Phew . . . What a Day!

Today was busy, but fun! We all got ready in the morning and headed out the door to enjoy the annual Aloha Festival that they have here in AZ. This is our way of holding on to our Hawaii roots. When we first moved to Phoenix, we joined the Akana Ohana Halau and Leigh and I danced for two festivals with them. It was a lot of fun and a great experience for Leigh. Last year, we were out of town for it and this year we did not have time to do it. So we went purely to enjoy the things that they had to offer at the festival ------ FOOD! (lol) Nah, we do enjoy the polynesian entertainment, hearing the pidgin' being  spoken all around us, and next to eating the food, we love bumping into old friends and catching up. This year we bumped into the Foliaki's and my cousin Rachel Niu. While Leigh, Kara, and Randy watched the entertainment, the boys and I went to stand in line for some ono kine food. This year, I was determined to stand in the long line for the Aloha Kitchen to get some of their food, the manapua in particular. After standing in the line for 30 mins, they ran out of manapua (NOOOOOOO!). With a big sigh, I ordered three lunch plates of teri chicken, teri beef and kalua pig. The food was good!! The fact that I will be in Hawaii in a couple months makes me not so sad that I didn't get any manapua. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a white bun (different from a dinner roll), with red char siu meat (it's a chinese-type of food you find in Hawaii) inside of it. After lunch, we went and picked up some shave-ice. We always put the works on it, azuki beans, li-hing powder and sweet cream on top with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. YUM! We walked around, did some crafts, visited the booth that sells crack seed (no, it is not a seed to grow crack) another local hawaii goody we eat. We looked at the time and headed home. 

We got home with a 45 min break. We picked ourselves up again and headed towards the White Tanks. We were invited to come help celebrate Bro. Ellsworth's 60th birthday (great family friend and our dentist). The kids had fun playing with Sara's kids. We enjoyed visiting with all the family there, including my own brother Joe Niu, who flew in to town. My brother lived with the Ellsworths for 3 years of high school. When our family moved down here, they just adopted us into their tribe as well. We had BBQ hamburgers and hot dogs and all the fixings. It was windy and got colder as the sun was setting. They built a fire. I was so afraid that one of the kids was going to fall in. Luckily we managed to leave with all four children unscathed . . . the marks they did acquire there were washable. We roasted marshmallows and made smores. At the end, we sang Happy Birthday and had this great yellow cake with whip cream in the middle and strawberries. No, I was not counting my weight watcher points the whole day.  Didn't feel guilty either. We headed home around 8pm.

We were half-way home when Micah passed out. The picture just says it all.

P.S. My brother is single by the way and he goes to BYU Provo. That's him in the picture with me. 

P.P.S. Spring break day 4 & 5 were spent with Randy, fixing up things around the house that always gets put on the back burner.  I know you were all dying to know that.