Whats Going on Now

We had a great Christmas at Andy's parents house in Provo. Andy's sister was visiting from North Carolina with her kids too and there was always family stopping by. I felt like it was a nonstop party for 2 weeks. Andy's brother was married 2 days after Christmas in Salt Lake. They had two receptions on separate weekends. It was fun to have so many occasions for family to get together and see everyone. I feel like our time there went by too quickly though and before we knew it we were on our way to Maryland. I flew out the day before Andy so I could spend more time with my sister who I hadn't seen in a year and a half before she went back to California. I flew by myself with Tyler but was lucky to be on the same Southwest flight as some family friends who were life savers in helping me the whole way with Tyler.

We've been in Maryland for almost two weeks now. We've wanted to find work on the east coast and are focusing our search here. Its discouraging knowing how many people are looking for work right now, but in a lot of ways I feel that Andy and I are being looked out for. We're in a much better situation than some - we have nothing to lose right now! I'd rather be in our own place sooner rather than later, but for now, we're doing alright. We've looked into the VA (Veteran's Affairs) lately and hear a lot of good things. There's supposed to be a lot more jobs there in the next 6 months so we'll see whats happens. We're going to just start sending out resumes to all of the locations this weekend. If anyone knows of any possibilities for jobs in Social Work, we're all ears!

Here's a picture of my handsome boys at Brad's wedding reception:

Transistioning

So I've sat down to do a blog entry many times over the past month and just didn't know where to start. So today I'm going to try to catch up a little. I wanted to post about the things that have been easier or harder than I imagined with coming back to the States. In a lot of ways I think we acclimated too quickly. Really this is what I've known my whole life so its easy to slip back into the way things always were. Here are a few items of mention from our "transition."
What I noticed most when first driving down 1-15 in Utah: The wealth: everyone has such nice homes, stores, etc in America.
Unexpected difficult transition: locating a car in a Wal-Mart/ Costco parking lot (Andy and I have lost our car three times now, I guess we're a little out of practice with large parking lots)
Slowest learning curve: I still turn on my windshield wipers every time I make a turn in a left hand drive now.
Biggest commercial thrill of coming home: Going to a American grocery store - 20 aisles of endless possibilities for dinner!
Things that have stuck with us somewhat: Not feeling like I have to look fashionable and wear make up everyday. I do more than I did in Samoa, but if I'm not going anywhere besides Wal-Mart that day - why put in the effort? Tyler was playing with a roll of wrapping paper in the kitchen the other day and was holding it with both hands and sweeping it back and forth across the floor, saying "I cut the grass." (Everyone mows their lawns with weed wackers in Samoa) Tyler still thinks this is how you cut the grass and imitates a weed wacker instead of a lawn mower.
Things we miss about Samoa: the lack of crowds, we were hit hard with the reality of crowds the second we stepped off the plane in LAX, the day before Christmas Eve! It was a nightmere, but we made it to Utah somehow. We miss the Nius too, although we found a family at church that can get us Taro and make Palusami! I miss how hospitable everyone is in Samoa too. They're such a welcoming people.

Masi Popo Houses

(Tyler) and My Masi Popo House

For our last playgroup before I left Samoa I really wanted to make Gingerbread houses. My friends Apu and Pura had never made them so I wanted to introduce them to it. Suzie and I searched the whole island for Graham crackers and couldn't find any. We tried all of our favorite "American goods" stores and no one had them. This morning Suzie came up with a great idea. We'll use Masi Popo. Its a biscuit like cracker they make here out of coconut, flour, sugar, and water. They worked great for our houses. The icing was melting in the heat but most of them lasted until we could at least get a picture. It became more of an adult project than a kids one. The kids had fun eating all the candy though. I was glad I could introduce my Samoan friends to one of our "Palagi" traditions.

Busy working away

The finished products

Trying to catch the Christmas Spirit

I have to say with 90 degree weather and 90% humidity everyday. Its been tough for me to feel like its Christmas time. I play Christmas songs on our Zune all day and have tried making some of my favorite Christmas treats, but its still a little tough. I need hot cocoa, cold weather and lots of Christmas lights (with electricity being so expensive here, you don't see many Christmas lights). A few weeks ago for Family Night we decided to crank the AC, make a version of hot cocoa and decorate our 1.5 ft. Christmas tree. I only bought 6 ornaments for it and Tyler took them off the tree as fast as I could put them on. He'd take off an ornament, yell "Ball!" and chuck it across the room. The tree has been moved out of Tyler's reach ever since. Only 6 more days til we're back in snowy Utah sitting around a big Christmas tree with all our family!

Funny Tyler moment: Tyler was carrying around our fly swatter today swinging at imaginary bugs and kept repeating the words "erry crifmas!" It took me a while to look over at him and realize he was holding the fly swatter high above his head, swining it down on a bug and yelling "Merry Christmas!" over and over again. I don't think it was very merry for that bug.

Big News

I have two big announcements for our family that we decided to make public. The first is that we're expecting another baby! I'm due June 20th. Like last time around, I've been feeling pretty sick during my first trimester, but I'm hopeful that its coming to a close soon as I enter my second trimester. We're very excited to have our family grow and for Tyler to have a sibling.

Our other big announcement is that we're moving back to the States in 2 weeks. Its a rather long story that I decided I won't post all of the details on a public blog, but you can ask us the details in another forum. We really feel its the right time for us to leave and are just having faith that we'll be able to find another job in the States soon. We'll be in Utah for Christmas and New Years and then spend some time in Maryland at the beginning of January. Although these past few months have been tough for me here, I find that I'm looking around now at all of the things about Samoa that I will miss. We both feel that its the right thing to do though and are very excited to be back around family and in our home country again. We fly home on December 22nd, but won't arrive in Utah until late on the 23rd (Its a long flight). Hopefully we'll get to visit with all of our old friends during the holidays.

Thanksgiving and Impetigo

This past week we celebrated Thanksgiving and I don't really have any pictures of our dinner. It didn't exactly go as planned anyway. Andy worked on Thanksgiving and Tyler and went over to campus for Thanksgiving dinner with the boys. Tyler ended up getting a fever and I had to leave early. Kye also wasn't feeling well (surprise, surprise). By Saturday they had both broken out in sores all around their mouths, legs, arms, and bum. We took them into the doctors office together and the doctor thought they had generalized herpes and were highly contagious! We were suppose to have another Thanksgiving dinner that day with people from church. We spent Saturday busy making our Thanksgiving dishes to send with our husbands while we searched google images for pictures of kids with generalized herpes and tried to get second opinions from nurses and doctors we knew in the states. After lots of possible diagosises from Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease to Chicken Pox we took them back into the doctor on Tuesday. Their sores were starting to heal but had formed blisters that were opening and then scabbing over (Sorry for the gross details). The doctor then diagnosed them with a mild case of Impetigo. (Tyler's was more mild than Kye). Apparently this is very contagious among kids and is an infection in their skin. Although they looked pretty awful for a few days, they're starting to clear up now and are back to their usual selfs. One more adventure in Samoa right?

Halloween - Samoan Style

Independent Samoa doesn't actually celebrate Halloween. Luckily a few people from our ward are Americans and still celebrate so they had a ward activity for kids to trick-or-treat to people's houses in the ward. We also had a Halloween Party for the boys at Andy's work, which I was in charge of so we still got our yearly dose of Halloween festivities. It was kind of late by the time the work Halloween party was over so we didn't get out trick-or treating till almost the boy's bedtime, but we still made it around to a handful of houses.Their costumes were my idea - Samoan slap dancers. It was a really cheap costume - only about $3 for the material and the necklaces were homemade by Suzie (thank you!). I know they took her a long time. The boys even performed a little dance for a few houses. Tyler doesn't really know what candy is yet and I decided to keep it that way for a year longer. He just didn't understand why we weren't going into everyone's house after they gave us candy. I'm sure he'll "get it" more next year.