Merry Christmas!!

Hey Everyone~Merry Christmas! Or Mele Kalikimaka! We have had a wonderful year in Hawaii, and are especially thankful this time of year for all we have. We have eachother, family and friends, and miss all of you. We are especially thankful for our Savior and for the meaning of this day. We had a great Christmas and loved all of the gifts from our families. We ended up getting eachother almost exactly the same thing! Shoes and ipods! No, Frankie did not get me a doggy, we were housesitting for some friends and had a great time at their house laying by the pool today after we opened our gifts! We hope that these pictures may entice you to visit us!! LOVE YA!!

I am an Auntie, of kid #11

Congratulations to my sister Tara, she had her little baby girl onDecember 8th, 2007. She weighed 6 lbs. 9 oz. and was 20 inches long. Probably the littlest Dueling baby ever! My fam usually has behemoth babies! She is sooooo cute... I am pretty sure her name is Mylee Joe... unless my sister changed her mind... I will find out more tomorrow. My sis has had quite the year... from eloping, basically, and then having a little bambino. I am so happy for you Tara Belara! YAY! Love ya!

These are a few of my favorite things!

My gorgeous sistas!!

My Frankie & life always being an adventure.

Being proud of my hubby... yes that is him with Mr. President Bush


Sunsets

My weirdo sisters, and new weirdo sister, Amanda!












Getting married and gaining the best family ever.


The Beach...

Happy Holidays!

We just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Frankie is now the most senior Ensign, or the bull Ensign, as they call it. He received a nice little hat for it. The tall guy is Commanding Officer Maurer. Frankie got a new job for NAVFAC and his areas cover the West Oahu bases. He is busy and is in charge of the funding for projects around the bases. We have both been so busy; Frankie with work, and myself with school. We can't complain though, because we live in stinkin' Hawaii!! It is so great here. We have been fortunate to have Frankie's Granddad and Barbara visit twice for a short time. We wish we were able to make it home for the Holidays, but I am taking a winter session class, and we are also house-sitting for some friends. Plus, it gets expensive flying from here! We cannot believe we have been here over a year. It has gone so fast! We want to wish everyone a warm holiday season! Love ya!

Fun in Philly!

The whole time Frankie and I lived in NY we never made it to Philadelphia! We were talking about it one day and the next day Frankie was asked to go to a conference there from Hawaii! Go figure! It was for SAME or the Society of American Military Engineers. So, we flew out like a week and a half later and enjoyed a nice week in Philly where we not only got to see the sights, like Independence Hall ( not pictured), the state Capitol,





famous parks and a great historical city... but the best part was we got to see our Family and friends Greg and Anna, who are getting married in about a month, YAY! It was so nice. It was cold though, early May, especially after being in Hawaii and California for so long. We didn't have the right kind of clothes.... like coats, but it was really a fun trip! We are so blessed and so thankful to have been able to go! I wish you could all see the video of Frankie running up the Stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (the Rocky stairs), it was ridiculous! Love ya all!

Frankie the Shipboarding Officer aboard the USS Ronald Reagan

A cool experience I really wanted to post. Since Frankie is the Shipboarding Officer for all foreign and US Navy ships he got to bill the USS Ronald Reagan and supply some of their services; he also was able to get me to go on a tour of it with him. It was an awesome experience, the picture with the helicopter flying by it doesn't to it justice, because it doesn't have the front end of it, but it was huge. When it pulled into port it was really cool. All the guys were in their whites standing around the flight deck and there were 3 helicopters flying around it and a couple of other boats to protect it. All of the jets were out on the deck as well, which we got to go on, as you can see. We went up to the house and got a great view of the ship and also the Arizona Memorial in the background where soldiers from the Pearl Harbor attack are still inside the hull of that ship under the water and the USS Missouri is the ship behind it that was retired pretty recently. And there is Frankie in his camoflauge and hard-hat :) what a dork. But I am really proud of him for all of his hard-work.

Technical Difficulties? :)

Hey Everyone! We know it has been so long since we blogged, but we had a technical difficulty, actually I thought I had a technical difficulty, but I was actually trying to log on with the wrong account and I thought we got booted off blogger. Oops! So, now it is time to catch up on some pictures and what we have been up to. Here are a couple of pictures of us at a midpoint of a gorgeous ATV ride, and then in a Helicopter with a view of the mountains of Kaua'i.
We have been busy hiking, surfing, snorkeling, windsurfing, which we don't actually have pictures of, but we will. Church here is great. We have an awesome ward. Frankie and I teach the Valiant 10 class and he is also 2nd Counselor of the Elders Quorum, so with that and his job he is super busy. We hang out a lot with people from his work and it seems there is always a BBQ, or other social function. Everyone is really fun and active out here; there is always so much to do. We have almost been married 11 months, and we really love it; we honestly can't believe that in a month it will have been a year already. It has gone by so fast and it is so much fun! Being in Hawaii is really like an extended honeymoon, besides the whole work and soon to be school thing, but it really feels like being on vacation everyday. We get to enjoy the beach regularly and the mountains, and the ocean and are just so blessed to be here, although we still do miss our awesome friends and family back on the mainland and around the world. Everyone better come visit us!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas in Hawaii was a little strange, only because it was 80 degrees outside. Frankie and I got into the spirit of it by getting our little special tree. It was pretty crooked and the backside was barren of any needles... but we loved it. We made it look pretty good, I would say! :) Christmas was really great. We decided to get eachother tickets to the Pro Bowl coming up in February, and let our gifts be all of our snorkeling gear that we bought for eachother about 3 weeks before Christmas! Our families were great and sent us so many gifts, so our little tree was full of presents to open up on Christmas morning. We had fun and are so thankful for our families being so generous and thoughtful.

Our Place in Kailua, Hawaii!

We finally have our pictures of our new place for all of you to see! We love it! We got so lucky, because it came fully furnished, red couches and all...they actually grew on us and this place really feels like a home. Right now while typing this I am looking out of our huge windows at our view of gorgeous green mountains. The beach is only about 3/4 of a mile away. Our apartment complex also has a gym, pool, jacuzzi, BBQ area, and tennis and raquetball courts. It's pretty sweet. The only bad thing is we only have one bedroom, so when ya'all come to visit it might be a pretty tight squeeze! I get to be next to Frankie though! :) We love ya and miss ya and hope you are all able to come visit us in paradise.