When Hawaiians move away from the islands in order to buy their own homes, there’s a good chance that their destination is Las Vegas AKA “the 9th Hawaiians island”.  If you’ve been to Hawaii and tried out some of our local cuisine then you can only image what it’s like to be away from it. Luckily, locals are opening up restaurants all over Vegas where we can get our fix.

Kualei is a new company run by a ohana of cooks.  I’m talking about home style local food that you can only get at Papa’s house for family potluck. I’m so excited that Sarah & Sam are able to share with everyone their ono food.  Check out their website and give them a call for your next pa’ina.

A lot of time has passed and there have been so many things happening in life, hence the months of not posting.  I found out in October that my oldest child, Maui, is going to be having a baby in May.  When he first told me, I lost my mind.  I cried and cried.  He’s only 19 and going to be a dad.  I felt like all my dreams and all of my hard work raising him and trying to provide the very best for him just went down the drain.  It was heartbreaking! I had Maui when I was 18 and know first hand how it is to be a young parent and how much harder you have to work to provide.  School was harder because along with school there’s work on top of taking care of a baby who demands so much attention.

It took a while for me to finally see the positive and realize that everything happens for a reason and that a baby is the ultimate blessing that one can receive. Of course I still worry about the road ahead for Maui, but I know that with the support he has, he will be ok. The only thing to do is pray.

We recently found out that ITS A GIRL!  I am way too young to be called Grandma so I’ve been thinking of a cute nickname.  I’d love any suggestions.  Some that I’m considering are… cookie, lovey, kissy and toots.

Hi everyone!  I know that it has been so long since I wrote, but life has been so busy and there’s been so many changes!  I’ve been struggling with my anxiety and depression.  I’m going to be completely honest and say that I’ve spent so many nights just laying in bed and feeling like I’d just like to sleep the day away instead of getting up and going to work or making breakfast for my kids.  My kids are all doing great and I have so much to be grateful for but the thing is, it just takes something that gets me frustrated to feel so overwhelming that I do get really depressed.  I’m working really hard on trying to do things differently and take more time for myself and actually allow people to help instead of not wanting to burden anyone.

One thing that I absolutely loved, was writing blog posts and I’ve decided to set some time aside everyday so that I can do this.  I’m looking forward to sharing more with all of you and visiting your sites as well.  I hope that this is the one resolution that I can keep, the others I’ve already failed at.

I’m writing this at about 8:30pm.  Just a little over 12 hours ago I was getting my 13 year old son up to get ready for his Kamehameha Schools interview when I received this alert on my phone…

  
Suddenly all of the other phones in my house started blaring and we all went into panic mode because we had absolutely no idea what to do.  I grabbed my 2 year old, buckled her into her car seat and Kahele and Kūha’o got in the car and we drove to the nearest high school to seek shelter.  My 10 year old daughter had stayed with my mom last night and my 19 year old slept out.  I called my mom and told her to go to the nearest grocery store and called Maui and told him to go to the mall which was 5 minutes away from where he was.  All the while in my head all I could think was “this is it I’m never gonna see my 2 kids again”.  

We parked the car in the lot of Aiea high school, still wondering why we weren’t hearing the sirens. I grabbed my daughter and we started walking to the gym.  At this point it’s 8:28.  We’re waking to the gym (still in a panic and alternating calls to Maui and Téa) to find that the gym is locked up.  We start running back to our car.  The emotions that were going through me was something I never want to experience again.  At one point I just stopped walking because when I looked to my left I saw Pearl Harbor and thought ‘we’re dead’ and just squeezed my 2 year old and buried my face in her neck and just prayed. I don’t remember what I was saying while praying but  I do know that I’ve never prayed so hard and with so much feeling in my life. My dad called me at that moment and said that there was an alert saying it was a false alarm.  I told him I didn’t believe it while sobbing.  He said the alert came Tulsi Gabbard. Then people around us started yelling out “It’s a false alarm!”.  I still didn’t believe it, how could that be a false alarm and why did they wait so long to get that alert out? 13 year old just hugged me and said it’s ok Mom you can calm down.  I received the official alert on my phone soon after.

  
 I was in a complete daze as we walked back to our car.  We all got in the car and I just had a complete mental break.  I couldn’t get myself under control.  I called my mom and she had ended going to a store in Kailua and Maui had just ended up going into the concrete addition of my dads house, which was safer than where we were. 

When we got home we sat for a little bit still crying and decided to still take Kūha’o for his interview.  I’m glad we did because it was a much needed distraction even though I kept having these moments of anxiety and crying.  We picked up my daughter from my mom and my son from my dad and just spent the day at home together watching the news alerts and interviews and just being thankful to be alive. We are planning to make emergency kits for everyone tomorrow that we will have ready in case this happens again.  We also are going over where the best place to go will be.  This was a huge wake up call to us all. 

I’m so upset that they’re saying a “wrong button” was pushed!  Are they serious?!  A wrong button?!  Can we please see a picture of this button?  Is it some big red button?  Is it next to the false alarm button?  But that’s a rant for another post.

We’ve been hearing stories of the experiences of people all around the island and thought that this was a good place to document mine.  I hope that I will never have to experience the fear that I had today ever again! God bless you all!

  
Here’s a picture of our sunset this evening.  That’s Pearl Harbor to the left.  That line of lights are the bridge lights to Ford Island.