A Day with Family

Another Saturday spent down at King Intermediate. Leigh had another volleyball tournament. Leigh's team are in the 12U group, but today's tournament was against 14u's. Unfortunately a lot of the tournaments for the 12U's are on Sundays, so their coach put them in this age group because it was on a Saturday. Leigh's coach is LDS, which is great. There are never any practices on Sundays or tournaments.


Although they did lose every game except one, they did play well.


While at the game, we were joined by this lovely lady and her family. This is Callie (Randy's sister's daughter). She is soooo cute. Her brother Conner is a cutie as well. I don't know why we didn't have a picture of him either. Their daddy loves volleyball, he's coached his daughter and their high school team. He's helped Leigh out as well. It was so nice to see and hang out with Earl and Julie there at the game.

Right after the game, we rushed home with tired kids in tow. Leigh showered, we grabbed a bite and Tyler's pinewood derby car and headed over to Aunty Jan's for dinner. Tyler and his cousin Jett have been working on their cars for the past couple of weekends with Grandpa, getting them ready for Pinewood Derby. This is Grandpa Sasaki's area of expertise. The boys finished their cars and are ready for their races! (I had a couple of pictures, but I think one of the kids deleted them from the camera. Grrrr.) In Hawaii, if you win 1st & 2nd, you go on to a State Competition. We'll see if both boys make. Good luck Jett and Tyler!
Our family was pooped when we arrived home. We were actually home at a decent hour this time, 8:30pm (it felt like 11pm). We all just crashed!

We've Lost Our Marbles

For Cub Scouts, I was trying to introduce the game of marbles. The boys had fun so I brought the marbles home and played with the kids.

Micah trying great-grandpa's method of "lick-your-finger-then-squeeze-between-your-fingers". We only had one big marble to shoot with, so guess who was the lucky person that got to go after Micah.

At one point, everyone was getting rowdy and marbles were being snatched. Someone did finally exclaim, "I lost my marbles." Seriously?

It was a lot of fun. For some reason, we all got really loud while playing, yelling at each other (in fun). We were making up our own methods of shooting.

Go Big Red

Randy and I both hail from BYU-Hawaii. The basketball team this year has done outstanding. They had done so well that they advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. Even more awesome was that it was being held here at BYU-Hawaii. Not only was the North Shore excited, but the whole island. There have been news articles and features on the local news channels. It was an exciting game to be able to go to.





Randy and the kids have been going to their games. The kids have been loving going to the BYUH games. The kids and I went in early, decked out in our Red and White apparel in support of our favorite team. Randy joined us later for the 2nd half. BYUH was doing so well for almost the whole game. At one point they were ahead by 13 points. It looked like a shew in for the Elite Eight. Then, right at the end, Cal Poly caught up out of nowhere, and then at the last few seconds, scored and beat us by 1 point! It was sickening!


The whole CAC (4100) in attendance, was in shock at what had just happened. We were all sad that they did not win, very heartbreaking. I even had a hard time going to sleep (and I'm not a sports fanatic). Oh well, maybe next year. It was still fun!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

So if you've been following my blog since last year, you might have read that every year I make corned beef and all the other "American Irish" foods that go on sale at the store (all you corned beef haters quiet down). Well, being that I am on an island now, the competition for such items are fierce here, especially when it goes on sale. I didn't remember to buy my brisket till the morning of St. Patty's Day. Of course they were all sold out and offered a discount on Pork Butt. Aaaah! I walked over to the bakery section to seek out some Irish Soda Bread. No soda bread. I asked the people manning the bread area if the sold the stuff and their reply was that they have never even heard of it. What!! (Big sigh). In fact, someone from the bakery came to find me and ask me what Irish soda bread was. I explained it to her and she asked me if I had a recipe to give them. I thought that that was funny that they were asking me for a recipe. I'm gonna have to find a good one to give them. We always have corned beef and soda bread. After a few texts from friends and a conversation with my Irish friend Jess, I decided that I was gonna have to make some real Irish food for dinner.
Now, that leads me to a question. Why the obsession with having Irish food? I'm not even Irish! I think I'm just a sucker for traditions, and this is kind of a tradition that the whole country does, for the most part.



I went online and with the help of my personal chef, Leigh, we whipped up an Irish dinner. Here it is, Guiness Irish Stew (minus the Guiness), homemade soda bread, mashed potatoes, and some broccoli (probably not 100% authentic, but it tasted good). It was delicious. Leigh honored us with some Irish apple pie. Now I have to look for recipes for next year.

Butterflies for FHE

It was Micah's turn for the lesson portion for FHE. When we asked him what he wanted to do, he said "Butterflies". I think he must have done this art project at school and wanted to do it again at home. Since he was in charge, we just listened. It was actually fun to do something different. Here are our butterflies. Voila!

Top (L to R): Leigh, Dad, Mom, 2nd Row (L to R): Tyler, Micah, Bottom: Kara

Hinamatsuri - Girls' Day!

Happy Girls' Day! In the Japanese culture, they have days where they celebrate being a girl and being a boy. It's easy to remember because for girls it's 3/3, and the boys it's 5/5. I finally remembered to do something for my sweet girls. They were surprised that mommy actually remembered to do something. I bought little gifts for each of them and some origami paper. They loved it. I goofed and forgot to take a picture, but these are my girls. I was blessed with two. Those of you with daughters know what a great blessing girls are!

(Picture to come).

A "Niu" Reunion

We've talked about it for a while and Alvina finally made it happen. The wife of my cousin Shawn got all the cousins on the island together for a mini family reunion. For our family, this is a tiny gathering. My dad's family is HUGE! The unique thing about this reunion is that is was all cousins. There's usually an uncle or aunt that's in town that brings us together, but to my knowledge, there aren't any on the island. It's just all us cousins. After we all arrived at David and Lice's (the "c" is a "th" sound) house we introduced ourselves. There were a couple of cousins that hadn't ever met. As everyone was introducing themselves, I realized that I had lived near and known every single cousin in that room. I have known all these cousins ever since they were little. A couple of them are older than me, and one I remember when he was born. It was such a fun gathering. We were there from 5pm to 10pm. Thank you David and Lice for hosting.

This picture was so fun to take. All the spouses were shooting their cameras and flashes were going off left and right. I felt like a celebrity. It was so fun! From L to R: Shawn (Sione's son), Kathy, Diana, Sam (Teuila's children), David (Sione's oldest son), Me (Howard's daughter), Leland and Maikeli (Paul's sons).

This is one of my favorite pictures of the night. This is Reagan, David and Lice's girl.

Leland and Audrey. Yes, he is as much Tongan as I am. I knew Leland growing up in Hawaii.

The girls hanging in the hallway.

The good food provided by all.

The kids messing around.

Boys arm-wrestling.

The women setting everything up.

Kathy and Diana hanging out. Diana is the same age as me and she and I grew up in Tonga together. I remember when Kathy was born. Oh man, and now she's in college. Sheesh I'm old.


Maikeli and Brynn. Maikeli is another one I remember when he was born. I got to know Brynn well at the get-together. She and I have a lot in common. Gonna have to call her to go running. Maikeli is going to school here at BYUH.



All the girls.
All the boys.
The three posers.

David and Lice's family. David is the oldest cousin of this group. I remember him as being the older teenage cousin.

Shawn and Alvina. Shawn's was younger than me but we would still play together when we were little in Hawaii, with his sister Chantelle who was my age.

Diana's family, with Kathy.

There's us.

Leland and Whitney's family. Whitney is great. Loved getting to know her as well. It's too bad she lives on the other side of the island. Leland is in the military and stationed here.

Sam and his son. He has 5 children, but he just came with one for the night. Sam was another older teenage cousin, but in Tonga.

It was so fun getting to know everyone, and reaquainted with everyone else.