Recently, I've been thinking of what I want for Christmas. Not that it matters a whole bunch, I can honestly say that having our family close by of visiting is the best gift ever. So, yeah! we had them here for the reunion, that was memories for a life time.
So, here at Christmas time, I am sharing some recap of our family visiting during the reunion and some of our visits this year.



In a month, our oldest grandchild, Christian will be 12 years old. That is awesome. Hopefully we can travel to help celebrate his birthday and when he receives the priesthood. Imagine, he'll be a deacon. That is awesome. He's a great example for his siblings and cousins to follow.


Our daughters posed for this photo during the reunion. Jo and I are so proud of them and their families. They are awesome daughters, spouses, moms, and sisters.

Part of the fun of taking pictures is making faces. This is a good example of that, making faces.
Perhaps it was the trip to the Bean Museum to see the wild animals collection. We got to add to the collection here.


An outdoor activity was just tempting enough for the kids to pile on dad. So, Mark got the rough end of the pile on.











Our #20 grandchild Evelyn shows her bright face here.


Visiting Dan & Nikki just after little Ruth was born was a fun time, especially with her siblings. They made up for making our time worthwhile.



Here's baby "R" giving us her undivided attention. She's a doll.


Ipo holds on to her toy as a sign that "don't mess with my stuff" kind of look. Since all the kids are gone, there's no one to play with, so this is keeping herself occupied.



This is our annual Christmas photo to you all. Thanks to Erin for making it possible. Enjoy all.
Merry Christmas everyone!

Time To Catch Up, It's Almost Christmas!

Whoa!! It's almost Christmas and I haven't posted anything in a long time. I guess, time flies when you're having fun. Well the word fun is debatable. Anyway, we've had some significant things to share in this blog about the past several months. For one thing, I'm happy we were able to have our family reunion of most of our children and their families here in August. It was awesome, but the best part was seeing the siblings and children interact with each other. What a wonderful memory it was to see them play together, talk together, help each other out, and have fun together. That reunion, made our year. I am grateful to each of our children who were able to attend and their spouses for making the reunion possible. Each of our grandchildren at the time, showed me why they are special. They possess the traits and talents of precious spirits, come from the presence of God, to make our lives a blessing. They represent the genetic, spiritual, social, and intellectual makeup of the generations before them. They are the rising generation and they are awesome. Without going into detail of how each one, (Twenty at the time of the reunion), these grandchildren are awesome and wonderful.

Now that we are back in our home ward, the pace of things are pretty slow. It's different now being involved with the planning, preparations and other things involved with the various activities held in the ward. On Sundays, we usually sit with Mark and Erin and their family. I've been wanting to move to retirement row (area in the overflow area of the chapel) but Jo prefers to sit with Erin up close to the middle front. I've even suggested we sit further in the rear to give us a different perspective of the meeting, but Jo can't see or hear as well back there. Not that I'm wanting to disassociate ourselves with the wonderful 3rd Warders, but sitting in different places of the chapel and cultural hall can be a new enlightening experience. I have a home teaching assignment in the ward, Jo is serving in Family History, or "searching for dead people" in the ward besides visiting teaching. I guess with time like this on my hands, I should choose to be more productive. I'm waiting for the revelations.

Our second daughter had her second daughter almost a month ago. Jo and Ipo travelled to CA to help out with the family, the week before Thanksgiving

Week. I survived with my own cooking and a few meals up the street at Erin's diner. Then on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I flew to CA to join Jo there. What a blast, with the grandkids. Had a great time getting to know them closer. My two little buddies, the twins were very cautious with Papa at first. I found their weakness, fresh sweet grapes. So, I washed them, cut them in half and piled them on their highchair trays. Love them little guys. I learned to play the card game fish with the older ones. They are aggressive in that game. Had a great time viewing the drawings of Gabby. She is creative and great with her drawings. She's an artist in the making. I got to see how talented they are on the computer games, the learning ones. They each showed their savy and knowledge of the game and great comprehension. They only one I didn't spend much time with was new baby "r". She was well being tended to by her mom.

Jo and I checked out the local shop

ping areas and remembered why we loved the central coast area. It was hard to leave the family but we had to get back to Happy Valley. The one thing we did enjoy was missing the hugh snow storm of Thanksgiving week and the cold. So on our way back, we had to take a slower pace to get home safely. That did requi

re a stopover for the night in Las Vegas. It's amazing how cheap or inexpensive it was to stay there. We got home with now accidents or major problems. We had run out of space in the trunk of our car with our luggage and stuff that we bought to bring back, like CA oranges fresh from the grove, artichokes, grapes, and other stuff. We never fail to frequent the commisaries, or BX. Anyway, having to catchup with work, end of semester at the Y, and now finals week at the Y, there is still lots to do.

Why I Love A Good Family Reunion !!!

We held our family reunion last week and are in recuperating mode right now. Was it worth it? "Heck Yeah!!" Did I enjoy it? "You better believe it!" Would you do it again? "Darn Right, am open for suggestions when to do it again, and where to hold it?"

What did you enjoy most? Was there any special moments? "Hey! Just watch the clip of the Tahitian dancing by the young wahine cousins!" The young cousins really got things going during the family luau. With just a short amount of training from our island connection, Rachel, those young wahines really could shake'um.

The five cousins plus one auntie put on a show for the crowd. We even had a dance off or shake'um competition with the kane of boy cousins participating. "It was all good."

At the reunion, we had four of our five children and their families attend. Luckily, we had enough housing locally to put up all the out of towners. Having Sunday dinner together was a bit of an experience with everyone at our home. No one complained, the dog did her bit to help out, and there was lots of hands to help with the cleanup.

Was there any special things to remember aside from the "Tahitian dancing?" Like what? "The older boy cousins hung out alot, the girl cousins got along really well, they all liked being together because they're cousins. The uncle and aunties treated all the kids well, their own included. Later, the uncle and aunties played games, went to the movies after the kids were asleep, grandpa watched them, and had a fun time. When you have 18 grandchildren, first rule established by Grandma, the mommies and daddies were responsible to clean up their little ones, including nasty diapers. Hey, we had our turn doing that! The activities were cheap or free, like going to the swimming pool to cool off, or to Thanksgiving point for $2 Tuesdays, a museum trip at BYU campus, and a day trip up the canyon. One thing we didn't do well was take a group family photo. Nothing wrong with the camera stuff but the timing was just before dinner, the afternoon sun, and being hungry like Hungry Hungry Hippos! Again, it was all good!"

There were some other highlights like bringing each family to BYU to see Grandmas co-workers and brag about the grandchildren. There was even making a church statement, that we can occupy more than one row of church pews during Sacrament Meeting.

While looking through some older family photos, I notice that Ruby looks alot like Erin at a similar age, so does Gabby looking a lot like Nikki at a similar age. The same goes for Wyatt looking like Rachel and Anna looking like Leslie but without curly hair. Of course, my granddaughter Klai look darker than Grandpa because she's been in the sun more.

We were joined in our reunion by Uncle Dick and Aunt Joan and cousin Jarom and our dear friends the Funns. We had a blast, making lasting memories. Special thanks to our sons-inlaws, Troy, Dan, Mark, and Jase for bringing their families to happy valley this past week and a half. Also special thanks to Leslie, our program director/planner, Erin for the chicken long rice and taking the family portrait photos and scheduling the swimming activity. Special thanks to Rachel for the Halau O hula shakem up style training and #20 moopuna, and to Nikki for #'s 18 and 19 and soon #21. We love the little ones. We did miss Jesse and Amy and the boy, out on the east coast. We were all thinking of you all. Mahalo, to all.