Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the daddys and grandpas out there!  A special Happy Father's Day to my hubby Fi Dan! :)

Today started off as usual. Nenji and Rylan waking up first, then they start wrestling around, and then I woke up from them being crazy. Fi Dan got to sleep in today with baby Spencer. And I went and made some homemade doughnuts! Apparently here in Dominica, they don't have doughnuts and I have been wanting to make some for a while now. I think I have like 5 different pins on pinterest, so I figured to day was a perfect day! I prepped the dough the night before and then just rolled it out and fried it this morning. Made some sausages with rice and viola...a perfect Hmong breakfast. ;) I thought it was kinda a ghetto little breakfast, but it Fi Dan liked it and the boys were just thrilled we were having sausages. I gave a little "thank you daddy" talk, not thinking much of it, but I saw Fi Dan starting to tear up which made me know that it mean a lot to him. :)

We went to church and had a good day there. Then we came home and took a nap. After our nap we went to the river to feed the fish! Fi Dan has never gone with us and so he really enjoyed it. We came home, ate dinner, had Family Home Evening, took baths, and now the boys and daddy are asleep! Good day. :)

Helping mommy make some doughnuts.

Yum!  

Feeding the fish. 

He's so sweet. Just hanging out with mama. 

Take 1

Take 2

Take 3...Ry decided it was taking too long and left. 

LOL, he is so funny.

My little crazies!

 Nenji was our photographer...I thought he did pretty good. 

 They picked me some flowers...but it ended up on them! :)

Lately, I've been thinking about how blessed I am to have Fi Dan as my husband. Fi Dan and I met when I was only 17 and I just fell in love with him. Sometimes I look at 17 year old girls now and think, "Girl, you know nothing! You just a baby". So it's strange to me that I made up my mind I was going to marry Fi Dan when I was 17. I know that Heavenly Father definitely had a hand in it. If you would have asked 17 year old Kalia what she wanted in a husband, she probably would have said something silly like, "I just want to find someone who makes my heart smile". I really like that saying, but the Kalia now is thinking, "what the heck does that even mean?"

Now I know what I want and I have found it in Fi Dan. Crazy...right? Even though Fi Dan drives me nuts sometimes, he also is my best friend and my confidant. He has such a kind heart. Sometimes I have to give him the "really...you want me to do what?" stare when he easily forgives others and I still want to hold a grudge. (I know...I'm a bad person). He's such an amazing daddy. When I was 17 I didn't even think about kids, but I am just so glad that Fi Dan is such a good daddy and willingly makes time for the kids even though he's so busy. His sense of humor...nobody in the world knows his real sense of humor except for me. You all would be surprised by how funny he is. And lastly, I love it that he loves God and is a worthy Priesthood holder. He shows me how to be a better person because he always puts Heavenly Father first and he has such great faith. :)

Early Christmas (aka) Our Barrels!

So before we came to Dominica, Fi Dan suggested that I pack some barrels. All I really remember him saying is that cereal and diapers are really expensive here. For a pack of 24 diapers you pay 24.99 EC...that means about $10.00 US. And for a box of cereal depending on what kind, you can pay up to 21-25.00 EC, that's $7.86-$9.36 US dollars per box. CRAZY! So what did I mostly pack? Cereal and diapers! So from February to April I couponed and went to Target almost every other day with Kashia! It was so much fun. We went to a few other stores, but our favorite was Target because we could stack coupons, a Manufacture's coupon and a target coupon. We got really good deals there. Once Kashia did so well with her coupon that she only paid .98 cents. Amazing! The cereal boxes that I got averaged around $1.25 per box with my coupons. SUPER! :) 

Anyway, I packed these three barrels. One was FULL of diapers, one was half full of diapers and a ton of cereal, and then the third barrel was half packed of toilet paper. Then in every crack that I could find I stuff in cleaning products, toothpaste, kiddie snacks, baby snacks, baby food, and just everything that I could think of. But I wish I would have packed one more barrel full of crafting stuff, clothes, and just random stuff.

Well, it took 1 month and a half for the barrels to get here. We finally got it last week on Tuesday. Maybe at the beginning of next semester I'll ask my mom to send us a barrel! It's kinda expensive but well worth it because there are some stuff that you just cannot find here or it's so expensive that you just try to do without. But until then, I'm so glad our barrels got here safely! 

Opening the barrels really was like Christmas morning! I was probably the most excited out of all of us, it was wonderful! :)

I know, ugly grey barrel, but inside were my treasures!

Ry doing a happy dance!

The boys ripping open the tape.

Woowho! My cereal!

The boys helping mommy unpack the diapers. 

Trash...is now our treasure!

Everyday here is the same as the next with slight variations. Somedays are good and then somedays are not so good. On good days the boys and I do arts and crafts! I am so kicking myself for not shoving my suit cases or barrels with all my craft stuff. I wish I had construction paper, a stapler, all of my crochet stuff, scrapping paper, glue gun, yarn, felt, and my sewing machine. But not having all the luxuries sure has helped me appreciate little things.
For example, we don't throw away cereal boxes, toilet rolls, or anything cardboard cause that's what we use for arts and crafts! Yup, the boys are getting pretty good at using their imagination. :)

Here's Ry's guitar, made out of a cereal box, paper towel roll, duct tape, and rubber bands!

Nenji LOVED it, he rocked out for the whole evening. 

Rylan getting his groove on. 

We made race cars out of toilet paper roll. :)

Here's Nenji's car with a little finger puppet driving it. :)

That's how we do it in Dominica!

So yesterday the boys and I went to the river with some friends to feed the fish and to fish! We brought bread crumbs with us and off we went. It was the same exact location as the baptism that I wrote about a few weeks ago. It was so cool! When the kiddos threw in the bread crumbs the fish came like crazy and started to eat it. Then our awesome friends that we went with brought some regular sticks with fishing lines on them and we were able to catch some fish! It was pretty ghetto but pretty awesome too. I am learning that anything goes here in Dominica. Use whatever you can find to do what you gotta do. :) and so a fishing line on a stick was as good as any fishing pole you could buy.  All of the little kids took turns fishing and each of then actually caught one every time! It was pretty cool. We didn't keep them, we just threw them back in, but the Hmong-ness in me was like, "Wait! Don't throw that fish back in there, we can eat it for dinner! What are you doing throwing that fish back in?!" LOL, but then I thought about it and was like..."Who is going to kill and gut the fish...I know I'm not and Fi Dan isn't going to...oh well." I definitely need my mom or dad for that. But maybe next time I'll change my mind and keep the fish and try it by myself!

 Trying to throw rocks into the river.

Woo! Our first fish! 

Our friends. 

You can't see his fish very well, but it's there! 

Ry's fish! 

 The fish started flopping around and Ry got super scared. Nenji is holding his fish in that shirt and is about to let his fish go into the river. 

Today there was another baptism except this time it was at the beach...again, amazing. This time it was one of our friends' son who got baptized. The scenery was so beautiful...but it was so dang hot. Plus the kids were playing in the water so we couldn't even hear the talks. But it was nice to just be there and see Joshua get baptized. I'm telling you, even though I complain a lot about being here, I am also grateful because I am experiencing things I never would have back in the states and I am growing so much everyday. I always remind myself to just live in the moment and enjoy the time here on the island because it's only 11 more months and then we're back in the states forever! So...I'm starting to really like the island life and how you just gotta learn to roll with it here. :)

On the way to the beach. 

It looks beautiful but let me tell you, if you could feel the humidity and heat...it doesn't feel so beautiful.

 Yay! We made it. :)

Look at that little chubster! 

 His sand castle.

 Playing with the sand instead of listening to the talks.

Yup...it was a really nice day. 

 Enjoying snacks under the shade. Such a nice day. 

Daddy and his little silly baby. I love them! :D

I don't want to look at you.

LOL, here's another one. I was changing Spencer's diaper on the bed and Rylan decided to be Spiderman and started jumping on the bed right above baby's head. Naturally, I told him to stop or go jump on the other bed so he sad down and told me, "I don't want to look at you." LOL, I love his little mad face. 

Portsmouth Market & our house

So every Saturday there is an outdoor maker that I go to. It's past the church so it's quite a walk so I always take a transport. I usually go with some if the ladies in the church, but this weekend we all needed to go at different times. So this Saturday, Nenji was my partner. Besides, people here are wayyyyyy nicer to you when they see you have a kid.
Nenji was so excited. We woke up at 6 and took a transport. As you can see from his picture he loves not having to sit in a carseat, but I absolutely hate it! Every time we go around a curve I have to hide my terrified face so I don't offend the driver.
At the market you can get veggies for cheaper and there are some veggies that are only sold at the Saturday market. Plus you can haggle with them, but I'm not a great haggler, I usually just say ok...but every week I am getting better.
I also have a picture of a lady cutting open a coconut with a machete...scary but cool. And then there's some pictures of our road and house. :)

He's so happy here. If only he knew the kind of danger he were in, he wouldn't be smiling so big. 

Just enjoying the view. 

Fresh Coconut Juice! And I was wondering if her shirt stood for "Salt Lake City". :)

This is the road to our house from the main street. Our house is to the left with the green roof.

It's kinda like duplex. We live to the unit on the right in the picture, we have neighbors to the left and upstairs too. 

Another view of the house. 

This is our little yard. It's actually pretty nice because the boys can just go out and run around. And our house is really the one around that has a yard of any sort. Most people just have a fence. That's one thing we like about where we live right now. 

Another reason...

Ry is crying because he thinks that eating bread will turn him into a "fee fi fo fum Giant, and I don't want to be a fee fi fo fum giant!!!!!!" Those, my friends, were his exact words. Where he got this idea from....I have no idea. This is definitely my favorite reason so far.