Happy Birthday, Kuya Neal!

Today is my amazing brother-in-law's birthday! On Wednesday, I had talked to Amanda about what we were going to do for him...and this is what we decided. Since him and my sister are always SO giving with their time and they are always thinking of others that they sometimes forget to spoil themselves, we had decided to give them time. Meaning to say, since Amanda had taken today and yesterday off, she was going to go to their house and watch the kids for them to be able to get away for a few hours. Since today I had only a half day since we had our preschool graduation, I told her that I would go with her. So, that is what we did. We gave them time.

My morning started out very good, thank you very much!

I took my sister's advise and cut two thick slices of her amazing Honey Oat Wheat bread and toasted it. I like my toast crunchy, but not burnt. So that's what I did, then I smeared on a good amount of butter, but not too much and wow! That totally made my day all happy! I ended up cutting two more thick slices and toasting and buttering them and bringing them to school to share some with Mrs. A. She is the teacher that I join with in the morning to watch the early morning kids. :)

Mrs. A had already had breakfast so she ate one [she was SO happy to have ordered one cinnamon bread loaf for her family after tasting this one!] and we shared the other one with two other children that were there and wanted a taste of the wonderful smelling bread. :)

It was pretty chaotic short day at school. I am so proud of our graduates! They are on their way up to kindergarten...and this is one of the reason I LOVE LOVE my job! In these early stages of life, the children learn SO much and SO fast! And they are all smart cookies that I know will go far in life!

After school, I went home. I have a friend that we send a least a picture a day to. We miss each other so much...and I know that she is lonely at the moment since her husband went abroad for a month for school. And so, I decided to wear a flower in my hair for her...so I sent her the picture of the flower I wore...the background you can see the wonderful front yard that I am blessed to have. :)

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I am so blessed to have this place that I'm living at. It's a beautiful place and my landlady is amazing wonderful as well! She is so sweet and I know that I am safe here. :)

Since it was my brother-in-laws birthday, I got him a birthday balloon to go with the present that I got him.

It's always fun to have balloons for your birthday, at least I think that it is. :) So, I had driven over to Amanda's house and we went together to my sister's house so that she can take her husband out for his birthday. They ended up seeing the new Avenger's movie. I wanted to see it...so hopefully I'll be able to go and see it, if not, hopefully it gets on Netflix so I can watch it when it comes out! :)

But before Amanda and I got to the house we stopped at our favorite Boba tea place.

Taste Tea is so yummy! My favorite order is: Winter Melon with Lemonade, 70% sweetened, Less Ice, and Big Boba! It's so yummy! My sister and Amanda usually get the same. Milk Tea...but I like my Winter Melon. :)

When we got to my sister's house, they had just left and my parents just waiting for Amanda and I so that they can leave to go meet their friends. I knew that my sister was already going to be gone...but I'm bummed that we missed them by just a few minutes, so we just put her Iced Tea in the refrigerator and Amanda and I enjoyed our tea while we were waiting for my lil' DollGirl (2 years old) to wake up from her afternoon nap. Lil' KaiBoy (3 months old) was also sleeping...but he woke up when we got there so we got to play with his little cuteness for a bit before sister woke up and demanded our attention to play with her.

Amanada stayed with KaiBoy in the house while I went outside to play with DollGirl.

She loves cars...just like her daddy! :) While I was taking her picture, she told me that she wanted to take pictures to...so I let her take a picture...and I had a million pictures of the garden that her and her grandpa (my daddy) had made for her mom.

She loves to garden! She is going to have a green thumb just like her grandpa! I love watching them together! My dad is an out-doorsy person...and so is DollGirl...she loves going outside! She loves running...for what seems like NO REASON...but she LOVES LOVES to be outside!

Well, I am getting tired now, but before I end this post, I wanted to post up some of the pictures that I got from the wedding that we did today! My brother-in-law was able to go with Passion Roots to help put up those ridiculously heavy chandeliers! And wow! I so admire and him and Amber (my co-worker)...they had to do some quick thinking with how to put them up!

My other co-worker and friend, Ivy, sent me these pictures earlier today...and I couldn't be more proud of my Passion Roots team! They look amazing! Ivy said that they had a lot of people come up to them to compliment the arrangements and The Modern were amazed by them as well! Yay for Passion Roots! We rock! I love working with them and being part of the team. :)

"Happy birthday, Kuya Neal! I hope you had an amazing day! I love you!"

House Cleaning.

This morning, my sister gave me the schedule of Passion Roots, and I saw that for the first couple weeks of October will be super busy, and so I knew that I had things that I wanted to do before I didn't have the time to do it...so I made myself a list of the things that I needed done.

Not everything HAS to be done, but there were somethings that I really wanted done. But I have to say that I got a lot of things done, so that's good. I know that I have today, Monday, and Tuesday to get everything that I wanted done to get done. After that, my life is not my own any longer! *laughs* Just joking...it's still mine, but I know that I will be super busy. It will be wake up, go to preschool work, go to Passion Roots studio, go home, shower, crash...repeat. And if I am lucky, I will find time to eat between goings. *laughs*

One thing I knew that I really wanted to get done today was to clean out my fish tank. To do a full cleaning of my tank. I usually do a full clean of my tank every 2 months. Every month I do a 50% water change and I also change a filter (taking turns with the two filters that I have) every two months. So, it was due a full tank cleaning, and I knew that actually I would have one more week until I had to clean it out, but knowing the schedule that I have I knew that I wouldn't have time, so I decided to do so today.

And you can tell by the millions of bubbles you can see that it was a successful cleaning of my tank. :) I did put in an order at Amazon for more plants...so when that gets here, I'll take another picture of home my tank looks...I like to spoil my pets. *laughs*

Speaking of which, I suspect that my poor BamBam Jr. has FIN ROT! NO!!! Well, I can not be TO sure, but I wanted to treat him so that in case he does have it, he will get better. I was happy when I saw that if I treated him as soon as I notice it, then it's not that bad...I would hate for it to be BODY ROT because all the run has rotted away already! 

My BamBam Jr. doesn't act sick though...he is still super, duper outgoing! But I did ask the person at the pet store if it would hurt him if I did treat him and he didn't have the disease, and he said no...but not to over treat him. I won't over treat him, but I hope that he gets better if he is sick!

Another thing that was on my "to-do" list was to clean and spray paint my shower caddy! It's getting rusty and gross looking and so I wanted to get on that! I also wanted to hang it on a hook on the other side of my shower because I don't like how it's in the way of the cord when I am taking a shower. 

So, I removed everything from in it, and took it outside and cleaned it as best as I could. Took of the rust and all that...and then spray painted it black. I then added modge podge so that it can stay like this longer.

Here is a side view of it...and I love it! It looks more cleaner! But hey, I DO keep my shower clean! *laughs* I do a deep, full cleaning of it every two weeks! :) 

Here is a front view of it. I really like it a lot! And I like how it is on the other side of my tub where there is a lot more room for it. And my shower looks super cleaner because it's not as cluttered with the shower head and stuff. So I hope that it stays like that tomorrow...and not fall down! :)

Well, I was able to do quite a few things off my "to do" list, so I am happy for that. :) What I am going to try to do for this month at least is to force myself to lay down on my bed for sleeping at least by 12. I know that I am going to need my sleep if I am going to be pulling literally all-nighters with trying to balance my two jobs and my school. We will see where it all ends up then! :)

Day Seven: Running.

One thing that makes me sad is that I don't have a camera to document the amazing views when I go running in the morning. Even in the evening when I go running, the sunsets are amazing...but the sunrise...oh wow it's beautiful. I do run with my iPod, but unfortunately it doesn't have a camera.

Another thing that I want to say is I had forgotten how wonderfully nice the people are here! Every since I started running, the people that go running have remembered me and they give me encouragement. There is not a single day that has passed that someone, if not several of them, have encouraged me one way or another. We don't ignore each other when we run...they look me in the eye and greet me and give some encouraging words. I love the Aloha spirit here.

After I run, I like having my daily smoothie and pot of tea. Today, I was able to have some nectarine in my smoothie! I LOVE nectarines! They are soo expensive here, but it is so worth it. White nectarines are my favorite though.

So today, I used two yellow nectarines, two apple bananas, one acai packet, a scoop of Matcha Ginger powder, a handful of granola, a dribble of honey and, of course, my favorite coconut water.

I wasn't able to fit everything in the first go, so I filled it as much as I could, an then I blended it and then added the last nectarine.

Today, I chose my Peach Ginger tea with honey. One of the top 5 favorite flavors of tea!

As you can see, I couldn't wait until going downstairs to start on my yummy, yummy smoothie. :) But now that I am down stairs I need to start getting ready for my day. But here's to a wonderful, beautiful, Sabbath day.

"Let prayer be your first response, not your last resort."-Joyce Meyers

Classroom Changes.

These past few weeks have been extremely tough. Nothing that I can't get through...but still tough and pretty stressful. I guess it's good that I have made it a conscious effort to exercise every day; to run as much as I can. And it does help a lot. I have only been running for three days, and I honestly thought that it would take longer for me to get in the hang of running again, but I'm glad that it hasn't. I am so blessed to live here in Hawai'i and that makes running a lot easier because it's such a beautiful place to run...the view is soooo amazing.

My classroom is getting there. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the changes that I've done with it. I think that it's going to be good. The theme that I am going for is bugs. At first I was going to do caterpillars and butterflies...but then while I was making the huge caterpillar for my wall decoration, my lil keikis were telling me that they also wanted ladybugs, bees, and ants...oh and I can't forget the flowers for the bees. *laughs* So I have decided to just make a bunch a insects and ginormous flowers for my decorations. And it's going....slowly, but surely.

As for the layout of my room, I'm more happier with it. I was pretty upset when I had to switch rooms with out any notice...and I wasn't able to plan out how I wanted my room to be, but since then I have rearranged a few times and how it is now, I think I am now satisfied with it. My kids seem to like it as well...and I am loving all the new things that I am getting in my room. I just now need to transfer all my teacher stuff from my teacher cabinet to my room. Right now, JessiLynn and I have an understanding that we will just walk into each other's room and get what we need. We both have been frustrated with how things panned out...but then she's an amazing person and we both got this.

I just can't wait until we get our infant and toddler program up and running. It's been a hard thing to do, especially since I didn't know that it was going to fall a lot on me. I didn't ask for it, but then at least I know how to start one up now. It's a slow process...but it's getting there.

Well, I need to go to sleep, I feel myself dragging right now, but I just wanted to say...yay! I've been keeping my goal and running everyday! Hopefully I can keep it up! :)

http://www.lovethispic.com/image/30066/dont-quit

Day One: Running.

I just got out of the shower...and I thought that I was going to take a nap, but actually, I feel good. I haven't run in such a long time. Well, I take that back, I have run...but not proper run. I woke up at 6:00AM to get ready to run. I made sure the charge my nano iPod, because I find it hard to exercise without music. Well, actually, I have a hard time getting through my day without music...but I hate running and music is a good distraction.

See, just looking at the fun socks that I bought yesterday makes me happy. Yes, it's the little things that make me smile. :)

So, here I am ready to go. I decided to just run the Lanikai Loop, which is just two miles long and shouldn't take too long for me to run. It was as lot harder than I thought to go back into running...but I have decided to do it...and so I will. I have confident that I can...and I did. I thought that I was going to stop...but then the different things that was going through my mind were things like:

--Just. One. More. Step.

--You're not tired! Your body is...but not your mind.

--You've ran 8 miles straight before...you can do just 2!

--Hurry! You have things to do!

--The end is just around the corner.

--Just keep going.

--Your feet do NOT hurt.

...and things like that. Part of me was laughing at myself, and another part of me was trying to block out everything. And most definitely, the music helped a lot.

Before I start to do my school related things that I need to get done, I made myself some yummies to consume. I made a smoothie made out of acai, strawberries, bananas, a handful of granola, honey, and Matcha powder. And it was yummy as anything! And then my pot of Irish Breakfast with honey. It was a good start of a day. And now to get my day rolling...

"She who leaves a trail of glitter is never forgotten."-anonymous