The Garrs

My family with Sister and Elder Garr

The sweetest couple missionary I had ever met. They are in our ward. Sis. Garr is in our RS Stake Presidency and Elder Garr is my D&C professor. I see Sis. Garr almost everyday in PCC, she works for the Mission Settlement, and she just always have a sweet smile. She never fails to make my day with her sweet thoughts. Elder Garr is the best D&C professor ever. I am taking my second class with him this semester, and I just love it. Not only because he is very smart, but also because of his great lessons and stories. He always leaves the class wanting more of his stories. He's so good at it, and I really like his sense of humor.

I wanted to share this photo because this was taken during our ward thanksgiving potluck. As I was going over the things I am thankful for, I realized how blessed am I with wonderful people in my life that I am forever grateful for. Elder and Sister Garr are one of those. One day I glanced over my school notes from Elder Garr, and I just thought, "Boy, these things I wrote from his class are worth keeping in my journal." It really is. In my typical class notes, I usually just take note of the things that might show up on the test. With Elder Garr's class, most of it are powerful spiritual thoughts that garnished my mind as I was listening to his lessons. I am forever thankful for all the lessons I learned from him, and for the kindness and love that Sister Garr had shown. I love them.

Catch up, catch up! :)

OH! This is what I was scared off, haha. I just realized I haven't been updating my blog for a long time now. haha. I knew this is gonna happen. But, anyway, I found another idea of journal keeping last week. My teacher told us about his video journals that he records everyday and sends to his email and store it there. That sounded like a good idea to me, since I am lazy to write/type. haha. So yeah, I started doing video journals, and lets see what is gonna happen. I still enjoy blogging though, it allows me to share things to other people and to update my families and friends too. But I would still love to have my own personal journal. So few updates:

• FHE plans had been doing good. We are still on our schedule so far! :)
• Keahi is 9 months old now. Starting to stand up momentarily on his own, but not quiet walking yet.
• Classes are going more difficult. Welcome to Senior life.
• We are still in Hawaii but we only have 5 months left, and the leads me to the most exciting update:
• GARRY'S GRADUATION!!! 

I am a very proud wife. My husband is the most hardworking person I have ever met. He had a lot of hard times when he started college, but he's a tough guy :).If there is one thing I learned from Garry that I would always be proud of, it's his good planning in life. He doesn't believe that there is success in "last minute stuffs". Preparation is always a very important thing to him. He may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I admire his hard work in his studies. Very loyal to the teachers, very persistent in his homework, very perfectionist in his projects, and most importantly, he has a very good goal setting skill. I have never seen a student in my life, who would be so depressed to miss class, to the point that he would always think that missing a class is the same as being disrespectful to the teacher, to yourself, to your parents, and to your university, all at the same time. He only gets upset with failed exams if he didn't review. He only gets disappointed with missed homework if he slacked off with his scheduling. Other than that, everything he does for school, he gives his all, and whatever the outcome will be, as long as he knew he did his best, he will be thankful. I love my husband, and I learned a lot of things that are valuable in life from him.

I love you and congratulations! :)

Family Home Evening

"In 1915 President Joseph F. Smith and his counselors in the First Presidency began a Churchwide effort to strengthen the family. They called on parents in the Church to gather their children once each week for a "Home Evening." Families were to take time to pray and sing together, read the scriptures, teach the gospel to one another, and participate in other activities that would build family unity."

Family home evening is one of the many things Garry and I would want to raise our children with. Even though it was really awkward at first to do it with just the two of us, we strive to hold FHE regularly. Now that our son is here, we decided we have to make sure FHE is something our kids would look forward to every week. And so from our last FHE we decided we would now prepare for every FHE. We've always been just praying, picking some random topics, plan for the week, and that's it. Some changes for preparation includes:

1. Plan the monthly FHE schedule every first Monday
2. Include activities (even though it'll be awkward once again because there's just the two of us and an 8 month old baby)
3. First FHE of the month would be "Daddy's Choice Lesson". Garry will choose the topic that he think would be appropriate for the family's current situation. The rest of the month's topic will be distributed between Mommy and Daddy, and kids someday :)
4. We will have an opening hymn in French and closing hymn in English (haha, not too important, but hopefully this would help me improve my French, and Keahi's too :)

I am really hoping all these preparations would have great results for my family. But like what Garry always tells me, "the essence of holding an FHE is spending precious time with your family." As long as the things we do in our FHE helps us strengthen our love for each other and to our Heavenly Father, that's what matters.

Here's a sneak peak of our November's FHE plan :)

The church's website got a lot of resources for FHE too that I really want to take advantage of:

http://www.lds.org/hf/display/0,16783,4215-1,00.html

and

http://www.lds.org/cm/topicsearchalpha/1,18284,4789-1-1,00.html (list of the hymns that allows me to have them in both french and english, just what I needed) :)

Keahi's First Halloween

Happy Halloween! :)


Since I got here in Hawaii, this is the first time I actually felt halloween. I didn't dressed up but I sure did for my little guy. I tried to convince Garry that we should dress up too, he just kept saying "ta cru", so nevermind. haha. We were gonna go trick or treat, but the two boys boycott me by sleeping late afternoon all the way 'til 7pm, and Keahi didn't wanna keep his costume on. So we just walked to foodland and watched kids with their cute costumes. Keahi had fun. Here are some of his pictures.

He was a ninja.

A knocked down ninja.

Trying to show his tiny tooth.

He's got Garry's lips. This is how Garry's lips looks like when he's unconscious. haha

He wished he could eat those goodies.