Mama On The Move

I often have people ask me if I "always" wanted to homeschool. No. I didn't ever want to homeschool. I know people who plan to homeschool from the moment they find out they are expecting a baby. They research curriculum, join message boards on-line, and start lessons when their kids are barely toddling. I was not one of those people. I wanted my kids to be normal . And homeschooling is not normal. Not mainstream. Not what everyone is doing. Especially not ten years ago when we first started. Ben actually went to a year of preschool. The entire year he was in preschool, I worried about which school I should send him to the next year. The preschool was independent, not attached to any school. So we had the choice of sending him to the local public school, the local private school, or putting him in another year of preschool since he was one of the youngest kids in his class. I had one friend who homeschooled. She told me, "Ben is really smart. You should consider home...

Ben's youth group was given the task of thinking up skits to show the creation story. They divided into two groups: boys vs. girls. Let's see how they did: The girls took the time to come up with costumes representing the days of creation. This girl represents the day animals were created. See how she's wearing a cute little cow mask? And she's holding a stuffed cow and a stuffed frog! Next to animal girl is fish girl (they weren't standing in order at this point). She has little fish cutouts taped on to her shirt and represents the day all the creatures of the ocean were created. Next to her is the girl representing land. She's holding an earth colored rectangular thing and.....a hat. God created hats the same day he created land. It's in Genesis, I think. Look it up. The next girl is wearing wings. She represents the creation of all birds and flying things. The girl who has yellow construction paper taped to her represents the creation of light. The las...

A house in our neighborhood is being tented for termites. I've heard of it being done, but I've never actually seen it. I always had in mind that if a house were covered in a tent, it would be a sort of whitish covering, like wax wrap. But no..... I keep expecting an elephant to come trundling out of there.

Here is an update from Kerry. I cut out all the mushy stuff: I just saw Toby Keith in concert from 50 feet away! It was a great concert and he was very entertaining. I went to the bazaar and hit a home run for your anniversary gift. OK...it is a new fishing pole...I could not keep the secret...if you don't like it I will use it! :-) The food here is not too hot. There is a huge European influence here since the majority of the troops are NATO (North American Treaty Organization - our European allies). I got some sausage links yesterday that looked like a kielbasa. All right! I love kielbasa! I bit into it and it was like eating a pudding pop with a hard sausage covering. Let's just say that I made quite an indelible impression as I, the ugly American, had to spit this concoction - that looked and smelled like sausage but was obviously a cleverly disguised Taliban weapon - back on my tray in front of several hundred of our curious allies. It was either that or save face and try ...

Different states have different rules regarding homeschooling. Hawaii requires that you register your children with the school system and then officially withdraw them. That way they have a record of a child within their district who is not attending their school. I don't question, I just accept. I filled out the forms and mailed them in. Each of my kids would be attending a different school here, so I had to send in three different forms to three different schools declaring, "Here is the child I am not sending to your school." Today I got back a form from Emily's school....mailed to me at my address....wanting to know whether or not we are homeless. I have never been given a form where I had to check boxes for "Homeless" or "Not Homeless". It even gives guidelines on what qualifies as homeless in case you are not certain. You know, in case you are thinking, "Well, this cardboard box may not be much but it is 'home' to me, so I'm...

On Sunday we went to the beach with a group of people from our church. The weather could not have been more perfect. It was absolutely the right temperature - not too hot, not too cold. We really had an excellent day. The youth decided to bury several of the teens in the sand. They spent quite a while digging holes deep enough to hold an entire person. Of course, Ben volunteered to be buried. He showered TWICE after he was finally freed, and still had tons of sand in his ears. I hope he doesn't get an earache.

We found this huge snail crawling out back around the garbage cans. I've never seen a snail this big in my yard!

The kids are rehearsing for the musical they are in. Rehearsals are long and tiring. The songs change, the blocking changes, the choreography changes. It's sometimes difficult to keep up with what's going on if you've never been part of a play. If you have been part of a show, you expect regular changes and you know everything will come together in time for the actual performance. Katie has a hard time with this. Katie knows where she is supposed to be, and where everyone else is supposed to be, and she has no qualms about going over to another child and moving them if they are slightly out of place. She sings at the top of her lungs because she doesn't feel everyone else is singing loud enough and she is trying show them how it should be done. Katie gets very frustrated when choreography changes. When they first started staging "Oklahoma" all the kids in the chorus slapped their hands on their thighs in time to the music. Unfortunately, it just wasn't c...

Ben spent the weekend camping with his Boy Scout Troop at the oldest scouting show in the U.S. - The Makahiki. All the scout troops from around the island meet for this weekend. Each troop brings one activity or event and the family members come on Saturday to try out all the activities. Some of the troops do demonstrations. Ben's troop was demonstrating all the different ways of making a fire depending on the materials at hand. One troop had set up a tee pee. One troop brought a real working trebuchet and let people try it out. Instead of flinging rocks, we flung Ziploc baggies of water which the boy scouts would try to hit with a bat. There were MP's there with their attack dogs. We watched an incredible demonstration of how the dogs will attack a suspect when ordered to. I would not have wanted to be the guy who had to let the dogs take him down over and over for our entertainment. Yes, he is yelling in this picture, but it was just to make the dogs think that they were do...

I talked to Kerry one day recently and he had been fielding dozens of phone calls from all around the world. Apparently an officer at another base in Afghanistan had been trying to impress his family with a hardship story and he sent an email that his unit was out of food and that they were reduced to eating camels and goats. The soldier's father-in-law, upon receiving this email, was incensed that the Army wasn't feeding the soldiers properly and contacted his senator . This in turn, led to a congressional inquiry which led to Kerry getting dozens of phone calls. Kerry is a logistician and his job involves getting all supplies (beans and bullets) to each base and making sure there is enough for everyone. Kerry was not particularly happy about this. "I talk to the soldiers at that base every day and their main complaint is that they are out of a certain flavor of ice cream, not that they are eating camels and goats!" I'd love to know if they told the father-in-law...

We were watching a magic show on television Monday night. The magician showed the audience an empty box, closed a curtain around it, spun it around, opened the curtain, and revealed that flowers had magically appeared inside the box. Then he closed the curtain again, spun the box around, and opened the curtain again to reveal a scantily clad woman inside. "Wow," said Ben. "I've got to get me one of those boxes."

We were eating lunch today when Katie piped up and said, "I think I might be a veterinarian when I grow up. You know why? Because I tried dipping a potato chip in lemonade and then I ate it, and I thought it tasted pretty good." Now, I'm usually pretty good at following Katie-logic but I have to admit this one had me stumped. Ben and I both said at the same time, "You'll have to explain that a little better." Katie replied, "Well, veterinarians do gross things, and most people think a potato chip dipped in lemonade would be gross, but it didn't bother me! I can do gross things and not be bothered!" Ah. Katie-logic.

On Thursday, we went to a rehearsal at our church. During a rehearsal break, Ben asked if he could have the keys and run out to the car for a minute. He came back about five minutes later, "Hey, Mom. Something funny happened. I locked the keys in the car." Ben is quite a prankster and often pulls little jokes likes this. I know better than to fall for it. "Ha ha, Ben. Give me the keys." "Really. I locked them in the car." "You did not." "Yes, I did." "Seriously!?" "I love you, Mom." "You're lucky I love you , because it's the only thing keeping me from throttling you right now!" Turns out he had taken a couple of his friends out to the car to show them the knife Kerry sent him from Afghanistan. He was so excited about the knife, he set the keys down in the car and then forgot them. But he did remember to lock the door when he was done (so no one would steal his knife probably). Long story short: a ...

When Kerry and I had been married for two whole weeks, he was sent to Korea for a year. He was a Private First Class and we were busting with pride that he outranked somebody (regular Privates). We still giggle about that. It was hard spending our first year apart. I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. We loved each other more than anybody ever loved anyone in the whole history of the world and ripping us apart like that was the most cruel, heinous thing that could have happened. Romeo and Juliet had nothing on us. Back in that ancient time (1991) people had never heard of home computers. Well, maybe some people had, but I certainly hadn't. And even if I had heard of them, only rich people would have had them. I was married to a Private. Computers did not exist in our universe. No, back then we had "AT&T Reach Out World". This allowed us to talk once a week for eighteen whole minutes. Our phone bill was around $200 a month, an astronomical ...

Said Katie this moring: "Daddy's not going to be home for almost a year right? Will I be dating by then?"

Sit, Rigger. Sit. Good boy!

This is called a "Jingle Truck" because the Afghanis paint them bright colors and tie things all over it that make jingling noises. This is the view of the mountains from his base. Ready to go on a convoy. Ariel view of an Afghani compound. An Afghani house.

Katie had her first dance lesson this week. She used to take ballet and tap when she was four, but then decided she wanted to take gymnastics for a year. Then she switched to Tae Kwon Do when we moved and forced her to. She has been incredibly excited about ballet class. She's been asking me every day how many more days until her ballet class. We got her a cute pink leotard, cute pink tights and matching pink ballet shoes. When the big day arrived she was up and dressed in her dance clothes by 7:00am despite the fact that her class wasn't until noon. I told her she might want to wait until closer to time for class to wear her outfit, but she was determined. Then she decided to go water the tomato plants outside. (You see what's coming here don't you?) She came back inside with a horrified look on her face and mud all up the front of her pretty pink leotard. Luckily, it was still early, so I took her leotard and washed it immediately. The mud didn't come out. I spray...

I just got back from National Youth Leader Training camp, and I am very glad to be back in my own home... Camp Pupukea is a pretty cool campsite, but it was a kind of miserable week. We arrived and they set us up into our patrols; they put us with random people, so I didn't know anyone. They organized the patrols by color; we were the Lime Patrol. We had to think of a name that matched lime, so we became the Irish Whooping Llamas (yes, that was my idea). Our patrol and the Gold Patrol were unlucky enough to get stuck in the camp site that was half a mile away from everything... down hill... those wimps in the other patrols were right next to everything. And I had to drag a 100 pound cart up that hill about 4 times a day, because the rest of my patrol were a bunch of lazy butt holes. I literally did K.P. for all but one meal, because if someone else had to do it, it wouldn't get done and then we would get in trouble. The classes were OK, they were just talking about different le...