Back in Business...

Yay!  Thanks so much to Marie for getting me back in business!!!  My cord to charge my laptop was fried and my laptop was completely dead....I went around trying to fix my wire and found out that it was like $80 to replace it.... so I haven't had a computer for like a week or so.  I just happened to mention my mishap to my little sister and she said she might have an extra Dell cord lying around from an old computer they had.....I went there hoping and praying and YAY it fits!  My computer is nice and charged and ready for me to blog all the things that have happened in this past week.... hahaha!

First off, I've completed another little home project.... I went with my mother-in-law to Ikea to buy some curtains for my living room, totally had in mind to buy navy blue curtains, but we saw these blueish greenish curtains that we totally fell in love with and so we bought those ones.... that of course changed my other navy blue plans....cause now that just wouldn't match.  My idea to bring the color of the curtain to tie into the other living room was to take my kids pictures in clothes that matched the color of the curtains, and to hang them under the vinyl..... it couldn't have turned out more perfect....I just love it!  :)  I totally scored too because I only went to two stores and found exactly what I was looking for.  At Michael's I found a gerber daisy flower that was blueish green, and then at Children's Place I found shirts for both my boys.  My BFF Talia made the flower into a hair peice for me and it turned out so nice!  We came home and I threw a white sheet over the couch that's on our patio and I took the pictures as Tea was making the kids smile.  In like 15 minutes we got the shots we wanted and so I headed to Sam's Club to get the prints (keep in mind my computer was down so this is exactly how they were taken, I didn't get the chance to photoshop and touch them up at all)  An hour and $4.28 later, I had the 8X10 prints of each of my kids.  I stopped at Walmart and grabbed some cheap $2 frames and went home.  Tea had bought some woven material to make ta'ovala's for my boys a while back and she was going to throw away the left-over material....but I kept it!  Thank goodness I did, because I ended up using it to cover the mat around the pictures and it totally matched the Fangupo vinyl that's on the wall....... here's how my project went:

Here are some of the pictures I took...the ones with the blue background

are the ones I chose for my project...

The $2 frames from Walmart came with a mat...

The woven material Tea was going to throw away...

Glued the material to the mat with a glue stick...

After the glue was completely dry, I cut the material around the mat...

I taped the pictures to the back of the mat so they would stay in place....

Only problem was that I bought the frames that have the glass that pops out of the front, but because the material I glued on the mat was a little thick, I couldn't pop the glass back in, so I went to Ova's tool box and found a roll of black vinyl/electrical tape and I taped the edges!  hahaha... I tried really hard to make the tape straight, hoping it would end up looking like a black frame around the edges....hahaha you can't even tell it's tape! 

And ta-da the final product!!  I love it!  My sister told me about the command strips to hang up pictures so you don't have to use nails and make holes all over your walls!  It's pretty cool because it's like velcrow so you can move and change your pictures around if you want to without damaging the walls!

Now I just have to find time to take a family picture (cause the last one we have, Lautala wasn't born yet) and I gotta put up my pictures of Christ and the Temple and I'm done!  Yay!

I'm so totally bummed right now cause I have so much to blog about, but my laptop cord died and won't charge my laptop :( So to be cont. my fellow bloggers! :)

Vinyl's Up!! Whoo-hoo!

Thanks to my older sister Leslie for coming over last night and helping me put all my vinyl up!  She is a demonstrator for Uppercase Living and they have some really cool and unique vinyl. I'm so loving how it's all coming together!..... Now I just need curtains and to hang up my pictures - and my living room/family room area will be done!  Yay!

I made this custom design with our name on the MyDesign Suite on my sister's website:

 

FANGUPO

"Families are Forever"

A thoughtful Makai...

If any of you have or have had a first grader, you know that they make all kinds of crafts and thoughtful things during the school year, especially for the holidays.  I remember Makai made a wreath for Christmas out of a wire hangar and some Christmas material.  For Mother's day he made me a paper flower and he wrote me a poem.  Well, being that yesterday was Father's Day, I asked Makai if he made anything for daddy....he had a big smile on his face and went and got a picture that he had drawn on the computer of 2 boys, 1 little and the other one big.  He typed Dad on top of the big one and Makai on top of the little one.  He also typed 'I love you Dad'  It was cute and simple and showed how well his computer skills have come along since the beginning of the year.  Since we've already established that my boys are not good at keeping secrets, I was not at all surprised when he showed it to Ova way before Father's Day.  Little did we all know that Makai had something more for his Dad for Father's Day....and he WAS keeping it a secret, he didn't even tell me!  Ova came home from work on Sunday night with the biggest smile on his face and went straight to Makai and gave him a big hug and said thank you.  I was wondering what he was talking about....and I couldn't help but notice how proud Makai was.  Ova went over to the kitchen table and put his lunch box down and started pulling out 3 things:

The poem on the little white paper says:

My Dad is my hero

And I will tell you why,

He's brave and strong and helpful

and makes me happy when I cry.

He always likes to play with me

I'll love him to the end,

He's not just my hero

but also my best friend.

Don't you love how Ova's 6 foot 50 inches and only weighs 5 pounds....hahaha  Makai love to share his Swiss Rolls with his Dad.... I just love this one because he spelled all the words himself!

Ova came home from work and was telling me that when he opened up his lunch box at work and saw all the things Makai had made for him, he was so happy, he couldn't stop smiling.  All the guys he works with were gathered around him reading and looking at the things that his son gave him for Father's Day.  Ova felt so special!  I'm so glad Makai thought of surprising his Dad this way on this very special Father's Day.

A sneak peek!!

So here's a project I mentioned before and I really should wait to post it until it's completed, but I'm just so excited about it, maybe even more than my kids!!  hahaha  My friend from work is an awesome artist....he has the talent to look at a picture and be able to pretty much duplicate it without tracing or copying it.... he looks at the picture and free hands it and it turns out exactly like what the original looked like.  His name is Dave and he's actually one of the manager's at my work.  The screen saver on his desktop are pictures of his kids rooms and all the art work he's done on their walls.  His son is into star wars and he hand painted the entire room with space ships, the planets, all the start wars creatures....and it looks amazing!  In his daughter's room, he hand-painted the disney princesses.  I love the way he did it too cause he has Jasmine with her palace on one wall, Ariel under the sea on the other wall, He painted snow white with the dwarfs in their little cottage, and sleeping beauty is reading a book under a enchanted tree.  It's amazing!  I asked him one day if he did it as a business, and he said no...he thought about it once, but never did anything about it..... then I asked him if I could pay him to come paint the Marvel Superheros in my boy's room.  He was happy that I asked him, but wanted to make sure I knew he'd never done the superheros before.... I told him that was fine I'm sure he'd do an awesome job!  I went home and found some pictures of superheros online and emailed them to him...... I told him that the walls in my boys room are white and that it was his to do with what he wanted....just to use his creativity.  It's going to take a while to complete, cause he's just doing it on his spare time, but I'm absolutely LOVING what he has done so far.... He's painted a building, Captain America, Spiderman & Hulk....and he has yet to paint Iron Man, Thor, Wolverine, The Thing....and even though these ones are not Marvel, he's going to paint Superman and Batman!!  Since his work is so awesome, and I've been talking him up like crazy, he's gotten a lot of business from other people wanting him to paint their kid's rooms.... I'm so glad I asked him to do it for me, and so happy that now he's able to use his talent to make a little more money for his family.  If any of you are interested in getting something done.... (and he can do absolutely anything!!)  Let me know and I'll give you his number!  He's extremely reasonably priced....like way way reasonable for his quality of work....and he's here locally...... his art work is absolutely AMAZING, as you can tell my my pictures!!!

Pictures on the left are the ones off the internet...... ones on the right are his!

Will it ever heal???

Ok, so totally clumsy on my part, but I totally bruised/sprained/thought I broke my toe like a couple weeks ago, and it's STILL killing me!  Let me tell you my clumsy story.... I needed to get something out of the garage and since we just moved here we've still got things in the garage that need going through.... There was a big bin in the way, and it was too heavy to move so I tried to jump over it!  Stupid move cause although my right foot cleared it, I guess I didn't lift my left foot high enough and it slammed right into the top of the bin...super duper hard!  I fell to the ground and screamed in pain....trying really hard not to let a cuss word accidently slip out....hahaha....  I seriously thought I broke it, cause I mean, I've stubbed my toe before and this time it was ten times more painful.  I limped around the rest of that night, almost couldn't even walk.  I elevated my foot that night and when I woke up in the morning I could move it so I knew it wasn't broken, it just felt like a big bruise and it was dark purple from the tip to the joint where my toes meets my foot.  I was glad it wasn't broken, but will the stupid thing ever heal?  Just when I thought it was getting better, my boys will be rough-housing around and accidently step on it and it bruises up all over again.  I changed Lautala's diaper the other night in the middle of the night and it was pretty wet.  I threw it at the door so I could take it to the trash when I woke up in the morning and instead, I woke up and kicked the heavy wet diaper with my sore toe..... oh my goodness.... pain all over again!  Hahahaha.....what a random post huh??!!  Here's what my toe looks like today, STILL after a couple weeks of TRYING to heal.....

 hopefully someday soon, if I be more careful, and my kids be more careful....it will be back to normal!  hahaha!

Happy Father's Day!

I know it's a little pre-mature, but since my husband works on Sunday.....we decided to celebrate Father's Day a little early.   He's been dropping hints here and there that he really wanted some tools to fix up the yard, like a lawn mower, a weed-eater, and edger.....etc.... well, I of course tried to play it off like I wasn't really paying attention to his hints, but I did hear loud and clear.... I la-la-la-Love to surprise him, I think it almost gives me more satisfaction to see him happy than it does for him receiving the gift....hahaha!  Well, he'd been working all day long on Tuesday and when he got off work, I had dinner ready for him....and then he went to rugby practice.  I had seen an info-mercial on tv about the Worx GT, it's an edger/trimmer/weed-eater all in one.... and the cool thing is, is that it comes with lifetime string refills.  Well, I ordered it for him and was planning in giving it to him on Tuesday night because he was off on Wednesday.... smart on my part, cause he'd be getting his father's day gift early, and I'd be getting a clean yard this week...hahaha.... it didn't quite work out that way though cause it rained all day on Wednesday, so no yard work was done.... Anyways, when he got back from rugby we were kickin' it outside on the patio and I whispered to Mone to go and get daddy's present.  He went and dragged this big old box out and said "Happy Father's Day Daddy"  it was so cute!  The box was blank on the outside so Ova didn't know what it was at first, but as soon as he opened it, he had the biggest smile on his face and he was so happy.......and I got the satisfaction I always love!  I just sat back and watched him act like a little kid opening a Christmas present, he immediately put it together and went out to the front yard to test it out (keep in mind it's like midnight)  needless to say, he was very happy!

In Ova's family when he was growing up, Father's day was never made out to be as important as Mother's day was.... so I'm trying to change that with my little family.  Father's day, to me, is very important.  I've been very blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful men in my life, all for whom I am very grateful.  This post is a little tribute to all the 'Fathers' in my life.  My husband, the father of my children.... I'm so grateful for his love, his humor, his smile, his priesthood, and especially for working so hard to provide for our little family...I'm so grateful to him for taking me to the temple and for doing all the little things everyday that make me feel special and loved.  My Dad.... I'm so grateful to him for always being such a good example of faith and love, I'm so grateful for his testimony of the gospel and his unconditional love his has for every single person he comes in contact with,  I'm so grateful to him for raising me and teaching me when I was young that choosing the right is what will truely bring me happiness in my life.  My Father-in-law.... I'm so grateful to him for his faith, and for raising such a wonderful young man just for me!  :)  And of course on this Father's Day week....I can't forget to thank my Heavenly Father for all the blessings he has blessed me with.  I'm so grateful for his unconditional love, for his forgivness, for his sacrifices and especially for blessing me with all these wonderful men in my life.  I hope they all have a very happy Father's Day this weekend.

Pirate's Island

There's a new place that opened up in Orem called Pirate's Island.....it's like a Chuck-E-Cheese, except it's focused on pirates......and it's awesome!!  My older sister called me one night a few months ago (sorry took so long to post, but I just found these pictures as I was loading them to my computer) to ask me what we were doing.... thankfully we had no special plans, so we decided to meet up and take the kids out.  We were originally going to go bowling, but Leslie had heard of this new place and we thought we'd try it out..... like I said before, It was awesome!!  Right when you walk in the door, you feel the pirate spirit....it was dark, and muggy and they had the pirate song playing as background music.  There was a huge display at the entrance with pirate skeletons sitting around treasure chests in a cove of rocks..... very creative and well put together!

In order to get to your table, you had to walk through caves and at the back of the place they had built a huge pirate ship against the wall that was kid-friendly so that the kids could climb and play on it.  They have a variety of things you can order from fancy meals to pizza and wings.  We opted to do the family deal which was a HUGE pizza, jugs of soda, breadsticks with alfredo or marinera sauce (the bomb), and 100 tokens for the kids..... I just had to take a picture of the pizza, cause it's the biggest one I've ever seen!

50 slices in this one pizza!!  The kids ate, and were so excited that the meal also came with a pirates hat.... we divided the tokens between all the kids and let them go play the games and ride the little kid rides.  After the tokens were done, they counted their tickets and went to the desk to get their prizes.  The only downfall was that the prizes were way too over-priced.... I mean when you only get 2-3 tickets per game and they want 25 tickets for a little tootsie roll candy, it's kinda pathetic.....but hey, the kids had a blast!  Makai and Mone both chose to get a pirates eye-patch to go with their pirate hat.  It was an awesome night at an awesome place.  It's always fun to spend family time with the cousins!  Gramma Cindy stopped by after work to spend time with us, and that was so nice!  So if you're ever wondering of a new place to take your kids, think of Pirate's Island.....it's all the way in Orem, but it sure is worth the drive!!

Diaper Jeans

Oh my goodness, aren't these just the cutest thing ever?  And just in time for summer so my little princess doesn't have to wear pants....but it looks like she's wearing them!  I scored 10 packs of these diapers with my coupons, after coupons I ended up paying $3.79 for a pack of diapers!  La-la-la-Love when I can get diapers for cheap cause they're usually so expensive!!

Ok, so I have like 10 memory cards that are full of pictures, I've never sat down and uploaded all of them to my computer, or put them on discs or anything....don't ask me why??!!  hahaha  Needless to say, I finally did it.  I loaded all 5000+ pictures into their own specific folders on my computer, and was able to free my memory card space for more new pictures!  The reason I finally did it was because I've always had in my mind that I wanted to scrap-book all these pictures of my kids...something that they will be able to have when they're older, to remember how they were, what they did and what their life was like when they were growing up.  Well, obviously, I haven't started yet and it's going to take me F-O-R-E-V-E-R to get caugh up scrapbooking..... BUT I went to the Casual Bloggers Conference with my sisters and I found this company that will print my blog pages or any pages I make with my photoshop into a 12X12 color photo paper for only $1.00.  And they'll even hard bind it into a book if I want them to.....they had some examples there and I just fell in love with it and it totally motivated me to get moving and get caught up!  So, here's my goal I set for myself.....I'm going to make a blog post every single day, starting last night!!  :)  At least I'm going to try to...... so that I can get going on my picture memory book!   Here's a collage I just put together of Lautala at 5 months old.....

Drive-in Time......

Ova has been working the grave-yard shift since December, and because of it, all our sleeping schedules are pretty messed up....we pretty much sleep during the day and stay up all hours of the night....and I'm not talking about just Ova, I'm talking about the whole family, kids and all.... it's pretty bad actually, but a huge blessing just came up and Ova had the opportunity to go to the day shift.  Since they work 12 hour days, he would be working from 6am to 6:30pm instead of from 6pm-6:30am.... I couldn't be more excited for it cause hopefully we'll be able to get back onto a more normal schedule.  He used to work Thur, Fri & Sat and every other Wed....now with the day schedule he works Sun, Mon, Tues and every other Wed.  His first day of his new day shift was Sunday the 13th and let me tell ya, it was so nice for him to come home from work in the daylight and to be able to eat dinner together as a family and try to sleep early!!  We went and celebrated his new shift with our kids last week.....we went to Chuck-A-Rama for dinner (kid's choice) and then to Walmart for some treats and then we hit the drive-in..... can I just tell you that I absolutely LOVE the drive-in!!  I mean, you can't beat the price...and only $7 for adults, $1 for kids 5-12 and kids under 5 free.....that means for $15 we can take the whole family to watch 2 new releases and we can take our own treats so we don't have to buy over-priced consession stand ones..... awesome!!  Well, can you guess which movies we went and watched????

Of course, Shrek Forever After & Iron Man II....... both movies were AWESOME!!  We're huge Shrek fans to begin with, so we were so excited to see it.... and are sad that this will be the last one!  :)  Iron Man was good too.... my boys are total super hero's fans, so they were wide awake watching that movie (even though it was like midnight, cause remember.....our sleeping schedules are messed up....hahaha)  The only thing that sucked about that night was that it rained like crazy....so instead of being able to sit outside on our lawn chairs.....we all crammed tight in the back of the van with the hatch open..... oh, and when the movies were done and we were getting ready to leave, our van wouldn't start.....aarrruuugggghhh!!  Ova said he had a feeling a couple times during the movie to go and turn the van on, and he didn't do it..... I gave him a lot of crap about not listening to the whisperings of the spirit....hahaha!  Anyways I called my little brother to come and jump start us and by 3am we were finally on the way home!!   I was a very long and cold, but fun and successful family-filled night!! 

Another Project Completed....

Ok, so I apologize that this has become a home-makeover blog....but between my kids, my husband, and our new house....that's what's goin on lately...so here is yet another blog about the updates I've made in my home!  My sister's Leslie and Marie came over last night to help me paint my house..... Ova was at work and we wanted to finish as much of it as we could as a surprise to him when he got home.... I can't believe we were able to do ALL of it.... both living rooms, the hallway and the entry way!!  Whoo-hoo!  Of, course it ended up being an all-nighter, we started @ like 9:30pm and finished at like 5am.... hahaha!  We had 14 kids running around here too (all our kids) so between taping the room, painting, chasing the kids downstairs, making dinner and talking, talking, talking....we sure got a LOT done!  I'm so extremely happy with the way it turned out!  It's truely amazing how much painting a wall can change and enhance a room!  Before there were white walls everywhere..... now, we have color!  I decided to keep it somewhat neutral.... going with a dark brown accent room and the rest of the house in a lighter brown/tan color.... since Ova and I both love the color blue, I'm planning on keeping the base brown and accenting it with blue objects... like curtains, throw pillows, etc.... a HUGE shout out to my older sister Leslie for helping me put all my jumbled up ideas, and a lot of her creativity into reality.... she seriously should be an interior decorater!   She's also a vinyl sales person and so of course I ordered some vinyl from her.....but since we just painted, I've got to wait a couple weeks for the paint to cure before I can put the vinyl up..... that'll be for another blog post!!  hahaha!  Here's a few pictures of our busy busy night.... and also some before and after pictures..... I la-la-la-LOVE it!

Before Pictures....white walls....

Hard @ work.....

The finished product...

N-E-ways, these pictures really don't do it any justice......it is really nice! I can't wait to get my pictures and vinyl up and to have a fully decorated/moved into house!! Thanks again Leslie and Marie for all your help! I couldn't have done it without you!