- sisters -

"A loyal sister is worth a thousand friends" -Marian Eigerman

Luckily for me, I grew up with TWO loyal sisters... jeeze, that's alotta friends! LOL. Anyways, I come from a family with 5 kids... Me being the middle child with two older sisters and two younger brothers. So with two older sisters, I've pretty much been stuck with being the "baby sister" my whole life.

First off, there's my half sister Leilani Lynn, who is half tongan and half white. When I was 8 (I think?) I remember my dad calling a family meeting for just me and my sisters, probably because my little brothers were to young to understand what was going on. But thats when he told us that he had another daughter. At first I was completely lost.... ANOTHER daughter!?! I wasn't sure which I should accept first, the fact that I have another sister? or the fact that my dad had a kid to another woman before he met my mom?- but I mean I was young, and it wasn't that big of a deal. It made me happy to know that I had another big sister. So after the "big secret", you could only imagine all the questions we were asking my dad about her- What's her name? How old is she? Where does she live? What does she look like?... and well...... after my dad had said that out of all of us she looked like me the most, I knew right then and there that she was an extremely beautiful girl. LOL :) hahahaha just kidding- you would think it too!

Unfortunately I didn't necessarily get the chance to "grow up" with her.. I guess you could put it that way. But a sister is a sister no matter what and I'm grateful :) She is now married with two beautiful daughters and is living in Arizona.

Then there's the eldest in the family... Precellia Nanuma, but we just call her Pumpkin. I don't know exactly how she got that name really, my mom said that its because when she first held her as a baby in the hospital, she had a big orange head.... like a pumpkin. Lol- What a sad way to earn a nickname right?! hah.

Even though she's technically my big sister, I'd swear she was more of a big brother than a sister. I would say she was like a second mom to me, but then I'd be lying. She was more like a second dad. I mean....... she walks like a dude, talks like a dude, eats like a dude, smells like a dude and even punches like a dude! Lol. Jk- but I wasn't kidding about the punching part. Lol. But out of all three of us, she was the tough cookie. She never seemed to show weakness in anything! Whether it was family problems or sports, she was always the strongest link among the 5 of us. Even though she's married with her own family now, she STILL holds both families together with how much strength she has. She was also the 'over-protective' one, every family has one.. right? I remember when I first started dating Robb, Pumpkin didn't like him at all. Not because she knew him (cause she didn't at the time. Lol), but just cause he was "dating her baby sister" and at that age I was too young to have a boyfriend. Which is understandable, but mind you this was when Pumpkin was still a junior in highschool and she didn't have a boyfriend till her senior year. Lol. So obviously she had something against all guys in general........... at that time. Lol. But anyways, I always felt sorry for Robb cause she was so rude to him! Lol- but like a good guy, Robb never stood up for himself. He just sat there and took it. Only because he had more respect for me and my family to not try and mess things up. I mean I would do the same also of course. But through time, Pumpkin grew to love Robert because of all the sweet things he has done for me and for our family up until now. So because I loved him, she loved him also. Now, I'm pretty sure she loves him more than she loves me! Lol.

Pumpkin has always been the backbone to our family and has always made sure that all her younger siblings were taken care of no matter what the issue be. She always keeps me laughing with her annoying text messages and her sarcastic remarks, I swear Pumpkin just has something to say about everything! Lol. Yep, thats my big sister ;)

Last but not least is my other big sis Brittny Maile, some people call her Britt but we just call her Maile. Lots of people always ask why we call her Maile and well........ to make this short and simple, her middle name, "Maile", came from my dads younger sister who had down syndrome, my aunty Maile. After my aunt died in '02, my dad made all of us kids call her Maile from here on out. He specifically said, and I quote, "If I hear you guys call her Brittny one more time I'm gonna whip you with the belt"- lol. Psycho right!? Nahh.. Lol- he just wanted us to use that name as a way of remembering my aunt :) So since then I guess, it pretty much replaced her first name.

I guess you could say that Maile has always been the "odd one out"- not because she's odd or anything, but just because out of all three of us.. she was the skinny, blonde one while me and Pumpkin were the short, thick ones. Lol. Also because of the fact that while Pumpkin and I looked like my dad, she resembled my mom the most. Friends and family members always said that Maile was the the different one- not in a bad way. But in reality, we're ALL a lot more alike than you think. While Pumpkin was the hard one, Maile was more of the "girly" one. I was kinda in the middle. She was the sister who tried to avoid conflicts at all cost while Pumpkin was the one searching for one. LOL- But we still would have a few arguments here and there. So I guess we may "appear" different, but if you were to sit in a room with us three. You'd see that our personalities just mesh (is that a word? lol).

Even though I bump heads with her the most out of her and Pumpkin, aside from all that bickering and fighting I have no reason to believe that she wouldn't be there for me not as a friend, but as a sister. Yes we fight and yes it has gotten to the point where we cut up each others clothes and her giving me a black eye! (don't ask. lol) But I like to think that thats just what siblings do... and at the end of the day, a couple of fights here and there can't even measure up to the value of sisterhood. I admit, there were plenty of times in highschool where I hated playing with her... not because I hated HER specifically, but because all I would ever hear at home was, "Why can't u play more like Maile?"- and I just couldn't take that pressure. My sister was an amazing volleyball player, and I just felt like I would never be able to be in her shoes no matter how hard I worked. But she motivated me to pull through all that stress during highschool and she taught me how to be a more aggressive player. So after she graduated, her motivation led me to try and follow in her footsteps as much as I can for the two years that I had left :)

Even though to some people (who are to remain unknown. lol) aren't proud of the things my sister has done in the past, I am extremely proud of her and how much of a wonderful woman she's grown into.

Both of my sisters have been such great role models to me and have taught me many lessons in life that help me learn to carry myself as a strong woman just like they have.

...I LOVE MY SISTERS...

..just one of those days..

So its Sunday morning and the first thing that I think about when I wake up are my two nieces back in Utah: Teleisia Nichole and Maile Makalita. Back home, I always woke up to all the crazy noises my nieces would make. Whether they were crying, laughing, whining, or in my room playing with my make-up.......... there was never a time where there was silence in our house. Lol- and now that all thats gone, the only thing I'm hearing when I wake up is my stupid annoying alarm clock! LOL-For me, as much as that bothered me when I lived back at home.. I would give ANYTHING to have it again.

It broke my heart that I wasn't there to watch Maile take her first walking steps without help and that I had to miss out on her first birthday party..... and it breaks a little bit more each time I talk to my other niece Teleisia on the phone. Just hearing my nieces voices over the phone makes me teary eyed and the minute my niece says, "I miss you aunty"- I burst out in tears :'(

I miss them SO much and it makes me so sad that I'm not going to be able to see them for thanksgiving/my birthday. Just the other day I went costume shopping with my friends and the halloween store we went to had an entire section of 'Yo Gabba! Gabba!' costumes for toddlers!- and that just brought back memories of when I would have to watch baby Sia while Pumpkin ran errands and the ONLY thing that would make her stop crying would be the 'Yo Gabba! Gabba!' tv show. This little girl was obsessed! She knew all the songs word for word and new the dance moves and she also took her stuffed 'Probe' (character from the show) with her everywhere she went. That was her favorite show :aside from Dora the Explorer of course. But seeing those costumes just reminded me of how much I miss my babygirls and even though their annoying and irritating crying made me want to punch myself in the face........ I would much rather punch myself in the face then be two states away from them. Lol. Only because I miss them THAT much :)

They could be screaming bloody murder while running around in a dirty diaper for all I care.... But just being able to be there watching them grow up is good enough for me. Plus I'm working on trying to be their favorite aunty. Lol. Wait- who am I kidding? Obviously I'm the better half on that part. LOL- joking. But anyways, you get the picture. *Funny story........... I was sitting in my dorm room bored and so I decided to check up on my little bro to see how he was doing and see if he was enjoying his freshman year of highschool. So I called his phone and a guy with a really deep voice answered:

Guy with deep voice: "Hello?"

Me: "Uhhh.. yeah is AJ there?"

Guy with deep voice: "Nikki?"

Me: *confused* "Ummm.. yeeeeah?"

Guy with deep voice: "Its me AJ stupid, what do you want?"

Hahahahaha I just busted out laughing because the last time I had talked to my little brother, he was in that stage in his teenage life where his voice squeaked- poor guy. Lol. Just the fact that I couldn't recognize his voice was shocking to me.... and made me miss my family even more :(

Random story I know, but i just wanted to throw that out there. Lol. Anywho- these are my sunday thoughts for today (:

"Up Til' Dawn"

A little over a week ago, I was asked by one of my teammates if I would like to participate in a fundraiser that her house (sorority house that is..) was holding for the St. Judes Childrens Hospital. So I said, "Hey why not?!", I mean its not like I had anything better to do for the rest of the week. Lol- Plus I thought it'd be a perfect opportunity for me to get some community service hours :) hah. This Halloween themed fundraiser occurs every year in October and has always been very successful.... So I've heard. Lol.

The theme for this years fundraiser was

-"Scare Away Cancer"-

"TEAM TIE-DYE"

In order to participate in this fundraiser, each participant had to pay a 5 dollar admission and were assigned to a team. Each person also had to bring 50 house addresses to mail the donation envelopes to. So from 8-12pm (with little breaks in between.. LOL) my team and I had sat around this table filling out donation sheets, writing addresses and licking envelopes :) Now as boring as that sounds, of course there were other activites going on that gave us time to take little breaks so it actually wasn't too bad at all :)

Aside from making donation letters, each team also had to come up with costumes for the "Best Team Costumes" Award... and our team won :) LOL- which was only because we were the only team there dressed up! Hahaha we tried to look like hippies... my costume was a last minute sorta thing that i just grabbed from my closet. Haha at least we got free bowling passes!

Ahhhh! Now these two girls are the funniest white girls you will ever meet....... that is, if you ever get the chance to meet them. LOL- on your left is my dead sexy friend Darian Lightfoot (: also known as D-Money! Now this girl will make you laugh non-stop. She has jokes for days and almost everything she says qualifies for a facebook status most definitely. LOL- I love her. On the right is her best friend and big sorority sister Katherine. She is just as funny and very smart. Her strong personality just brightens up any room and her charm makes her very easy to get along with. These two wonderful women were the highlight of my night.

There were lots of activites going on such as raffle tickets and prizes, bobbing for apples, decorating mini pumpkins for your dormrooms, pizza and unlimited fountain drinks! They also had a pretty sick haunted house downstairs that everyone got to go through free of charge :) Darian of course was way to chicken to go through so me, Katherine and KP decided to go. No lie- it was a pretty badass haunted house. Lol. I'm pretty sure I had my arms around KP's neck the entire time because I was so scared... Boy do I love Halloween :)

Overall this was an awesome night. I had a blast with the activities and felt pride in myself for helping out in supporting the fight against cancer. I know this wasn't the best blog ever but I couldn't help but rush.. Lol Sorry :/ anyways, i hope i've given you a little bit of insight of something I thought was a great thing to blog about. hah. Till' next time (:

Surprise, surprise..

So last week was our spring break for school and we had the entire week off. A whole week of NO SCHOOL, I was way too excited! I had so many things I had planned on doing over the break...... movies, sleepovers, brunch with my teammates(:, chillin with my cousins from Oakland, hanging out with Rob (my fathead boyfriend), just everything! But what did I do?? Absolutely nothing. Lol. Until a trip down south (south of Utah i mean lol) came unexpectedly.

Once Spring Break had started, we were having back to back workouts for volleyball which unfortunately left me way too tired to do anything. Even though those workouts were only an hour.. trust, it was the longest, most tiring, hardest, sweat-drippin-like-water hour of my entire life! Lol. Seriously though. I just wasn't in the mood to do anything. On top of workouts we had our regular volleyball practices on Tuesday and Thursday nights in Layton. I'm pretty sure I spent my whole spring break either in Bountiful for workout or Layton for practice.

Since I was dreading workouts and practices, I decided (in the middle of the week) that I needed a break from volleyball. Lol- So I woke up at 8 in the morning, put on my most comfortable sweat pants, met up with some close friends (who wish to remain unknown LOL) and headed out to surprise my boyfriend in Ephraim. It was thee longest two hour drive of my life.. but besides the deers, cows and stinky smell.. it was well worth it :)

The entire drive on the way down I was so paranoid that Rob had already found out I was coming, even though I had told him that I'll be in Layton for training the whole day (smart I know! LOL). But I knew I was just thinking way too much and the surprise was still in progress. So I didn't let it get to me. He kept sending me, "What are you doing?" text messages and all I sent back was, "Oh nothing, just still in Layton" LOL- and the closer we got to Ephraim the more nervous I became. I don't know why, but I was getting butterflies in my stomach! Then I realized that during the time me and Rob were dating, I had never surprised him. Not once. Some girlfriend I am right? hah. This was the perfect opportunity!

But anyways, so you would think that after not seeing your girlfriend/boyfriend for a couple days.. an unexpected visit from either would be the best to do right????- So here I am wondering how Rob was going to react to me surprising him. Is he gonna be happy to see me? Is he gonna give me a hug? and all I kept thinking was, "I can't wait to see the look on his face" Lol- So we pull up to his apartment (I made sure he was there first of course) and I watched my friends walk up quietly and knock while I stayed behind just to be the last one to walk in ;p LOL.

He opened the door and thats when I made my move and walked into the apartment where I saw him standing in the living room..

******************

ME: "Surprise!"

HIS REACTION: *looks around* "Ummm...." *scratches head* "Wowuhhh..?" *stares at me with a blank look on his face* "But I have class??"

ME: "Gee thanks, it's nice to see you too!"

******************

So as you can tell.. this wasn't exactly the reaction I was lookin for. Lol- but he told me afterwards he was just in shock mode (nice cover up rob ;p haha just kidding). But being there was the important thing and we ended up setting that aside and going out for lunch. The whole time we were there all he kept saying to me was, "I hate you. I can't believe you're really here. You really got me babe" Lol. I felt special because I was actually able to pull it off instead of giving in and telling him that I was on my way to Snow even though it was killing me inside that I had to keep lying to him.

After lunch, we thought it would be a good idea to head to the Manti Temple and take some pictures to remember our little trip.

After taking a million pictures (I only put up three out of the twenty that we took LOL), time was running short and so my friends and I had to get ready to head back to Salt Lake. Since Rob had his practice and I still had my volleyball to attend, we had only got to be with other for a short amount of time.


The surprise visit: fun.

Saying "good-bye": not so fun.


I don't get to see Rob as much as I want to so the trip had gone much better then what I had planned. Since I only see him on weekends, being able to see in the middle of the week made the rest of my week that much better :)

Colorado Crossroads

Last month my team and I had traveled to Denver, Colorado for one of the biggest tournaments of the season. Also known as the Colorado Crossroads tournament. With over 200 teams from around the U.S, my team was going in as the highest rank from utah as 4th place putting us in a great spot to start off our first days of playing. This tournament has always been one of my most favorites out of the many that I travel to every year, but being that this is my last year of club and the last time I was ever going to play in this tournament, it just made it more of an amazing experience.

As soon as we got off the plane, we got our rental and arrived to our hotel to find it packed with crowds of people both inside and out. I mean we didn't know what was going on... but we were curious enough to roll down our windows and try and take a closer look as we pulled into the parking lot. We're just nosey like that I guess... LOL. We saw tons of people dressed up in different kinds of costumes! As we sat in the lobby waiting for our coach to check us into our rooms, looking at all the varieties of costumes and signs that were around we realized that we were at an anime convention. Lol.

NOTE: For those of you who don't know what anime is. They're characters of japanese cartoons such as pokemon, digimon, sailor moon, etc.

I could tell ya now it was pretty crazy. I saw at least 5 pikachu's, 4 sailor moons, 2 charmanders, and even sub zero and scorpio from Mortal Kombat. Hahaha. It was quite the show... and this picture proves it. Lol. These girls in the photo were fairies, and the girl on the far right of the couch was a unicorn... hmmmm, I wonder which cartoon she's from? ha. Some of those outifts were outrageous! But cool :p

I mean as ridiculous as these people looked from our perspective, to them there was nothing wrong. I mean they looked at us like "WE" were the weird ones.. haha. As extreme as our night sounded, it had gotten even more crazy when some guy in a gas mask punched one of our team moms in the face! (For no reason, he was just drunk apparently. lol)-- but drunk or not, its still not ok. Lol. So we had to call the cops and he was arrested, pretty sure my coach was gonna beat the crap outta that guy. haha.

Our first day of matches we started off
extremely well in defeating all of our components and taking first. But even though the first day seemed easy in a sense, we knew we had upcoming tough teams that we would have to face. This kept our motivation to work harder on limiting our mistakes and having higher expectations. After four LONG but exhausting games, we went to dinner and headed back to our hotel to sleep for the next big day ahead of us.

Having the morning wave for the 3 days that we were down there, it was pretty tiring waking up at 5:30 every morning and preparing for our games. But starting early meant finishing early which had us ending at noon and giving us the rest of the day to enjoy our trip :) Although the weather wasn't as great, the city was beautiful. Not that Salt Lake isn't beautiful, Denver just had its own kinda beauty.

So we're sitting in our hotel rooms dying of boredom and one of my teammates (the one jumping behind me on the right) comes into the room and says, "Let's take some epic pictures!" lol- of course I was down. What were a couple of bored teenage girls to do?? hah. This was BY FAR thee most funniest night of my life. We even went a floor lower than the floor we were staying on, just so my coach couldn't hear us jumping in the halls. Lol. We attempted to take this "action picture" about 12 times before we actually got it right. Being a ninja ain't easy folks ;) lol.

Before I was born, my grandmother had died from breast cancer which left me unfortunate to never meeting her in person. But from the stories my dad would tell me, I knew she was an amazing woman. Every year the tournament has a "Dig Pink" day where they choose one day (usually Sunday) to support those who have suffered from breast cancer and the women who are fighting it against it. In honor of those people, each team is required to wear something pink. So my team and I had went and bought bright pink sequenced headbands and wore them in respect to the fight against breast cancer. Some teams had pink jerseys, pink socks, pink laces and even pink hair! It was amazing to see such great support.

Even though we didn't walk out of the gym with gold medals around our necks, the experience was more to us than not being able to win every game. But it gave us the motivation to work just as hard and being able to surpass our abilities the next time around in our next upcoming tournament in reno.

I can honestly say it was one extraordinary trip I'm never gonna forget. Of course there were other details I could say but thats gonna take some chapters, not blogs. Lol- so maybe I'll save it for another blog when I have alotta time on my hands ;)

..Just Because/Senior Year

So i noticed that blogging has become the "new thing" nowadays and after reading blogs from other people it had interested me enough to try it out and make one for myself! :) So here I am...

So I woke up this morning thinking about how much I hate school and how I can't wait to be done with it, and then it dawned on me and I realized that I only have 2 more months left until I graduate from highschool.
--2 more months and I'm done.... completely. No more seeing favorite teachers. No more reuniting with class friends. No more spirit week. No more dances. No more classes to ditch. LOL. Jk. I know it may not seem like such a big deal, but just the thought of me being done with highschool scares the sh** outta me. Lol- I mean, leaving highschool and friends are hard of course but growing up is even harder. My sister had told me that after you graduate, your entire life changes and you learn to become an adult. Now for me, that could go both ways in being a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes I even ask myself if I'm ready to enter into the reality world and leave home where I can learn to be more independent and live on my own. I mean I still feel like a kid inside! Lol. But I know I need to realize that I can't expect to be sheltered by parents my whole life. After all, one of these days I'm gonna be living on my own and possibly married with kids. I can't be some sore loser on the side. Lol.

I've been dreading the day that I graduate since my senior year had began last august, thinking to myself: Who's going to be there? Who am I gonna sit by? What am I gonna wear?...... Am I gonna look fat in my gown? LOL- I mean cmon now, its my highschool graduation.. I wanna look smokin! Oh I mean, sophisticated and adult like. Lol. But seriously though, thats the biggest upcoming event for me and just thinking about gives me butterflies in my stomach. My boyfriend had told me that graduating is "the greatest feeling in the whole world"..... so I thought to myself, " Mmmm no honey, LOSING WEIGHT is the greatest feeling in the whole world" Lol. Just kidding, thats besides the point. But what he said really did hit me hard. There are a lot of things great feelings can come from but are only in comparison to baby steps. For me, graduating is another big step higher into accomplishing my life long goals. So until that day, I'm just another teenage girl learning to grow up and preparing to take that step.