Keeping Tabs on the Fangupo's: November 2011

October Haps: 2011 Halloween Costumes

This year I decided to let the kids choose what they wanted to be for Halloween. I admit that in the previous years I've done a lot of convincing and persuading on what the boys end up being for Halloween. This year I decided to loosen up and let them choose without any pushing from me. They're getting older and a lot of ideas that I thought would be cool, weren't cool in their eyes. At first I wasn't sure if me giving them full control was a good idea. Nic changed his mind every day! At first all his choices were scary things: zombie, and a mummy. Then he started choosing all these video game characters from Street Fighter. Siope said he wanted to be Sponge Bob. I thought that would be interesting and immediately started thinking about how we could make his square pants... but then he changed his mind. Mote was pretty set on what he wanted to be... a JABBAWOCKEE. I thought it was a little too simple and boring, but he had his mind made up and was sticking to it. Ti loved the idea. He said it would be easy... ha! He should know me better... I don't think I ever make things easy. We got so frustrated with the other 2, that I gave them a deadline and told them they had to choose a final character. Ti mentioned that it would be cool if they were all Jabbawockeez, and they agreed. I didn't start on their costumes until the week before Halloween Eeeeeep! I'm not sure who came up with the concept cause I'm almost sure I chose the colors, but Ti said he did... so I'll say we both did :) Since Jabbawockeez perform here in Vegas, we decided it would be cool to add some of our roots to the costumes. We put our Utah touch on it and came up with this...

I ordered the Utah Jazz snap backs, then based the t-shirts off of those colors.

The final product

We added the skeleton gloves to spook it out for Halloween

The back of their shirts said "trick or treat"

I got done with them right before we went to Utah... just in the nick of time.

I follow the JABBAWOCKEEZ on twitter and right before I went to bed Halloween night, I was checking my twitter line. I noticed that they were running a costume contest and were selecting a winner off of pictures that people were submitting to them. I uploaded one of the boys and hoped that I wasn't too late to enter the contest. The next day before I went to work I got a reply from one of the members saying that he chose the boys as one of the winners!

How cool is that?!! Pretty freak'n cool if you ask me! The boys were so excited!! and all my hard work paid off! ha!

October Haps: Visiting Ren

We were in Utah for less than 48hrs. When we woke up Sunday, we packed everything up and went to visit Ren before we left back to Vegas. Although the weather in Salt Lake is so much colder than Nevada's, Sunday was really good to us. The sun was out and Wasatch Lawn was absolutely beautiful. We stopped off and got some flowers. It was fun to switch up a little. Instead of her normal purple, we did a Halloween arrangement full of orange flowers and even some cute spiders. When we pulled up I was surprised to see that so many of the sites were decorated for Halloween. We got to Ren and I added our arrangement to her sea of flowers. She had so many. The boys took turns watering her grass and making sure that everything was neat and tidy. I hope you liked everything Ren.


This is the view from Ren's spot. I love how beautiful UT is.

My parents kept bugging us to go out and eat with them even though we told them a million times that we needed to get on the road. Ti finally gave in and we got to have lunch with my parents before we left.

October Haps: Happy Birthday Grandpa Kina!

I told you we did a lot in October! So I know that we said we wouldn't be going out to Salt Lake for the rest of the year... I guess I lied :) Ti's family decided to throw their Dad a surprise birthday/retirement party and because of my new shift we were actually able to attend. Ti and the boys picked me up from work at 6am, we picked up our rental, and got right on the freeway. We got there just in time to take our seats and welcome Kina with shouts of surprise. The family honored him with delicious food, traditional dances, and words of gratitude.

After the party we got the opportunity to meet our niece Katea Fangupo. She's the tiniest thing I've seen. Like many other trips I've made to the hospital, this one reminded me of so many simple things I take for granted. It was a special thing to spend time with her and to see another one of God's miracles with my own eyes.

October Haps: Pumpkin Picks 2011

Samiu and Toakesa slept over and we let them all pick out pumpkins. We can't carve our pumpkins early out here because they won't last in the heat. We will normally carve our pumpkins the day before or the actual day of Halloween. I wanted to spruce them up in some way so I decided to add some spook to them while they sat on the porch waiting to be carved. I let each of the kids pick out a design and we decorated each of the individual pumpkins. Here's some pictures of the kids with their pumpkins they chose...