Our Festive 4th...

Yesterday Terina and I were so lucky that Kasala didn't have to work night show or tour guide. We were able to spend the whole day together. We went to the beach and Terina finally got into the water willingly. When we were at Frank's house last week his room mate gave Terina a little floaty thing for the water. She loved it! Well.. not at first but it was better than her death grip when I hold her. After the beach we had a picnic (in our house) and after Terina and Kasala took naps. I stayed up and just had time to relax, clean and watch some TV. We went for a walk to the Temple after dinner and people were starting to lite their fire crackers. Terina had some "volcanos" (sparklers) and we had fun with those. She ran around while Kasala and I lit them. She was to scared to hold one but she loved running around and making a lot of noise in the dark. Although we did have some fun it just didn't seem like a holiday. I knew that my family was all at home together having a BBQ, playing games and visiting. I wanted so much to be there with all my cousins. It seems like the 4th is the one time we are all together. Yesterday showed me that it was time to make traditions of our own. While our families are very important and we love them very much we aren't going to be able to make the trips home everytime something special happens or there is a holiday. This is going to be a great time for us to bring things that we did growing up into our little family. This will be our way of bringing our families closer to us while we are far away from them and hopefully we'll be able to go not only back to Washington but to Samoa while we are living here.