celebration for both. This is a pic of the table they were sitting at to honor them. Gotta love the pigs! :)

This is Lilio who had the 21st birthday with Solo and Lolohea and their cousin Paul. (using my kids tongan names)

The two beautiful girls we were celebrating. Lilio and Dinah. Such great girls! It was a fun trip to get out of the cold and be around family.

My baby is 1..... Why do they have to grow up??

So I know that I sound like my Mom when I say this, but why does time have to go by so fast and why do these kids have to grow so fast. I hate it. I feel like I had her and then blinked and she is now 1. I just want to freeze time sometimes and not let these kids grow up. Anyways.... we didn't make a big deal of Milika's b-day. Just a small little family party at my Mom's.

She had her own cake to eat, which she ate half of and probably would of devoured the whole thing if I would of let her. :)

Happy Birthday Milika. We love you so much and are so thankful you are part of our family!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We started our holiday with Christmas Eve at Grandma's house. We had dinner and then the kids put on a talent show for us and we played games and gave the kids fun little toys for their stockings and then they went down to watch a movie while the adults had fun and played games.


Christmas morning after everything was opened. We were getting changed and ready to go to Grandma's house to open gifts there as well. (Hopefully Savani won't be mad at me for posting this pic of her).

The kids got spoiled by the Grandparents. They got a Wii and it has been a blast playing it. We have played it almost every night since getting it. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Lloyd took the kids sledding over the holidays. Thank goodness for him because I hate the cold and if he wasn't around they probably wouldn't be able to do anything fun like this.

New Years Eve we had some friends come over and they brought their Wii and Projector screen and so we had that going on one side of the room. Here's Drew and Siera singing on American Idol. That is such a fun game!

Then the boys in Joshua's room playing football on playstation.

And the other kids playing our Wii on our Tv on the other side of the room. We ate lots of junk food and stayed up till 3am playing games. Crazy!

Thank goodness for Day Spas!!

For my Mom's b-day last May we gave her a gift card to Sego Lily Day Spa. We finally got around to going and my sister Cindy, and me went with my Mom. It was so much fun. We got there about an hour before our treatments and we changed into our robes and then went out and sat by the fire and just talked. It was such a nice break and great to relax and enjoy time away from kids and work. I highly recommend Sego Lily Day Spa, it was fabulous!! We missed you Tara, Cherish and Mel. Hopefully all of us can go together next time. Thanks honey for the early Christmas gift!

Happy Birthday Siera Lolohea!

My daughter turned 10 yrs old yesterday. I can't believe how time flies by and that she is that old already. We have decided to do birthday parties with our kids with friends every other year, because it's too much work and too expensive to do it every year. So this was her off year. So me and Lloyd took her out to eat on Saturday to Iggy's which was so yummy! Then she wanted to go shopping for clothes for school. You know your child is growing up when they don't want toys anymore and just want clothes. We had a great day with her.


We had my parents over for dinner yesterday and to have cake and ice cream with us to celebrate.


One of her gifts was this art kit. She is my artist and loves drawing and she is great at it!

She also received an outfit from her Grandma that she wore to church.

My sister Cindy stopped by and also her aunties Lolohea and Anu. I hope she had a wonderful birthday. She is a great daughter and we are very proud of the young lady she is becoming. We love you Hea!

Happy Thanksgiving

What a great time we had last week. My husband took off all week and we had so much fun! First of all he watched the kids for me while me, my Mom and sisters went to see Twilight, finally. We all loved it! Then the kids were out of school on Wednesday and we took a little drive up through Park City. We did some shopping at the outlets and took some pics in front of Jordanelle. It was a beautiful day!


Then Thanksgiving day we took the kids to see Bolt. It was in 3-D. It was really fun and it had been a long time since I saw a movie in 3D. The kids loved it! Even Milika was good and fell asleep on my lap half way through the show. Thanksgiving was great. We went to my Mom's and everyone in my family was there this year, except for my nephew Noah. He was with his Dad and we really missed him.

After eating, we went out in our circle and played some football. We tried to work off everything we just ate. ha ha

It was a little chilly but the kids enjoyed running around.

On Friday night we got all the christmas stuff out and finally put it up after the kids had been bugging us all day long. Sometimes it's so hard to want to get everything out. It feels like so much work.

Finally it's done. yea!

Milika and Lloyd were wore out after decorating. Soo cute!

Finally we went to the mall to get Milika her first Christmas ornament. We have a tradition that we always get the first ornament at Things Remembered and have them engrave their first name with the year on it. So we got that done on Saturday and surprisingly there was no line to see him, so that was nice. It's interesting because my two older kids didn't want to go to Santa. Especially Joshua he said there was no way he was sitting on his lap. I guess maybe they are getting too old for Santa. Any of you that have older kids when did you tell them about Santa?? Just curious. I hope everyone else had a Happy Thanksgiving as well!!

6 Random Facts tag

The Rules
1. Link this post to the person who tagged you: Kristen
2. Post the rules on your blog (SEE!)
3. List 6 random things about yourself
4. Tag people at the end of your post

Okay this is a hard tag trying to think of 6 things. We may not make it to six, but we shall see.

1. I love reality shows. Lame I know. I love Biggest Looser, Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, used to watch Desperate Housewives of the OC but no longer have the Bravo channel-sad, sometimes even the lame VH1 and Mtv reality shows. I think I'm addicted.

2. I have had all my children c-section. When I was pregnant with Siera and we were down to the last few weeks, my doctor did a pelvic exam. He told me that we cannot let the baby get any bigger and that I needed to be induced. So the next week I was induced and they broke my water and I was able to dialate to a 10, but after pushing for 2 hrs and the dr trying forceps and everything they could to get her out, we ended up having to do an emergency c-section. Her heart rate started to go down and that was it, it was c-section time. So I was scared to death and so disappointed that after 10 hrs of labor I had to do this. But with my other 3 kids I didn't want to chance going through all of that again and so I opted for the c-section. It was nice to be able to plan the births and go in and have them born after 20 mins. (trying to think of the positive to c-sections)

3. I love sports. Especially football and this time of year. We are huge Y fans and never miss a game. We bought season tickets but had to sell them after realizing we would never be able to make it to the games with our crazy saturday sports schedule with the kids. But I love to watch college football and love basketball. Hopefully the Jazz do great this year. When I was a kid about 12 I met Karl Malone and he was so nice to me and so cute that I fell in love with him and the Jazz. (although not a big fan of him now) Honestly though I really enjoy sitting with my hubby and watching some good games. GO BYU!!!

4. I love peanut butter and chocolate together. Yummy! In candy bars, ice cream you name it. If it's sweet then I love it. I don't love peanut butter sandwiches, just the sweet stuff.

5. One of my favorite actors (if you can call him that) is The Rock Dwayne Johnson. I think he is so cute. He is 1/2 poly and you know how I like the brown boys. I just think he is hot! My kids and husband always tease me about it. No matter how lame his movie is, I really enjoy watching it. How could you not??? (okay I can't believe I just admitted that)

6. I'm kind of a freak when it comes to my house being clean. I can't stand to have an unorganized, dirty house. It just drives me up the wall. I sometimes feel so bad that all my kids are going to remember about me is that I was constantly telling them to clean up this or clean up that. I get it from my Mom, she was exactly the same way. Our house was never peaceful and you couldn't relax until it was clean.

Okay so now it's your turn. I tag Jessica, Cindy, Mel, Shannon (come on Shannon this is an easy one) and Heather/Randy