New Year's Eve

We spent New Year's Eve dancing at the Mapusaga Ward dance. We were there until about 11:30. Then we left and went to the Pasega Ward dance. We brought in the new year with balloons falling and popping and hugs and kisses to all of our friends and family. After the dances were over, we went to my parents house to hang out with my parents, brother, and his "friend." We went to Dee's to get some breakfast. This is the best picture attempt out of three.

We are excited for a new year and new goals. One of our goals is to be consistent with our family home evening. The first Sunday of each month, we are supposed to get together with Kuso's cousins and their spouses and kids to have family night. As part of the family home evening, we set group goals which include to build on our welfare (food storage) and do more activities as a family rather than the boys chillin with the boys and the girls chillin with the girls.

This first week we had them all over to our house. It was a little stressful having 8-10 adults and 5 young kids in our little two bedroom apartment, (that is not set up for kids to be entertained) but it was still fun. They were here for nearly 5 hours, so given that, the kids did quite well with not having toys and a space to run.

Family home evening was something we didn't do much when I was young, so it's fun for me to see how they run their family night. Kuso's cousins are good friends and it's great that we can spend time with them.

Hello Elders

Kuso, Shane, and Lee

Kuso, Lee, his Fiance, Shane, and his new Wife.

On December 29th, we were able to go to dinner with a couple of Kuso's mission companions. Shane is the white guy and Lee is the Samoan guy. I have heard so many stories about Shane Summers I was finally glad to meet him. Kuso was the senior companion and refers to Shane as his son. Lee and Shane also served together. It was fun to listen to their stories, mostly of their "non compliance" stories. It was a fun night and I'm glad that Kuso had the chance to get together with some old friends.

Christmas

Christmas Eve was spent at my parents house. We had dinner and played games all evening. We open presents at midnight. The tradition started in 1995 when our "Santa Claus" presents were stolen. We were all awake at 2:00 am anyway, so we just stayed up and opened what presents we had under our tree. So now, every year, we play games and have snacks, then at midnight, we open the presents, then continue games and snacks until we want to go to sleep. This is the BEST tradition because then you can sleep in on Christmas Day.

Christmas Day we went to Kuso's brothers house for breakfast around 11. The snow was so HORRIBLE that Nati got his truck stuck in the snow in a parking lot. Kuso and Nati tried digging is out, rocking it, pushing it, all without success. The truck ended up staying in the parking lot.

After breakfast, we went back to my parents house and just hung out all day. Kuso spent some time playing volleyball with his friends and family and the church. The weather was so bad, we ended up staying the night at my parents. We spent the whole next day just lounging around watching re-runs of U of U football games.

This season was really fun because this was Kuso's second Christmas in the states. Last year, the present exchanging was a little overwhelming for him, but this year, he totally had the spirit and spent several phone calls with my mom collaberating what they were each going to buy. We all got a lot of nice stuff. I love the holiday season and look forward to it each year.

Happy Birthday Aukuso!

Dinner at Red Lobster

Saturday December 20th was Kuso's 29th birthday! We started off the day with home made breakfast. Ham, Hashbrowns, Toast, Eggs, and Koko Samoa. Mmmmm.

Then Kuso opened his presents.

(notice the awesome U of U shirt he is sporting...)

Then we just hung out, did some shopping, and relaxed at home.

That evening we met up with my parents and older brother

for dinner at Red Lobster.

After dinner, we met up with Kuso's friends and family

Pasami, Laki, Apelu, Iafeta, and their wives to see a movie.

I tried my best to make it a special day.

I'm pretty sure I had success.

Contest...Go ahead and Vote.

So with Christmas coming, Gingerbread houses are a common tradition. Go ahead and take a look at the following two houses and make a vote on who's is better.

One of them I made. The other one was given to us by one of the Young Women in the ward.

Any of you who know me and my amazing talents, you will know right away which house is mine and which house was made by a 15 year old girl.

These houses are awesome!

Gotta Brag...

The past couple weeks we have found out some really cool stuff about some family members. Aukuso's niece, Tasha, is playing soccer at BYU Hawaii. We found out that she was named "Player of the Year" for the Pac 10 Conference! She is only a Sophomore! I don't remember the exact details, but I think I remember hearing that her coach is hoping that she can get drafted to go play in the South Pacific and get picked up by the Samoan National Team. How awesome would that be?

We also found out that Aukuso's cousin James Aiono will be playing football for the University of Utah next year! He will be a junior so he will get to play at least two years there. Let's just hope that they can keep up their amazing record!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Over Thanksgiving we went to St. George to have dinner with my mom's side of the family at my aunt's house. Our entire family was there except for grandpa, his wife, cousin Heather, her hubby and daughter and cousin Clint. Even my brothers from California were there!

It's been so fun to see them so much recently.

And my niece Kiley is getting funnier every time I see her! SO CUTE!

My goal was to learn how to prepare the dinner this year. I started with mixing the stuffing (not Stove Top) Wednesday night. That's about as far as I got. They started the turkey early. They started the homemade rolls and I wasn't aware...anyway, it was SO yummy. Maybe next time...


While dinner was being prepared, all the "kids" (ranging in age from 32 to 11) went to the church to play games. Even my cousin who I thought had ZERO athletic talent had fun.


Kuso's friend and classmate who lives in California was also in St. George for the weekend. So we got together with him and his wife. We went to see Madagascar 2. SO FUNNY!!!!
Then spent time at another house for HOURS just playing pool and talking.


It worked out well that Kuso's friend's wife was having a family reunion
and the friend wanted Kuso to dance with him at the talent night.
That was fun watching everyone's talents and dancing.


Sorry....left my camera home so there are no pics to add to this.
Boring. I know.
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday.


I'm SUPER excited for Christmas this year!