Mama On The Move

Ben had his last marine biology class this past week. They got to dissect a three foot shark. Lo and behold, when they got to the insides, they found six baby sharks. I know this photo is really blurry. One of the other students in the class took it with a cell phone. Here's a nice crisp view of the babies. Ben got to deliver those himself. He is one happy future marine biologist right now.

It's time for end of the year tests. At the end of the school year we take a standardized test to make sure we are on track and the kids are where they need to be academically. Usually, I give them the test at home, but this year I wanted Ben to start taking it in a group setting with a different administrator. It won't be long before he has to start taking college entrance tests and he needs the experience of taking a test somewhere besides home. The group doing the testing needed another tester so they could divide the group into junior high and high school and test them separately. I volunteered to test the junior high group and sent in my application and diploma to receive my official tester number. It's not a difficult thing to do. They tell you the exact words to say for every portion of the test. You are not allowed to leave out a word or add a word. It's like being handed a script. The main issue is that these are homeschooled kids who aren't used to having ...

Ben's scout troop placed flags on all the graves at the local cemetery. Here in Hawaii, they also place a small lei around each flag which is a beautiful thing to do. And, as is becoming increasingly common, Ben was stopped and interviewed by a local reporter about his thoughts on Memorial Day and what it means to him to have a father who is deployed. My kids are media magnets.

Katie and I were walking home from the playground today. As we started up the steps to go in the front door I looked down and gave a startled, "EW!!!" There was a headless bird sitting on our stoop. Katie stepped back outside to see what I was looking at. "Where is its head?" she whispered in horror. "I don't know," I whispered back. "Go get the camera" We all have our priorities. She brought the camera back and it hadn't moved. It was just headlessly standing there right next to us . As I got closer to take the picture, I could see its little chest moving in and out as it was breathing. The horror. The horror. We were talking in normal tones about it now, and I even reached out and pushed the pink bottle of bubbles away to see if that caused any reaction. It never moved. It just stood there on its creepy little legs - completely upright but with no head. Then it suddenly whipped its head out from under its wing (or wherever it was ke...

We have a great Banana Nut Bread recipe. The girls love to make it when we have some bananas that have gotten so brown and soft that no one will eat them. We try to get to them before the fruit flies swarm in. First you need three over-ripe bananas. Squish the heck out of them. Daintily gather together your implements of cooking. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of baking soda into 4 tablespoons of buttermilk. Take time to stop and smell the orchids. Take care not to get your hair caught in the beaters. Crack three eggs into a mixing bowl. See if you can make it look like a face. Or a body with two heads. Beat the eggs into submission and add 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup of oil, the buttermilk with the soda dissolved in it, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Mix well. Add two cups of plain flour, the mashed bananas, and 1 cup of chopped nuts. When everything is blended well, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Pour into a well greased loaf pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Eat it really fast before a...

Ben LOVES salsa. Boy, does that boy love salsa. He likes it spicy too. He seems to think spicy food is challenging him. Daring him, in fact. And he can not back down from a dare because then the salsa would win . He eats so much salsa that I decided we should start making our own. We could make larger batches of it as well as use organic ingredients and cut out preservatives and unnecessary fillers. We used this great recipe from the Muir Glen site: Ingredients 2 cans (14.5 oz each) Muir Glen® organic fire roasted or plain diced tomatoes, well drained 1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup) 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt (kosher or sea salt) 1 to 2 fresh jalapeño or serrano chiles, seeded, finely chopped Preparation Directions 1. In medium bowl, stir together all ingredients. 2. Serve with tortilla chips as desired. Ben made the salsa himself. He had already chopped the onion, jalapenos, cilantro, and g...

The latest from Ben: Today at Marine Biology class, we dissected a squid! I don't know where our teacher got them, it looks like she just bought them at any old store. They were a good foot long and smelled very fishy (or squidy). First we labeled the outside, then we cut them open. Did you know a squid has three hearts? Squids don't have spines since they're invertebrates, but they do have a little bone called the pen, which is shaped like a quill. We then took the pen, dipped it in the squid's ink sack and wrote our names on our papers; that was pretty cool! When we were done, our teacher told us to remove the pen and the beak and then put the rest of the squid on the counter. She then cooked them and ate them for dinner. My science class is so cool!

When I was growing up in the deep south, we were taught manners. We said "yes, ma'am" and "no, sir", and "please" and "thank you". If I had ever said, "Yeah" to a teacher I quite possibly would have been expelled. No one would have questioned it. I kid you not - true story - I once had a teacher threaten to break my arm because I shrugged my shoulders at her instead of saying, "I don't know." (Oh, if only we knew then what we know now about law suits. My family could have been wealthy.) I'm not bitter. All teachers were addressed as Mr./Mrs./Miss and their last name . Teachers did not have first names or if they did, we certainly never used them. That was a sign of total disrespect and none of us ever dared to cross that line and find out what the punishment would be. When I was in college, my tenth grade English teacher was in my creative writing course working on her masters. She told all the students to...

Today the kids and I were at the PX and we decided to stop at the food court for lunch. None of us are major pizza fans. We will eat it, it just isn't our preferred meal. Usually when we eat at the food court we eat Chinese or Subway. The good thing is that everyone can go where they want so we don't all have to eat the same thing. Today however, the main thought was "We're hungry, which line is shortest?" The pizza place had the shortest line so we decided we would try it out since we hadn't eaten there before. While we waited in line, we looked over the menu to decide what we wanted. Katie said, "I want sausage and pepperoni with a cheese-stuffed crust." "I don't think they have stuffed crust here," I told her. "A few minutes later, as we inched forward in line, she again said, "I want sausage and pepperoni with the stuffed crust." Again I told her, "They don't have that here, honey." We all kept discussi...

Going to the beach - even if it's just for a few hours - requires a lot of stuff . Sometimes it seems like we're moving instead of just taking a morning to have an outing with friends. We have to pack up the back of the car with everything we might possibly need: A folding chair for me, straw mats for the kids. Towels. Boogie Boards. Sunscreen. Snorkel gear. Lunch. Water bottles. More sunscreen. Mosquito repellent. Camera. Sand buckets and toys. By the time we haul it all to the car and then haul it all to the beach, we're almost too exhausted to swim. That's actually not true. The girls all had a really good time finding hermit crabs on the beach, making sand castles, and boogie boarding in the waves. The boys all sat in a tree and ignored the ocean, the adults, and their little sisters. They did come down long enough to eat lunch.

Eighteen years ago today, I married the most amazing man I've ever known............. This would be so much more romantic if we were on the same continent.

This morning I had to drop Ben off at a car wash to support his boy scout troop. It was early and there was a Burger King right next to the car wash so I decided to go to the drive through and grab some breakfast. I ordered two breakfast shots for Katie. Breakfast shots are like breakfast biscuits except smaller and on a little hamburger bun instead of a biscuit. It comes with egg and cheese on it, except Katie doesn't like egg or cheese so I always have to make a "special order" for her. "I'll take two sausage breakfast shots but I don't want egg or cheese on them, just the sausage and the bun." Past experience has taught me to be extremely clear about what I want. Otherwise I wind up with a freaked out daughter throwing a fit because there is cheese on her sandwich and it's glued to the bun and can't be scraped off. "You want breakfast shots?" The lady doing the asking has a strong accent and we are having trouble understanding each o...

The kids have............... ...rehearsed... ...and rehearsed.... ....and rehearsed.... And the show is finally TOMORROW!

This is Ben and Kevin. Kevin was Ben's youth pastor when we lived in Kansas. Now Kevin is moving here and is trying to start a youth group here similar to the one in Kansas. The folks who hired Kevin asked him if he knew any teens who would be willing to be filmed talking about what it's like to be a teen in a military family and what it would mean to have a strong program for youth at the post chapel. Kevin said, "Why, as a matter of fact, I do." Kevin came over yesterday to scout out good locations around our neighborhood to do the interview. Then he came back today with a real cameraman and a real camera and a person who had come up with interview questions. He was probably sort of the director too, but he didn't say "cut" or "roll 'em" and he didn't clack together a black and white board at the beginning of each take. Ben and Kevin started off doing push ups so they would look nice and muscular for the cameras. Ben had to get ...

Today, I came home from having coffee with a friend to find my laundry room flooded. The utility sink (into which the washing machine usually drains) was full of water and had apparently overflowed all over the room. I reached into the sink to find out what was clogging it up and found a sponge blocking the drain. My darling son, whom I love, I really do, uses this sink daily. He is the only person in the house who uses this sink. He swears he did not leave a sponge in the sink. We started mopping up the floor with towels when I suddenly realized that I was cleaning up the wet mess all by myself. I stomped in here and found my darling son, who most likely caused this giant soggy mess, checking his email ! Sometimes maternal instinct is the only thing that keeps me from throttling him.

I haven't made bread from scratch in over a year. Yes, I know the stuff we buy from the grocery store is unhealthy - even the whole wheat kind. But I just never could get my groove on last year. This year the girls have really been pestering me to teach them to make bread, so I decided to get all the ingredients together with my groove. Katie loves to grind the wheat into flour. That's her favorite part of any recipe that calls for flour. She's always the one to pour the wheat into the grinder. Please don't tell me you buy your flour from the store. You know they take all the healthy stuff out of the flour so it will last longer on the shelf, right? You know they take all the healthy stuff they removed from the flour and feed it to farm animals because it's got all those nutrients in it and makes the livestock really healthy, right? You know they blow bleach through the flour to make it white, right? Right? Emily added the yeast. One thing about yeast is you need ...