ohana search

brett and i have been the family history consultants for the ward for about a year. it has been such a huge blessing. yeah, my teaching skills really aren't the best but i learn so much everytime we do teach. it also really helps that i get to teach with brett, who helps fill in the holes i've forgotten about. teaching this class has also really helped me to get motivated to do my own family history. my parents have put it upon me to do the filipino side of my family. my dad and my aunt has been working on my white side of the family so its up to me to do the brown side. i'm excited to be up to the challenge but its been so discouraging. it is so hard to find people who specialize in asian countries when on campus all the family history missionaries specialize in european countries...so brett and i really plan on going down to SLC (like we seem to do every month anyways) to check out the family history center. the missionaries told me i'll be able to look at films and stuff to find more info on my family. i'm excited for when we get to do that.

doing your family history is so important and thats something we can't stress enough about every sunday. you know when you get married you wanna be with your family forever, don't you think your ancestors wanna be with you forever too?

click on the pic to begin your search!

pca gig

on monday, martin luther king jr's birthday, it was a whole day of practice and performing with the PCA. i'm the vice pres of PCA this semester so i get to have a lot more input this time. i love it. we went to idaho falls to perform for 150 mentally handicapped people and got the experience of a lifetime. they were seriously one of the best audiences we've had, they were so energetic. not like some of the snobby singles wards we usually perform for. there was this one guy in the front row who wore a cowboy hat and was yelling ya-hoo! the whole time. so freakin hilarious.

polynesian dancing has become one of my true loves. i was the worst as memorizing formulas and writing papers in school, but poly dancing, i think is safe to say i really picked up on. its also given me so much more confidence and helped me to be more outgoing.
during our performance we usually do some audience participation. our guys would teach the dudes of the audience how to do the haka and us ladies teach the girls to shake it like a salt shaker. i was the one doing the teaching this time. we even had a few gentlemen toddling to the stage with the ladies.
the ladies were so enthusiastic about learning! the guy on my left wearing the pink and white lei gave me a HUGE hug when we were all leaving, which i admit was just a little weird but funny. such innocent people who can't do a lot but can change peoples' lives and perspectives. we ended up doing 2 encores for them!

my PCA fam. it changes a lot every semester but the love is always the same.
the hard part is just trying to get brett to do the haka with the guys....

the date

today marks one of three momentous occasions in me and brett's new life together. 2 years ago today brett and i went on our FIRST DATE. it always feels wonderful thinking about when we first met and our first date. here's what went down that fateful night i met brett. it was the beginning of winter semester, january 2008 on a thursday night. my roommate rachel was then dating brett's roommate brandon. i went over to brandon's apt with rachel to play games, thinking i had already met brandon's roomies, i went over feeling like i have no need to impress anyone i wore something similar to this outfit and these EXACT colors...

also with NO MAKEUP!

how heinous is that? but there he was, sitting at the counter in his cute polo shirt and jeans. (thinking to myself, "well i've never met this one before!") i fell in love with his eyes and with how genuinely sweet he was, it also helped that he had the british version of the office :) he also tried to help me cheat at dominos...so i left their apt thinking that a person like brett couldn't ever be interested in me especially when his first sight of me was when i was dressed like a clown on crack.

then the phone call came that saturday morning. brett called me and asked me out to bowling and dinner that night. usually when a boy asks me out for bowling i say no! i really suck at bowling and think that its sort of a lame date idea. but when brett asked me i couldn't say no to a cute boy! i wouldn't care even if he had asked me to play baseball in the snow, eh maybe i would say no. jk.

anyways, we went out that night and we ended up double dating with another one of my roommate and his roommate. bowling with brett was great, he made it fun and memorable and dinner was even more amazing. yeah we just went to one of rexburg's finest restaurants, applebees, but when i go on dates i examine how the date is going. is he just going on about some random crap? are there lots of awkward moments? those are deal breakers with me. but that night with brett, he didn't do either. we talked and ate the whole time. absolutely no awkward moments and we asked and answered each other's questions about each other. such a magical night. brett definitely got 2 thumbs up for the date. the night came and went, i REALLY wanted to go out with him again. so i asked rachel to tell brandon to tell brett that i liked him and wanted to go out with him again. and the rest is history. brett was a single man for just a few days at byu-idaho. it was also his first semester there.

i later asked brett how the heck did he like me when i was dressed in such bad 80's colors? he said he overlooked all of that and he said he thought my face was pretty. i married such a darling boy. he's pushes me to be a better person even when i'm being stubborn. he's also helped me to dress a WHOLE lot better too! :) i'm grateful that he never gives up on me and that he has such a strong love for the gospel.

this was from one of our early dates. snowboarding. that was one of the funnest things i've ever done in my life! also that night was when brett kissed me the first time! i'm feeling SUPER giddy right now reminiscing about all this. we've had such happy memories and we'll have tons more in the future.

stay tuned for when our engagement night comes!

♥

farewell to O9

the year of O9 has come and gone...on facebook there's this app that makes a little collage of your facebook statuses from the year. when i made this i got a little sentimental knowing that some great things happened to me this year....sorry the type on the collage is small, just squint when you look at it.

while in salt lake brett and i took advantage of being in a bigger city than being in rexburg or idaho falls and ate at some delightful restaurants we couldn't otherwise get here. we found a new fav and ate at a new brasilian "fast food" place. brett's got me hooked on brasilian food. i just need to learn how to cook it.

these are brigadeiros, a sweet delicious brasilian treat covered in choco sprinkles!

we drove down ALL THE WAY TO MANTI despite the weather conditions which weren't that horrible as expected. it always surprises us how good utah is about plowing cuz rexburg sucks! anywhoz, it was WAY FUN seein my sis and her hub, travis.

sometimes, only she gets me. ♥

they took us out to a delicioso pizza place! thanks guys!

we got back to rexburg on new years eve and hung out with our great friends steve and gwen! we love them very much!

we had a great time new years eve, we played this one game and when we saw the clock it was 3 mins past midnight. we decided it was time to break out the bubbly, as in, tasty sparkling cider aka mormon champagne.

i've never really done resolutions but i'd like to try and commit myself to them this new year

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION

• be nicer to people-i suck at being nice to idiot customers. i am a nice person but seriously when i worked at wal-mart i ran into the dumbest of dumbest people there. but yeah i'm gonna try to be more nice esp while working at jamba when we're trying to promote healthy living. :)
  
  fin.

so far so good

the Christmas season of 09 has treated us wonderfully. at first brett and i were planning on junking out and staying in bed all Christmas day. but lately all of our holidays have been planned at the LAST MINUTE. 2 days before Christmas we found out my cousin scott and his wife katy from back east were down in Utah visiting katy's family and they invited us over for dinner on Christmas! it was convenient to go there anyways since we were going to SLC for my nieces' sealing. but i was thrilled. getting to spend Christmas with family (even though i didn't really know katy's fam) and have Christmas dinner. we ended up driving most of Christmas day to Alpine, UT. it was so nice seeing my cousins scott and katy again. it was a small taste of my huge family that i miss from out east. since brett and i were out and about in ut for Christmas day we did our "presents exchange" pretty much when we went shopping and didn't bother wrapping them. brett got some doc. marten shoes that'll count for his future 10 Christmases. and all i asked for were knee high socks from the gap. it was a great Christmas.

after Christmas we got to hang out with some of brett's side of the family. brett's brother darren and his wife, cyndi, just adopted 2 cute girls and had their sealing to the family in the Salt Lake Temple. it was such a neat experience. i absolutely love my in laws. i thank my lucky stars that i have such awesome in laws. seriously, before i even met brett i watched the movie monster in law and that horrified me. i was SO scared to be related to some crazies. but they all turned out to be quite the opposite. they are truly wonderful and i'm so grateful for them.

so the following pics are pretty much the only pics taken of our vacay so far. my 9yr old niece, ieshia, and i played dress up with all the jewlelry i brought.

ieshia, her sister nicole, and i are the only brownies in the family.

its awesome

when she asked me where i had gotten all my jewelry i told her brett bought most of them for me, and she's like, do you know that he's just wasting your money too? ohhhhh the young innocence of children

love her!

i never believed

in SANTA that is....

i never trusted that old fat man in red. eh it didn't help when my dad would go around the house singing, "here comes fat fake here comes fat fake!" my dad just didn't want us believin in santa claus but hey i turned out all right? right?

lately i've been a bit grinchy about Christmas. i am absolutely SICK of Christmas music. the Christmas fun has died because i'm sure i've heard 20 variations to every Christmas song while working at jamba. at the beginning of the month i was super excited for the festivities, especially cuz jamba was AMAZINGLY decorated. i was SO excited to go to work everyday! our apartment, however, was not amazingly decorated. there was a moment when i was really excited to decorate the apt but that quickly evaporated. we don't even have a Christmas tree. we were gonna get a real one with our friends, the kelloggs, but i thought it would be silly to get one when we'll be leaving right on Christmas day. i was actually really heartbroken we weren't gonna have a Christmas tree this year. i've never had a Christmas without one. so this is one of the main reasons why i've been a grinch. yeah we could've gotten a fake one but we don't wanna have another clunkin thing to haul when we move...blah blah blah. there's always next year huh? but i am excited about spending Christmas with Brett doing nothing! we will be junking out and watching delightful Christmas movies. those i can't get sick of. we're also planning on going to SLC after Christmas for the sealing of my nieces to my bro-in-law and his wife. we're way excited for that.

this delish delight are the white chocolate cranberry blondies i made for our friends, brandon and rachel's white elephant party. the blondies turned out a bit doughy on the bottom but they were still RICH and lethal. SOOO good!

brett and i hope you have a MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS and an awesome NEW YEARS!

♥

shakin it and lighting it up!

such an eventful week last week. its weird how i'm done with school yet i still have SO much going on! mostly because i've been doing the polynesian club thang this whole semester, and i hope to continue with it until brett and i leave rexburg once and for all. so up on campus we had a culture night consisting of our poly club, the indian association, the african association, and the latino association, and i believe thats it... but it was a blast. it was pretty much our last "major performance" for the semester. so thats why it was a little stressful for me last week. i got to do this way cute tahitian dance with my 2 good friends katie and alena.

i've been in the PCA for about 3 semesters now, i started 2 summer semesters ago and have gained such great friendships, a greater appreciation for different cultures, and learned some sweet polynesian dances.


and then it was PARTY TIME!!!!
brett turned 24! i can't believe it, he's getting old yet 24 is def really young.

we decided to have an asian invasion dinner night for brett's birthday bash! we had the party at the cougar court lounge so that we could have more room for our close friends that came...i fried my famous filipino lumpia (which i didn't burn, they just give off a lot of smoke) for the festive occasion and in so doing this is what happened...
i set ALLLLLLL the fire alarms off in the whole cougar court complex.... i was mortified. especially when the cops and the firemen showed up. but after the whole incident i couldn't stop laughing about it. our manager looked really pissed though. brett had to go to the church and grab him from his ward Christmas party so that he could turn off the alarms...sorry manager dude but next time how about adding a vent over the stove?
the shi-fu! katie made this delightful beverage for the party.

i surprised brett with a DQ birthday cake and i wasn't gonna light the candles after what just happened, but katie and gwen convinced me so i lit them up. but being afraid of setting the place on fire again i pretty much just ran to brett with the cake and half the candles blew out by themselves. sorry brett (i REALLY don't think he cared)

happy birthday boy! hopefully next year the cops and firemen won't come to your birthday party.