All kine stuff

So there's all kinds of things happening to us. Here's an update on our family. The first picture is of us coming back from Ephraim. Liko wanted me to take a picture of her.

The biggest zuchinni is from our friend Julie and the bottom two are ones that I grew in our community garden. I made zuchinni bread for the first time with the big one. It came out pretty good. It was kind of like carrot cake so I made a cream cheese frosting. I've been trying to cook different things. Like today I had some pork steaks that I didn't know what to do with. I stuck them in the crock pot and put in some spices, brown sugar and diced tomatoes. Then I made some flour tortillas and we had tacos. It was really good. I've been wanting to make this kind of sweet and savory pork for a while and I finally figured out how.

What else has been happening? Kalei has been speaking more which is such a relief. He loves to sing. Just today he was singing the ABCs. Of course some of the letters were pretty jumbled but he got most of them. I've been trying to teach Liko how to read and write her ABCs. She still gets mixed with some of them but she can pick out letters pretty well. She can definitely read the letters BYU and she can read you every letter in Walmart. Can you tell that she been exposed to these things a lot?

Sad news, I just found out today that because Liko's birthday is after September 1st, she will most likely not attend Head Start. I was very disappointed but it was my fault for not turning in her application sooner. They said that they give first priority to 4 year olds. Man, late birthdays really suck. I should know.

Kamalu has been growing fast. He is growing out of his clothes. I think I'm going to have to buy 12 months clothes already. He only turns 6 months on Sept. 8th. He is loving his rice cereal and veggies. I haven't tried giving him any fruit. I'll give him some next month and start giving him meat as well. He has WIC checks for jar food so that'll save us a lot of money considering how much he eats.

Kainoa just started school on Monday. He has been studying so much. I think his schedule is a little better since he's home more but Mondays and Wednesdays are hard for him. He has a 4 hour block of classes plus he goes to school earlier so he can study. He came home with a headache today. Poor thing.

As for me, I've recently got into couponing. My friend Kieiki took me to a little workshop with this amazing lady Amy that gives these classes on how to save money on groceries. I've been getting into it and I've been saving a lot. I love saving money. I even get things for free. Like the other week I got 2 regular packs of Huggies diapers for $12. It's great!

I also am going back to work. I start next week. I'm just going back to Motherhood. That was the easiest place to get a job and they had an open position. I'm not getting paid much but it's pays better than a campus job that Kainoa could get. He says it's better because he can study while watching the kids. We'll see how things go. I'm going to miss my kiddies, especially Kamalu. Hopefully I won't miss any of those milestone achievements that are creeping up just around the corner.

Endless Summer....I wish

So we've been trying to enjoy these last few weeks of summer. Wish it didn't have to end. Kainoa starts school on Monday. Bummer. At least his schedule is better this semester.
I've been being a little adventurous with my cooking too. Here's some pizzas I made. I got a recipe for the dough online. I rolled it and tossed it so it came out super thin. I also made my own sauce. Well semi-homemade. I used a can of crushed tomatoes and added some stuff. I had to admit, that the pizza was pretty dang good.

Then a couple of days later I made a roasted chicken and the next day some kalua pig and chicken long rice. Then the Sunday after I made cinnamon rolls. I found a new recipe for the dough and it was super soft and heavenly. I might have to make those again.

This past Tuesday we went to Thanksgiving Point because it was $2 Tuesday. It was so crowded. We went with the Po'uhas and of course Shaun was there too. We went to the Dinosaur museum. I guess it's the largest museum of it's kind in the world. Who knew? The kids had fun and that's all that mattered. I'm not sure if it was worth saving the extra bucks since there were so many people but oh well.

This past Saturday we went to the BYU scrimmage. RJ is doing so good. I'm so happy and so excited that he's going to start this year. He better since it's his senior year. He'll be the starting center. The rest of the team is looking good. I really hope that they do well this year. They have some big games coming up, especially their first game. It should be a great season.

On Sunday we drove to Ephraim to go to our family friend EricRoss Anderson's missionary farewell. We've never been to Ephraim before and had no idea where it was but little did we know that that's where Snow College is. The kids slept in the car so that made it nice.

Yesterday we took the kids to the pool in Provo. We met Wendi Sanchez there with her three kids. Our kids were free and it was $4 for each of us. It was well worth it. The kids had tons of fun. They loved it. There was a kiddie pool where they could swim around. There was a little playground thing with sprays and sprinklers. The kids had fun going down the little slide. We were able to go down the two tube slides there. That was worth the $4. I would've taken pictures but it wasn't allowed. Lame.

Tonight was the Cougar Kick-off. It's like a pep rally for the community. We met RJ and Emi there. It was pretty fun. They were giving out free stuff and it was so cool to see people asking RJ for his autograph. What's even funnier is that a girl actually asked Kainoa for his autograph thinking that he played football. What's even funnier than that is that RJ's coach asked him if Kainoa played football before. They're really short on players on the O-Line. I was telling RJ to put in a good word. I wouldn't mind having Kainoa play football. There's tons of benefits if they give him a scholarship. It would be hard on his studies but it would be worth it. I'm getting way ahead of myself because who even knows if anything will happen.

Okay well I've said enough. I better update this better so I don't have to bore everyone will such a long post.

P.S. Here's a funny video of Kalei singing to his Backyardigans toy. He loves to sing.

Fun with the kids

So we've been having fun with Daddy. He's home on Mondays and Fridays and the weekends. This past week we had a lot of get togethers with friends and family. On Tuesday RJ, Emi, Feki, Kieiki, and their two boys came over. Of course we had some good food (teri beef, won tons, potato mac salad, sushi rice, and chocolate trifle). It was good to hang out with them again.

Then on Thursday we had Chad Schumacher, Sheldon Carvalho, Teren Taniuchi, and Jocelyn (don't know her last name, one of Shaun's friends) over for dinner. I made mochiko chicken, spam musubi, and yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. They brought green and fruit salads. I used a new recipe for the chicken and it turned out really good. Kainoa said that I need to add it to my menu. The kids had lots of fun with all the attention.

On Friday we went over to Kainoa's sister Ilima's place to celebrate her husband's and son's birthday. She made BBQ pulled pork sandwiches. I made homemade mac and cheese (another new recipe experiment) and Aunty Heather brought cole slaw. Everything was great. We had fun swimming in the pool. All of the kids swam, even Kamalu. We played pool volleyball. That was really fun.

On Saturday we had dinner with Feki, Kieiki, Jude, Namea, Peter Chun and his wife Cris. It was at Feki and Kieiki's Wymount apartment. They set up a volleyball net in their quad. I haven't played v-ball in a while. I got some grass stains on my shorts from diving for the ball. It was fun and a good workout. Of course the grinds were 'ono once again. Feki and Kieiki barbequed some steaks. Jude and Namea brought some chili. The Chuns brought butter mochi. I made spam musubi and california roll. I haven't made sushi in a long time and Kainoa reminded me of that. It was fun spending time with good friends that we haven't seen in a long time.

Oh yeah, that first picture took me a long time to take since I was trying to get all of the kids to look at the camera but I was not successful since of course Kalei is not looking. Also, the last picture is of lettuce that I grew. I planted the seeds in April and my neighbor Jenebie transplanted them into our community garden. I just made a creamy cilantro lime dressing to go with it.

Okay so I noticed that I talked a lot about food in this blog. Sorry if I made anyone hungry.