Student of the Week: Siope Fangupo

Siope was chosen as the Student Of the Week for his class. He came home and filled out his facts without me. He spelled everything right for the most part. There were only a couple misspelled words and I wanted to leave them uncorrected because I thought they were cute, but he got embarrassed and insisted that I tell him the correct spelling. Reading and Spelling are definitely Siope's strengths. He's reading a grade level ahead and it seems to come easily to him. Writing, however is not. It's the 1 thing that has continued to hold him back from receiving straight A's. I know being a lefty can be an excuse to have sloppy handwriting, but we keep telling him he needs to try super hard if he wants to get an A in writing. We took some pictures of him for his little bulletin and I let him choose which one he wanted to paste on his paper. Of course he chose the one of him next to his bike. Most of his facts about himself have remained the same, but there were a couple that surprised me. Apparently his favorite color is now red. I asked him what happened to green, and he said green is his 2nd favorite color. His favorite book is The Book of Mormon, which really caught me off guard. Mote gave a FHE lesson last week for scouts and the kids had so much fun taking turns reading during that lesson. Which I'm guessing is why he put that as his favorite book. His "Proudest Accomplishment" made me laugh. It's totally something he would say... take the easy way out lol. And He's definitely "Happiest When... it's the weekend." =)

Biking

The kids have been long overdue for new bikes. They've been too big for their bikes for quite some time now, but we just didn't have the means (or didn't want to fork out the means) to replace the old ones.  Buying 1 bike? ... no problem. 2 bikes? ... okay. I can live with a dent in the checking account... but 3? At once? Not gonna happen... at least not for a while. So we put it off for as long as we could and finally decided, that these rambunctious boys needed some wheels, pedals, and speed in their lives. They got scooters for Christmas, which held them over a little while, but the time had come to finally get them some bikes. So a trip to Target, Walmart, back to Target, another trip back to Target for an exchange, and a trip to AutoZone for some tools.... and we finally were set to go with 3 bikes. Me and Ti of course still have our bikes, so the garage is getting a bit crowded with wheels. I made them ride their scooters one more day to school, so when they got home yesterday they were dying to get on their bikes. We all took a bike trip to the park (which I found out actually has a name... Nathaniel Jones Park) and rode up and down the trails. After an hour of going over bumps, going up and down hills, and falling down and getting back up again we rode back home. Today, the scooters remain in the garage and instead 3 little bikes have made their way to Wright Elementary with 3 happy kids as their drivers.

New Park!

The new park is finally open to the public! I don't know what the name of the new park is called, so I will just refer to it as the "new park" ;) We took the kids there yesterday and at first glance I was not impressed. There was a small playground, basketball courts, some grassy fields, and rocks.... lots of rocks. I've always been confused as to why Vegas likes rocks so much. I know it's a dessert, but I just feel like using rocks makes spaces less practical and unusable. We got out of the car and Ti and the boys started playing football on the grass. I watch for a little then decide that I want to start jogging the field. Soon I noticed a path amidst all the dumb rocks. So I start jogging on the path and am amazed at how this path wraps around the park. The path offered lots of different routes and before I knew it I was sweating. I made it back around to the boys and thought to myself that the "stupid rocks" were actually an awesome jogging/bike path. When the boys decided they had had enough football and rugby they asked if they could play on the playground. While I was watching them play I decided that the playground wasn't as crappy as I first thought it was haha! It was centrally located, so if we wanted we could let the boys play on the playground while we jogged the park or we could play basketball on the courts next door while keeping an eye on them. So in conclusion the verdict of the new park is..

 

Hehe ;) We love it!

 We all had so much fun and I'm pretty confident that we'll be visiting the park quite often since the weather is warming up.

Santa Monica vs. Las Vegas

1.28.12
We took a trip out to Southern California back in January to watch Ti Tonga play rugby. Since I have weekends off we decided to turn it into a mini family getaway. We picked up our rental on Friday so that we could hit the road as soon as I got off work Saturday morning. I got a little bit of sleep in the car, but not much. There was no major traffic and the weather was BEAUTIFUL! As soon as we got there we went straight to the field where Ti Tonga's team was playing. Super intense game with it resulting in a draw. The boys had the camera most of the time, so I didn't get that many pictures of the game, but here's the few that I have...

I regret packing pants. Should've only taken shorts and sandals!!

 

Siope kept saying he was a scarecrow

I could create a whole blog dedicated to this crazy kid!

Just busted my lip wrestling with my brothers... no biggie

Final Score: Santa Monica - 27, Las Vegas - 27 

more trip details to come...

Fatu & Brittainy's Wedding

Fatu and Brittainy got married on January 2, 2012. It was seriously the biggest turn out that I've ever seen! Also probably the most diverse wedding party that I've ever been a part of. It was so awesome to see old friends again that had come out to support our baby brother and his bride. Constance and Ruby Mei got to dance during the wedding and we had a surprise performance by Fatu's nephews. They all did awesome! I still have to get the video footage from Doug & Trina, but as soon as I do, I'll upload it and post. Congrats again to the happy couple... and welcome to the family Brittainy =)

Dr. Seuss Day

The boys celebrated Nevada Reading Week at school and on Friday they had a morning activity for parents to participate in with their kids. I was sooooo tired... but this is the reason why I wanted this shift - to spend time with the boys. So I sacrificed a little dream time and me and Ti went the Elementary with Siope, Nici, and Mote. They had cupcakes for everyone and Dr. Seuss books available to read. After the read-a-thon we all played Dr. Seuss BINGO and Mote was the first winner! He won a Dr. Seuss book to take home. I'm so glad we went. The kids were so happy to have us there and they had tons of fun.