Oh School.. How I HATE you..

Many of my friends tell me how they wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing... Being a full-time mom, part-time employed, and a full-time student all at the same time... Yet, I have found myself wanting to just give up on the full-time student thing.  It'll be 8 years since I've graduated from high school, which means that 4 years ago I should've already graduated from college or somewhat near it. A year ago, I was so sure that I knew what I wanted to do as far as my education.. now I find myself questioning my major, which puts me basically at a stand-still.  While others are registering for the next semesters' classes, I'm just sitting here.  I literally feel like everyone is moving past me, and I'm the lost one in the middle of the crowd.

I was talking to my cousin the other day and we talked about how all of our friends, well most of them, have graudated, or will be graudating from college within the next year.  But if you ask us, well... we have no idea when we're gonna graduate.  I think that's why I've been in such a slump.  :(  I feel like how I felt a couple years ago, where I faced the SAME dilemma.  I don't know what it is. Or maybe it's that this semester is just a little bit overwhelming.  Maybe there should be a rule that if your pregnant you can't take classes lol... Ok it'll never happen, but I should tell myself that because I swear my mind is already thinking of other things, and I'm already stressed out over nothing.. well throw school on top of it and it's all feeling just a little too much for me right now.

Hoi, I can't wait for this week to be over. I have 3 finals coming up, then by next Thursday I'll be free.. just for a little while I figure out what classes I'm going to take next.. HELP! lol

Finals Week = Stress!!!

I'm so so so so so so so SO over school.

For real.

This is the last stretch, about a week and a half left and then we're almost done. This semester has kind of been a tough one, I haven't been as motivated to go to school, I seriously feel like it's NEVER-ENDING and I just want to graduate and be done, but it'll be a while before that happens. On Saturday (yesterday) I went to our math class right after work, so I had fehi stay home with the kids, thinking that it was just a review for our Final.  Boy was I wrong.  I walked in a saw everyone with their heads towards their papers, they were taking a test! Ugh. Apparently we had a test but luckily our teacher is gonna let us take it on Tuesday.  HOWEVER, it's a test on about 6 chapters, and we have until Tuesday to do all the homework and turn it in on Tuesday too.  BUT to make things worse, we have a Final for our sewing class on Thursday (which I'm not too worried about), it's the comprehensive math final on Saturday that I'm worried about.  Like really?? Who has a test right before the final?? That's ridiculous.

Our class has had issues with this Math class in particular because of the way it's set up.  Instead of having smaller tests of like 1,2, or 3 (at most) chapters... His tests have like 7-8 chapters worth of stuff, and it's a LOT of stuff to remember.  Oh, and did I mention it's a medical math class??? So it's just a little bit more work, well at least to me it is.  Not only that but he words his math tests differently from how it's taught in the book.  He basically makes you do every single problem in the book, you think you know what you're doing, then he words it differently on his tests.  And of course, english is NOT his first language so sometimes it's hard to understand his questions. lol. Good thing I speak FOB as well. hahahhaha.

Overall, I just can't wait for this semester to be over.  I really don't expect to do that well.  On top of that I don't know what classes to take next. Because I don't want to do nursing anymore, I don't know what to register for next.  On top of that Fehi has decided that he's probably not going to do nursing as well.  Which I'm actually happy he came to that decision.  My husband is the entrepreneur type.  He wants to own his own business, but the only reason why he was going to do nursing was because he knows you could make good money in it, and well you'll always need nurses.  But after talking with him, he came to the conclusion that maybe he should first go after a business degree, or something like that.  I totally agree with him, and so now things have changed.  At first we were both going to school for Nursing, and were planning to do it together, but now we both have decided to change our majors.

Hoi, let's just say I have tooooo much on my mind, and school is just stressing me out.  I can't wait for it to be over, and then I'm gonna have to take the next few weeks to figure out what I'm going to do.

Kesaia's 2nd Bday!

My baby girl Kesaia turned 2 years old on Monday April 2nd, but we didn't celebrate her birthday until Saturday April 7th.  We held off her bday celebration for the weekend because we wanted my mom to be able to make it, and we were still in the middle of renovating the bathroom, and finishing up the renovations in the living room and kitchen. And thank goodness we were done with renovating on Thursday night.

The kids with their gifts from Aunty Ila!
They are sooo cool! lol

We wanted to keep things a little more simple, so we decided to just do a BBQ.  I almost had to change our plans because on Friday (thanks to Utah's bipolar weather) I woke up to snow! But thank goodness Saturday was beautiful, sunny and warm! So it was perfect for bbq'ing.  We the marinated chicken overnight (hawaiian style!) and then my mom flew with the teri-burgers and redondo hot dogs (a must have for any bbq- well hawaiian one that is).

It was nice for me and my mom to be the one relaxing this time.  For baby moe's bday we had a little too much on our menu, and we were cooking the whole day.  But this time, we got to relax, and have Fehi, my brother, and his cousin bbq. The food was YUMMMMY and everyone couldn't get enough of the teri-burgers.  We later sang happy birthday to her, and let her blow out her candle, and then she was able to open up her presents.  Sadly, I suck at taking pics, so I basically only got these pics of her opening up her presents.

All-in-all it was a wonderful celebration.  The kids had plenty of fun playing in the backyard, and Kesaia enjoyed all the attention she was receiving.  We were excited to have everyone see the renovations we made in the house, and my mom was especially surprised too.  She even told us we needed to come to Hawaii and do her bathroom and stuff... Yeah, we'll see about that one lol.

Renovations Complete :)

Well for the most part we're done, and I'm happy with the end results. :)  All together we've redone the living room, kitchen, upstairs bath, and entry way. And it's been a loooooong 3 weeks of doing all this, but like I said before.. I'm very happy with how everything turned out.

Here's some pics (Before/During/Afters):

Living Room- Before:

-Blue Carpet

-Dark brown paint

Living Room- During:

-Put in New flooring

-BUT paint gotta go...

Living Room* FINISHED Product! :) 

-Lighter Paint Color

-New Base Boards

-New Ivory Curtains

-New Area Floor Rugs

Only thing I think is missing is more decorative things, maybe a coffee table, or better yet.. new couches! lol.

But hey, I can't complain we did get these bad boys for free.. so they're automatic keepers (and they are really comfy!) :)

Entry Way: Finish Product!

-New Flooring (Same as Kitchen) 

-New Carpet on Stairs (Same as Area Rug)

Kitchen- Before:

 Sadly this is the best picture I have of how the kitchen looked like before.

-Brown Dirty Greasy Cabinets

-Green Paint

Kitchen- During:

After painting the whole kitchen this minty-green color, we (I) decided the cabinets needed to be painted white. Here we are with most of the cabinets painted white.  Well after putting the cabinets up, I didn't like the green after all. So what do we do... Change the paint color. :)

Kitchen-After:

-"Banana Cream" paint color (looks more soft and not as YELLOW/BRIGHT as in the pics)

- New flooring

-Painted Cabinets with original Hardware

-Didn't put up all the cabinets (kept 2 cabinets up top out)

-Took dishwasher out (wasn't working anyways) & now use it as storage space.

-And my favorite: Bead Boarding! :)

Don't mind the little things that don't belong in this picture lol. 

The only thing we didn't change or alter in anyway was the counter top, though I wanted to take a sledge hammer to it. lol. We decided to keep them, they were/are in decent shape.

Took curtains that was originally from the living room and hung them here. These pictures (from my phone) really doesn't do the kitchen justice. :)

Bead Boards!!! :) These were a pain, especially to paint, but I love the country/cottagey feel of them.

Bathroom- Before/During:

A few months ago I removed all the wallpaper in the bathroom.

Only to find out there was another layer of paper to remove. 

Basically finished removing all the old wallpaper.

Then our bathroom looked exactly like this for months!!!

Bathroom- Finished Product! :)

- Fehi chose the paint color.  Looks like a deeper blue here, but is slightly different in person (well at least to me it is)

-4 feet high Bead Boards

- New Vanity Set & Countertop

- Put in another/bigger toilet

-New flooring :)

It took forever to find a curtain to fit the color and feel of the room, and I'm glad to say I do like this one.

New Flooring

Change the lighting fixture, Got rid of the Cabinet/Mirror thang and just got a big white framed mirror.

Installed the Vanity/Sink/Faucet,etc.

Overall, this whole experience with fixing up the house has been very tiring but Fehi & I have never been more proud of our hard work.  Actually it was a trio-effort.  My brother TJ has been there since the first day we brought back the flooring for our living room, and has helped along the way.  He's quite the pro. in flooring installation now lol.  He did the flooring in the entry way on his own, and I believe the bathroom on his own as well.  He also helped a great deal with the flooring in the kitchen and living room.

Yesterday (well technically 2 days ago because it's now 1am) was probably the most tired I have been.  Tired of painting, tired of sweeping, tired of cleaning, tired of stepping over all the sheetrock & breadboards, tired of a whooooole lot of things.  Actually I'm really surprised I'm not knocked out right now.  I woke up on Wednesday Morning at 10am, and like all the other mornings, I would get up and get to work right away.  Well I woke up on Wednesday at 10am, stayed up all day, helping Fehi & my brother fix the bathroom.  We stayed up till laaate at night, and then it was now 2am.  I worked at 430am till 830am, on no sleep, but still came home and we finished up all the little details, and cleaned up a great deal. (You should've seen my deck, it was filled with garbage - that we have temporarily thrown on the side of the deck lol).

Today we all breathed a long, loud, sigh of relief because we were finally finished.  Though technically that's a lie because I have just a few bead boards in the bathroom to paint... then I will be done. :)

In the future we look to finish remodeling the downstairs bathroom and then all the bedrooms (starting with ours of course!)

Oh and I have to add that I have realized through this whole experience, just how handy my husband is.  And how wonderful, actually.. how much of a blessing it is, to know that he can do just about anything I ask of him, and trust me.... I had a lot of requests on how I wanted to house to look.  He's been soooo awesome these past few weeks, sacrificing much time and especially sleep to get all this done by this weekend, which was our original deadline.  So yayy for us accomplishing that as well! :)

Renovation Overkill

Seriously! When is it ever going to end!?!?!? lol.  So I shared last week that we switched out our ugly blue carpet for new laminate flooring.  WELL.. turns out we didn't like the dark paint with the floors after all.  So we decided to paint our living room.  My hubby chose this minty green color but as soon as we started painting a little area we both decided "Hell... "...( Excuse Me... I mean....) "Heck No!" lol.  So then we decided that maybe it would look better in the kitchen.  Well that lead me to painting the whole kitchen.  I should've stopped there, but I didn't.  My pregnancy mind and my diy mind decided that we should paint the cabinets white (because they no longer matched the  paint color) and yeah.  One thing lead to another and we were pulling the vinyl flooring off in the kitchen. lol. It's actually kind of funny because I told my husband that we should throw away the dishwasher that has been there for years but is broken.  And on top of that I told him in Hawaii we don't have dishwasher... I was the dishwasher so therefore I don't even know how to use one (nor would I ever).  So when he took it out, I saw the ugly vinyl flooring and decided to pull up a part to see how the floors underneath it looked.  Well by "pulling" on it, I ripped it. Not a huge rip, but enough to have to replace the floors. lol. That was my evil plan in the first place hahahahaha.

So now we're up to our necks in renovations.  And I'm tiiired! I've had 4 days off this week.. and every single one of those days from morning to night I was doing something (painting, cleaning, tearing up, etc.) and now I have the next 3 days off and that's what we'll be doing.  We've repainted our living room, and have actually decided to repaint the kitchen (I know right.. how many paint colors are we gonna go through? lol).  After the living room and kitchen is 99% done we will start on our 2 bathrooms. Hoi, my back is already feeling the pain. :/  I'll be posting more updates and pics.  I didn't get a before shot of the kitchen, but here's some of the almost finished kitchen:

Painting the cabinet doors.. HATED doing this but it had to be done .. This was the priming stage :/

Cabinets are up (Well most of them) and our kitchen is still a mess...

New flooring in the Kitchen... 

Our Island/Countertop Before

Island/Countertop After.. I love bead boards! :)

Bead board on the walls... Just needs to be painted white. 

Living Room with the new lighter paint color.. Almost done painting :)

And then the rest of the stuff going into the bathrooms (Hoi) 

Now it's time to go finish painting the living room and then start painting the kitchen.  We chose a soft yellow color for the kitchen. Hopefully we like it, cause I will cry if we don't and we change it again lol.