Aloha friends!

It’s Christmas so Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and happy holidays to those who don’t – blessings to one and all!

The one thing I dislike about Christmas is the traffic and short tempers/patience of people rushing to do things. I try to avoid going to the malls the two days before Christmas just to avoid being in a stressed out mood. It’s Christmas! We shouldn’t be so stressed out. But it never fails to give me some sort of stress from gift buying, delivering the gifts and trying to meet up with people, etc…but I do love the joy it brings my kids when they see the decorations. It’s winter break so and I got my kids the board game Life for Hanukkah and we have been playing Life (on repeat), Twister (someone else gifted that to my kids for Hanukkah), dreidel because it’s Hanukkah and my daughter can’t pass up trying to win chocolate! And speaking of chocolates…I’ve been getting so much treats and I try to give them away and then I get more treats back. 😅 My hubby isn’t here to help me indulge and I need to watch myself – he told me to just pack it up and send it to him in Okinawa.

He’s settling in fine, his job seems to be soooo much less stressful than the one here. I said he better relish this mental vacation because when he comes back in 2 years he’ll have to get used to the amount of work and the pace of work he did back here in Hawaii. And it’s crazy to think Hawaii as a stressful place to work, but it can be – he literally went from one island to another island just in different countries lol. He face-times us twice a day – and sometimes he gets on Minecraft with the kids (he created a personal server for them to use while he is away so they can be on together), and then he even played Life with the kids today 😅. So they are doing fine. When he starts work and the kids get back to school schedule it will be more difficult to face time but we’ll make it work.

Anyway that was my week – the stress of the holidays! Now it’s time to plan my daughter’s birthday sigh…the money spending never ends for me in November-January! 😩

Are we all ready for the New Year?!

Blog Posts:

• Goodreads Monday: Heartbreaker (Hells Belles, #2) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Happy Book Birthday | New Releases | 12/20/22
• Books I Hope Santa Brings This Year | TTT | 12/20/22
• WWW Wednesday | 12/21/22
• Looking Back on 2022: Books with Twins
• Looking Back on 2022: Series That I Started or Finished
• How the Grump Saved Christmas by. Claire Kingsley | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Let’s Talk Bookish: Holiday Books | 12/23/22
• Book Sequels I Want to Read in 2023

I can barely read I’ve been so busy!

Books I Read:

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Currently Reading:

Shows/Movies I Watched:

• Emily in Paris – Season 3 (Netflix) – I’m halfway through the season! I’m trying to watch it while on the treadmill.

How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!

Aloha friends!

The kids are officially on Winter Break – my daughter caught another cold, I went to see the show Hamilton yesterday which was amazing and today is when my husband leaves for Okinawa, Japan to work for 2 years.

So now starts a journey I never thought I’d be in since he’s already out of the military – I really didn’t think I’d be doing the whole single-parent thing…but it’s the thought of trying to keep my kids happy and okay during the holidays and I mean more emotionally than physically. It’s Hanukkah week (Happy Hanukkah) and my hubby usually does the candles and prayer every night. And then there is Christmas morning of course – but we usually head over to my mom’s for lunch so they will be surrounded by family and New Year’s we usually stay in because the fireworks terrifies my dog and Hawaii on NYE is bonkers. But right after New Year’s is our daughter’s 6th birthday. SO he’s going to miss a lot of family moments and I know I’ll do the best I can…but sometimes the thought of doing everything alone is daunting and overwhelming. I just have to learn to ask for help more (and I have plenty help – my family lives 30 minutes away, I have friends too). It is what it is and I guess I should start planning for that Japan trip which we are tentatively planning for October 2023!

Anyway I hope your week was wonderful and you have a fabulous start of the new week – it’s the countdown to Christmas! 😆

Blog Posts:

• E-Books on Kindle Unlimited or Deals I Found This Week | 12/11/22
• The Secret Society of Salzburg by. Renee Ryan | ARC Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Goodreads Monday: Stardust in Their Veins
• Books on My Winter 2022-2023 To-Read List | TTT | 12/13/22
• Happy Book Birthday | New Releases | 12/13/22
• WWW Wednesday | 12/14/22
• A Merry Little Meet Cute by. Julie Murphy & Sierra Simone | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Heartbreaker by. Sarah MacLean | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It’s been a busy week! So I haven’t done much reading – hoping I can do much more reading this week but we shall see!

Books I Read:

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Currently Reading:

Shows/Movies I Watched:

• The Hills (Hulu) – I binged Laguna Beach and now been working my way through The Hills while working on my Etsy keychains. I think it’s crazy to look back and see the fashions of the early 2000’s. I’m SO old lol…
• Harry & Meghan (Netflix) – I love their love story and really can the press just leave them alone? It’s awful to live that way…

How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!

Aloha friends!

I didn’t have a break after coming home from vacation – it’s back to normal as usual except I was dealing with an upper respiratory illness. I don’t know if it was a cold or rsv or what not – I didn’t have much nasal congestion, mostly a cough and finally my voice is 90% back to normal! I do still cough in the early, early morning probably due to the colder air and post nasal drip but most of the day I’m fine.

Another contributor to my cough/sinus/etc…is that Mauna Loa, a volcano, on the Big Island is erupting. I live on Oahu which is about a 30 minutes flight away – you literally go up and down! I haven’t been there in 20 years which is kind of a shame – I have relatives there and my dad often goes but we stopped making casual trips when flights got expensive. Anyway, the smoke from the volcano makes it’s way over to our island and there is vog in the air – it’s like smog, but not brown polluted air – it’s hazy and when there is no wind it lingers over the island, my allergies go into high gear, I get a headache sometimes. It’s been windy since yesterday so I feel much better but I’m not looking forward to the days where there will be no wind.

My kids have one more week of school then it is Winter Break, plus my husband is moving to Okinawa next Sunday – I’m just taking it day by day! But he’s stressed about what to bring and what to expect when he gets there, and I’m not super stressed unless I look at the calendar and think of the things I have to do by myself. 🙄 I’m in a half annoyed and half “oh well it is what it is” mood. He won’t be here for Christmas and our daughter’s 6th birthday first week of January and yes…I still have to plan it. 😕 So my calendar stresses me out right now! lol…so I try not to look at it! 😜

Blog Posts:

• Birthstone Book Covers: December – Turquoise, Tanzanite, Zircon
• Ledge by. Stacey McEwan | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Goodreads Monday: The Atlas Paradox
• Winter Theme Book Covers | TTT | 12/6/22
• Happy Book Birthday | New Releases | 12/6/22
• WWW Wednesday | 12/7/22
• The End of the Year Book Tag – 2022 Edition
• Belladonna by. Adalyn Grace | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It’s been a busy week! So I haven’t done much reading – hoping I can do much more reading this week but we shall see!

Books I Read:

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Currently Reading:

Shows/Movies I Watched:

• Laguna Beach (Netflix) – talk about nostalgia!!! Just seeing all of the people on the show using Motorola flip phones made me miss that time. I loved my Motorola flip phone lol.

How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!

Aloha friends!

Well it happened – my family and I survived out first family trip together! We flew into JFK airport in New York – where my son threw up during the descent. It was an 8 hour flight and my daughter’s first time on a plane – I was exhausted but we still had to get to Philadelphia. So we get our rental where my hubby freaks out because he thinks he left his phone on the airplane. Let’s just say…it was a tense moment – so tense that he didn’t realize until 15 minutes later after having someone help him at the rental place to call the airlines and asked if there was a lost phone…that said phone – had fallen to the floor under the car’s steering wheel. 🤦🏻‍♀️ After that we made the 2 hour drive to Philly, hungry, anxious – trying to listen to my husband’s old GPS device (dunno why he just didn’t use his phone – seriously…) -made it to our air bnb after getting turned around a few times, and dealing with aggressive drivers. My son barfed one more time when we reached our final destination – thank god I took the extra barf bags from the plane!

Oh and we went from 85 degrees in Hawaii to like 40 degrees. So that was fun! 😅 I did not pack enough warm clothes – we learned to layer! Our air bnb was an old house but close to where my husband grew up so it was the perfect place and not too far from Center City in Philadelphia. We had a busy week in Philly. We went to The Philadelphia Zoo, the Please Touch Museum, The Academy of Natural Sciences and the kids favorite The Franklin Institute! We even drove down to Delaware to visit my husband’s cousin and visited a best friend of his as well. Philadelphia was lots of fun, just super cold while we were there.

The day before Thanksgiving we made the trek almost 5 hours up to Poughkeepsie, New York where my sister and mother-in-law lives. For the most part it was a nice drive – kind of long but we made it. I wish we had seen fall leaves but they had fallen by then. I can imagine how beautiful a drive it would be with the changing leaves. Thanksgiving was a family affair and a success despite all the chaos of 3 families in the house. We did one activity in Poughkeepsie which was the Walkway Over the Hudson. It was a lovely walk on a bridge over the Hudson river until it got super cold and I felt like I couldn’t get warm enough – I think that’s when I actually caught a cold. The rest of the week we hung out at the house with family and my daughter had a wonderful time playing with their cat, Harry.

The day before our flight we drove from Poughkeepsie to Tarrytown (or Sleepy Hollow) to visit another best friend of my husband’s. I was feeling pretty poorly – my throat hurt but I had no fever or body chills thank goodness. I wish it was day time so we could actually see the town but it was night time. After that we drove another hour into New York City to a hotel next to the airport. I barely survived – barely got any sleep before it was morning and we had to eat breakfast, and get to the airport. Our flight home was 11 hours long and of course my period decided to come 6 days early! I bought some bottled water, wore my mask on the plane – tried to sleep. I was so proud of my kids for surviving that long of a flight. 🙏🏼 We got home with me barely having a voice. I’m still trying to recover my voice. I have some coughing but glad there is no fever and body aches or chills!

My dog, Atlas, is back to trying to figure out his routine. They had fireworks going on in my parents’ neighborhood so he was freaked out over that and lost some weight – he needed to lose weight anyway lol. My family said Atlas shadowed my mom a lot around the house. He picked up some interesting new behaviors – I think my dad let him run wild. So I’m trying to retrain him on some things! But other than that – my kids went back to school, I’m trying to deal with jet lag and waking up too early. Trying to blog! I finished the laundry and unpacking, I even wrapped xmas gifts. I still have half my xmas list to finish! 😆 And my hubby leaves for Okinawa at a later date, Dec. 18th…but still…so much to do, so little time.

But it’s nice to be home! How have you all been? I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving if you celebrated!

Blog Posts:

• The Poison Season by. Mara Rutherford | ARC Review ⭐️⭐️
• Cozy Reads | TTT | 11/29/22
• Happy Book Birthday | New Releases | 11/29/22

I managed to finish only 2 books while on vacation – there was just too much to do and family to meet with.

Books I Read:

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Currently Reading:

Shows/Movies I Watched:

• Wednesday (Netflix) – I managed to watch 2 episodes on the plane but I’m just that person who starts watching something on the plane and start falling asleep. Same for reading – I just cannot do it on the plane. Next time I should just do coloring books or word search puzzles or something! Anyway I finished the whole series when I came home and love it. Wednesday speaks to my Scorpio soul lol.

How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!

Aloha friends!

We got through this week! Almost thought my daughter’s cold was coming back but it’s been allergies because mine has been acting up too so Flonase for her and Claritin for me has helped. She did get eaten by mosquitoes on Thursday when she went on her first field trip – she doesn’t get a break does she? 😅 But she is a trooper!

I’ve started packing just to see what will fit in my luggage and honestly, packing warm clothing is taking lots room (our summer trip would have been filled with shorts and tank tops 😅). And it’s so sad – my kids barely own any long pants and definitely no long sleeves. My daughter always tells me her feet sweat in socks and I told her oh well she’ll be wearing them on the trip! It will be such an experience for them. My son has been to Nebraska to visit relatives but this will be my daughter’s first plane trip and it’s an 8 hour one. I guess it will be practice for when we visit their dad in Japan next year! We are excited, but I’m excited/anxious/worried – mostly because my indoor dog will have to be an outdoor dog for a few days when he goes to my mom’s house. So I’m worried my spoiled boy will be a little stressed. He gets to hang out with his cousin Tucker who is fully an outside dog. 😆

So I’ll be gone on Wednesday – I’ll still have post go live while I’m gone because they are pre-written but I won’t be replying to any messages until I come back Nov. 30th.

My sister also wanted to do an early Thanksgiving Lunch today since we won’t be here for actual Thanksgiving, so we get to eat today! I don’t think we’ll have turkey but we will have food and pumpkin pie.

Blog Posts:

• Nothing More to Tell by. Karen M. McManus | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Book Haul | 11/7/22
• Series I’d Like to Start/Catch up on/Finish  | TTT | 11/8/22
• Happy Book Birthday | New Releases | 11/8/22
• WWW Wednesday | 11/9/22
• A Wilderness of Stars by. Shea Ernshaw | ARC Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Bloodmarked by. TracyDeonn | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I was kind of in the mood for rom-coms and started on some arcs that I was gonna save for later. But it works out and helps me knock them off my list!

Books I Read:

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Currently Reading:

Shows/Movies I Watched:

• Falling for Christmas (Netflix) – it’s kinda nice to see Lindsay Lohan doing movies again. This one was cute and christmassy.

How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!

Aloha friends!

**I wanted to mention I was devastated by that Halloween incident in Itaewon, South Korea. I was devastated seeing that news before Halloween and I pray for those young souls lost so tragically.🙏🏼** So heartbreaking.💔

It was Halloween on Monday and it was a busy day for us. I was so happy my kids’ school chose Nov. 1st as their waiver day (school closed) – so we didn’t have to wake up early the next morning! They had a school parade in the morning. Then at night we went trick or treating. I bought about 5 or 6 big bags of candy – I made 40+ goody bags for their classmates – the rest went into the candy bowl to pass out. We had a LOT of candy to pass out! Usually we leave the bowls out by the steps and go trick or treating. By the time we came back to the house the bowls of candy was almost empty. By the end of the night I think I refilled the 2 candy bowls twice? And we were left with only a handful at the end of the night. Here are some of the pics from that day and night:

Can you guess what my kids are? My son is a red PIKMIN (a Nintendo game character from the Pikmin game). And my daughter is Pikachu – the ears on her hood is flat in the picture but they are there lol. And yes my son is in slippers (as we call them in Hawaii, flip flops on the mainland lol) – it was 80 degrees outside! My hubby and I were Peanut Butter (him) and Jelly(me). We loved seeing the houses that go all out on decorating! I wish we had as much motivation to do it lol…but it gets expensive. There was one house that was a bit too scary for my kids – it had some ghostly girl swinging on the porch and a creature thing that looked like it didn’t do anything until you stood there long enough and it screamed at you. 🤣

The skeleton house is always popular and the skeletons are SO huge! My kids say it’s their favorite house on Halloween. And then my daughter and I found this one woman who was dressed as a fortune teller and was in full character, asking my daughter to ask her a question, etc… SO cool!

The rest of the week went quick – my birthday was on Friday and we went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.

I loved my daughter’s drawing that she made me on Procreate. And yes her name is Layla…can you tell? 😅🥰 Me and the kids are lactose intolerant so we had to take some Lactaid tablets to enjoy the hot fudge sundae. We didn’t have cheesecake because I’d need like 2 more lactaid for that. Cheesecake is hard on my tummy and I only became lactose intolerant in my 40’s. SAD huh? My favorite used to be the Oreo Cheesecake or the Pumpkin Cheesecake…both of which is painful to eat now. 😩

We are counting down the days to our trip…so I’m trying to figure out who can take care of our dog for 2 weeks 😢 – our vet is full, a home sitter I found on Rover.com with good reviews said she’s not available for the dates we are gone. Bummer…so…last resort is he goes to my mom’s house but she doesn’t allow dogs in the house, their dog is an outside dog and it’s a busy/rough neighborhood. I guess I’ll check with one more vet that was recommended…and see what they say. 🤞🏽

Blog Posts:

• Tokyo Ever After by. Emiko Jean | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Happy Halloween! Purple and Orange Book Covers
• Halloween Book Covers Tag
• Unlikable Characters You Can’t Help but Love  | TTT | 11/1/22
• Happy Book Birthday | New Releases | 11/1/22
• WWW Wednesday | 11/2/22
• Most Anticipated Book Releases | November 2022
• BLOG TOUR} Silver in the Mist by. Emily Victoria | ARC Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Birthstone Book Covers: November – Citrine and Topaz
• The River Has Teeth by. Erica Waters | Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
• Monthly Wrap Up | October 2022

Books I Read:

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Currently Reading:

Shows/Movies I Watched:

• World Series Major League Baseball – Phillies lost, oh well! But the Astros had really good pitchers.

• Selena Gomez – My Mind & Me – I can feel her sadness through this documentary 😦 but I’m glad she is healing. I loved the scenes of her going back to the small town she grew up in.

How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!