Mama On The Move

Ben was selected to go to National Youth Leader Training with the Boy Scouts here. I felt like it was a great opportunity for him and made, er...I mean, "let" him go. He was not allowed to take a phone so we had no contact with him for a week. This concerned me as this was not a camp out with his usual troop. These were boys from different troops all over the island. One of the first things they do is separate boys into patrols with people they don't know so they learn to work with strangers rather than teaming up with their buddies. Friday night they held a feast and invited the families to join them for dinner and watch skits the boys had worked on during the week. They definitely had the "feast" part down pat. I think there were five different kinds of meat. Potatoes and rice too. Definitely food scouts were happy about. After the meal, they led us down to their campfire area. It was waaaaay back in the woods. We had to trek there in the dark. They had a sc

Hawaii is a pretty fabulous place to live. The weather is perfect nearly every day. I've seen more rainbows in the past three months than I've seen in my entire life. There are some of the most incredible views I've ever had the joy to see. It has it's drawbacks though. One of those issues was solved when the two Target stores opened here. Ahhhh. Target. Our other common laments are that we miss Chick-fil-A and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We don't complain about this often. It's not like we sit on a beach under a double rainbow watching the sun set behind the surfers and say, "This stinks! I want a Chick-fil-A sandwich and a Krispy Kreme doughnut. I hate my life." But still.......there are just some things you miss sometimes. But as usual, God always provides. This week I was driving home and there, on the street corner, was a group of people selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts for a fundraiser. I have no idea what they were raising money for. They could have

I have a great new baby sitter. Not that my kids need a sitter. Ben is old enough to watch the girls when I need him to, and even Emily is old enough to watch Katie now for a couple of hours. BUT...if you need a sitter, or just a mother's helper to occupy the kids while you have a moment's peace to go to the bathroom alone, have I got a sitter for you! It's called Cyberlink Youcam . This is a program that allows you to create cool effects while you are having a video chat on your computer. We discovered it while chatting on Skype with Kerry. The glorious thing about it is that you can also use it while you are not chatting with someone else. Just sit your kids down in front of the computer (one at a time with a specific time limit, unless you like to watch them fight) and give them free reign with the camera. You won't have to tell them how it works. They will just know. There are various fun-house mirror applications, which are an instant hit. You can take snapshot

I really have to rely on my kids for my electronics knowledge. I don't know how today's youth were genetically altered to make them able to quickly figure out new gadgets and gizmos. Maybe there was something in the water we were drinking when they were in utero . But hand them anything new and shiny with buttons - even if it was just invented and is only about 40 seconds old - and they will have it whizzing along and know all the in's and out's of it before the end of the day. They usually don't even need the instruction manual which I hang on to forever "just in case". I know this is not a new phenomenon. I can clearly remember my parents getting a suitcase which had a built-in-combination lock (new-fangled!) on it and they could not figure out how to set the lock to a combination of their choosing. My aunt and uncle were visiting and the four of them were reading the instruction manual and finally decided it made no sense and gave up. My cousin Bonnie a

Friday night we went to our second square dancing lesson. Our second . That means last week was the first time we ever tried square dancing. There were three new people there last night who had never square danced before. On the way home, Ben laughed, "It's so much fun to watch the new people learning how to square dance! They don't have a clue what to do!" (Re-read the second sentence if you need to.)

We are fortunate enough to be part of a group of homeschoolers that meet to do PE once a week. The kids always start with stretches and then sprint races. They spend one full month working on a particular sport. Last month it was volleyball for the older kids............ ....and badminton for the younger kids. This month it is tennis for the younger kids, and jumprope for the older kids. You're thinking, "Jumprope? You mean they just hand them each a jumprope and tell them to jump for an hour? That doesn't sound like much fun. And it doesn't sound like a sport either." You would be amazed at what kids can do with jumpropes. Check out this girl as she jumps while sitting on the floor . And these girls who are learning to jump in tandem while turning in a circle. Or this boy who jumps rope while jumping rope. Even Ben is finally learning to make it through the ropes without getting hung up in them - and he even manages a shoulder roll after he goes through!

Here is Kerry's latest story about military life in Afghanistan: My briefing to the General went well and we survived unscathed. Originally, he was scheduled to arrive at 1530 and we had the conference room set up with coffee, danishes.....a really nice spread since about 20 people were going to be there. His aide called (after we waited for 20 minutes and I was poised outside to meet him at the door) and said they would have to re-schedule. Oh well.....so we opened the flood gates and invited all of the soldiers in the building to come and eat the goodies. The swarm of locusts descended within minutes and left nothing on the table. I dutifully took all of the classified briefings and put them in our classified trash can to be shredded and then burned. Our boss left early (at 1700) because his wife (who is also stationed here) was in the area. Wouldn't you know it....at 1705 we received a frantic phone call that the General was en route. Panic! I was digging through the trash c

The girls decided to see who could go greenest. I love the way Emily accessorized her outfit with a tray of green things and Katie accessorized her outfit with a snake and a green pillow.

One of the great things about being a homeschooler: We get some incredible field trip opportunities. One of the wives in our homeschooling group is married to a navy pilot who is fairly high up in the chain of command and he arranged an amazing field trip for us! Here is our group of unsocialized homeschoolers in front of the P-3 Orion. A lot more people wanted to go, but space was limited; we were very fortunate to be among the first families who responded to the invitation and made it into the group. The absolute coolest thing about the trip was the P-3 simulator. It is just like being in the cockpit of the plane. When we looked through the windshield, we could see the Hawaiian islands down below us. I literally could not have told the difference between the real thing and the simulator if you put them side by side. I really felt like we were flying around, looking out the windows of the cockpit. We could see the military base below us and the waves in the ocean. When we turned the

In all my research about Hawaii, in all the time that I have been prowling around this island finding new things.........one thing that was never mentioned: Square Dancing. I never, not once, connected Hawaii and square dancing in my mind. (I'll bet you never did either.) Oddly enough, we found out that a bunch of the homeschoolers who attend our church go square dancing every Saturday night. So we decided to try it out. I thought my kids would think this was way beyond the usual dorkiness factor that we have. But amazingly, since a lot of their friends were doing it, they thought it sounded cool. Then we got there and found out it was actually fun! I kept waiting for Emily to dissolve into a tearful puddle, but she was laughing and having a good time! Many of their friends have been doing it so long they are in the advanced class! It was an absolute blast! We all had such a great time! We are planning (by unanimous vote) to keep going. But we're not going to wear the do

An interesting aspect of deployments concerns the population of the different Foward Operating Bases (FOBs) where the soldiers are stationed. There are FOBs all over Afghanistan and they range in size from the large from the 17,000 person bases like Bagram all the way down to the smaller ones that have less than 200 soldiers. Unique personalities emerge while soldiers are on these bases for a year. A curious sub-species of soldier emerges. I am definitely plagiarizing, but I wanted to describe some of these types. A "FOBBIT" is a sub-species that never, ever under any circumstances leaves the safety of his base (except to re-deploy!). These people make every effort to remain in the safety of their offices or hooches in order to remain safe. Closely related to the FOBBIT is the "TOC-ROACH." (A TOC is a Tactical Operations Post; the Army loves acronyms!) The TOC-ROACH is the individual who is always hovering around the coffee pot and drinking large quantities

To the lady next to me in Walmart today: Your son is screaming and holding up his arms for you to pick him up. Quit griping at him and pick him up. Hug him for a minute. Talk calmly to him. Love him. Pick him up ! Stop acting like a twit and take two minutes to calm your son down. Quit telling him that everyone is staring at him because he's yelling. It isn't helping, and frankly everyone is staring because you're being mean to him. To the man in front of me at Walmart today: I know you only have one item. Put it on the conveyor belt. Do not stand there and hold it. When you stand there and hold it, and I put my items on the conveyor belt behind you, my items scoot to the front of the line. Put it on the conveyor belt . The cashier does not know that the next items on the conveyor belt are not yours. Yes, she will start scanning my items before yours because she does not know that these are not your items. Griping at her will not make this process go any faster. To everyone

You can not imagine the delirious joy of living on an island. You can not imagine the delirious joy of living on an island and having a new store open. Target has come to Hawaii. And the population has gone wild. Crowd control has been activated. The parking lot is closed off when it is full and everyone circles like sharks waiting for someone to leave so they can take their parking space. The driveway in front of the store has been completely blocked off with orange cones and tape and has police manning it at all times to direct people safely in and out of the store. When you live on an island, you can't just drive to the "big city" to the Target. You can't cross state lines for an afternoon of shopping at larger stores. You can look at the items on-line and pay astronomical shipping fees to have something sent to you, but you can't walk in the store and browse. You can't try things on to see if they fit you. So when a major store like Target opens.........t

I don't often make a big breakfast around here. Kerry is the only one in the family who likes to eat first thing in the morning. The kids and I don't usually want to eat until after we've been up a couple of hours. And even then no one ever wants to eat at the same time. If I make breakfast, invariably part of it sits around getting cold and then no one wants reheated bacon and eggs. Most mornings, everyone just grabs what they are in the mood for, when they finally get hungry. This can range from cereal or fruit to an all-out omelet with everything in it. This morning Ben walked in the kitchen and said, "What do we have to eat?" I rattled off the litany, "Bacon, eggs, toast, grits, cereal, oatmeal, or fruit." "So.........nothing good then?"

This week we attended our first luau! We went to the luau at the Hale Koa hotel. The grounds were just incredible. There were men playing soft Hawaiian music, the plants and flowers were glorious. There were people in native costumes making headbands out of palm fronds, chopping up fresh coconut for us to taste, handing out flowers for us to put behind our ears and handing out seashell leis to each guest. It was very relaxed and peaceful. This was a Samoan man who kept us entertained during the cocktail hour. He was very funny! Check out those tattoos. He said the tattoos were part of a rite of passage that he had to go through. He said it took fourteen days to complete the tattoo and, yes, it hurt. And yes, everything was tattooed. He demonstrated how to climb a coconut tree using only a bandanna around his feet. They picked people out of the audience and gave them a quick hula lesson. Katie was thrilled to be one of the people chosen and of course it irritated Ben because he thi

Emily's been having quite a time with the whole puberty issue. One minute she's deliriously happy and the next she's sobbing and I have no idea what happened in between. She doesn't have any idea either. We've been discussing for quite a while the emotional roller coaster than comes with puberty so she knew this was coming. She just didn't know the reality of it would be so aggravating. She knew that tears would come over ridiculous things. She'll even start laughing at herself while she's crying and say, "I have no idea why I'm crying!" Sometimes when she is frustrated she will just tell me, "I need to go to my room and cry for five minutes." She's goes off, and comes back five minutes later with a (slightly) better attitude. I recently had another mom tell me that they were able to control her daughter's mood swings with a low carb diet. She said that they ate lots of proteins, fruits and vegetables, but not many carbs

Katie's Language Arts lesson for today tells her to "Write three sentences about going out to play in the snow, sliding down a hill, and throwing snowballs." Here are her three sentences: I live in Hawaii. There is no snow except on the mountains. Which I haven't been there.

If you have not seen Cartoon Network's animation exhibit, you need to ! Check around and see if it is coming to a museum near you. Take the kids and plan to be there a looooong time. Wear comfortable shoes. The "Animation" exhibit (sponsored by Cartoon Network) is currently at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Ben was with his youth group so I only had the girls with me but we will have to go back and take him with us. This exhibit gives kids a chance to see the science behind cartoons. They get to play with hands-on exhibits that let them be the animator. In this exhibit (featuring one of the characters from The Kids Next Door cartoon), we could see how the character's mouth would change depending on what sound he was making. Using just those five images, we had to lay each picture on the gray square and take a snapshot of it. It took 21 images to say one short sentence. When all the snapshots were strung together it actually looked like the character was talking and

Today is Kerry's birthday. I had each of the kids make a card for him and we sent them in a care package with his gift. Of course, the girls made beautiful cards with hearts and lots of love enclosed. They drew pictures of themselves with their Daddy. There is love in every square inch of those cards. Here is Ben's contribution: "I heard that it's your birthday! I also heard that it's about time for your mid-life crisis. So when you waste your money on a big vehicle.......... (open card) Make sure it's a Humvee !!! (back of card) PS - Sorry about the cheap card, but I think you're old enough to understand that with the economy as bad as it is, I had to make some big cuts on the materials."

Why yes, that is my Honda being towed in to the shop because it won't start. Why yes! I did just get my Honda out of the shop two weeks ago where I spent a large sum of money to have a new distributor installed, thanks for asking. This is a common lament among wives of deployed soldiers. Major things go wrong while our husbands are not here to help. Not that I can't take care of this myself, but it would be so much nicer if Kerry were here and I could just let him handle it while I pretended to swoon. Last time he deployed my washing machine decided to just empty itself out and flood the laundry room less than 24 hours after he left. About a month later an upstairs toilet chose to leak through the dining room ceiling. In both cases I would normally have said, "Tell me what the plumber said when I get back from the mall, honey." Being a single mom for a year (against my will) makes me stronger. It pulls me out of my comfort zone, makes me handle the duties I would