Mama On The Move

One of the things homeschoolers hear most is, "What about socialization?" One of the questions homeschoolers hate most is, "What about socialization?" If you are already a homeschooler, you know this is a non-issue. I have one homeschooling friend who won't even discuss it. She says, "It's already been settled. It's a stupid question." For those who do not homeschool, it's a valid concern. Before I started homeschooling, I wondered if my kids were going to grow up emotionally stunted from being home with me all day instead of being with their peers in the social atmosphere of school. What if they turned out "weird"? I needn't have worried. If your kid is a "weird" homeschooler, then he probably would be a "weird" public schooler as well. Weird is weird. Geeks are geeks. Jocks are jocks. No matter what situation you put them in. Ben and Katie are both extremely social kids. Emily is quiet and introverted. I...

Kerry's base was hit by a rocket last week. Two soldiers were killed and six injured. Luckily, Kerry was the one who told me about it. I didn't see it on the news and then worry, worry, worry until I heard he was okay. I already knew he was all right before I knew there had been an incident. But...... After we talked, I looked up the info on the Internet. It was front-page news. Top story of the day. I read about it and a wave of nausea took over. I couldn't believe how sick I felt even though I knew he was all right. It's hard knowing they are in danger. It's hard knowing other people are getting the news on what is about to become the worst day of their lives. There are parents, spouses, sibling, children whose entire lives are changed from this day on. It's hard knowing that could still be me, any day. I've been very complacent about this deployment. He's on a very secure base and he doesn't take convoys to other bases all the time like he did dur...

Back in ancient times (when I was a pre-teen) girls had to get their ears pierced at the doctor's office. Boys did not get their ears pierced. Period. I remember going to watch my sister get her ears pierced. She actually had to lie back on the exam table and the doctor had to wear rubber gloves. I can remember Sherry hissing air between her teeth as the needle went in. It looked like it hurt. Me? I got my ears pierced by the next door neighbor using a sewing machine needle . It was probably cheaper. My ears got infected and grew shut. So I got them pierced again. I'm not sure who did it that time. I just remember that they got infected and closed up again. The third time was the charm. They remained healthy little holes in my ears and I could happily wear earrings. Until I discovered that I am allergic to pretty much every earring ever made and my earlobes turn red and scaly if I wear earrings. I still tough it out and wear them for special occasions, but then I have to deal ...

Hi Dad! Happy Father's day! I can't wait for you to come home so I can own you at AirSoft with my new AK-47. Then I have to watch you wipe out on a surf board. Then I must fight you at HeroScape. Finally, I have to grow taller than you. This is all very hard to do with you so far away, so you need to hurry up and come home. Love, Ben

Kerry loves football. I mean, he R eally. Loves. Football. When we moved to Virginia, we had not only a channel showing current football games, there was also an entire channel which showed old football games. Kerry could spend hours parked in front of the television watching games whose outcome had been determined years earlier. He knows everything there is to know about football. I like to spend my time looking up obscure football facts on the Internet to see if I can stump him. I have never yet succeeded. He knows every player, every stat, every team, every play that it is possible to know. When Ben was born, Kerry was ecstatic that he now had a son with whom to share his vast knowledge and love of the game. He waxed rhapsodic about the games he and Ben would one day play (and watch on television). I remember saying to him once, "But what if Ben doesn't want to play football when he's old enough?" "He will," Kerry replied with assurance. "But real...

The weather is usually so very nice here, many houses do not have air conditioning. We usually just keep our windows up and let the breeze blow through. However, we've had record breaking temperatures for eight days straight this past week. Suffice to say, it's been warmish. I decided to turn on our air conditioners. Turning on the air conditioners requires closing all the windows. Ringo does not realize there is a difference between an open window and a closed window. He simply hears someone outside with a dog, decides they need to be barked at............. ...................and smashes his head right through the glass. "Hey buddy! Come back here and say that to my face!"

Today we tried out Waimea Bay Beach Park on the North Shore. You have to go early because parking is limited; we arrived at 8:30 and had no problem finding a place to park. When we left at noon, we were stalked by people who wanted our parking spot. See this rock? This is called "Da Big Rock" or "Jump Rock". People like to jump off of it. There are lots of different spots where you can take a flying leap. I chose the second highest area. I figured if I could make myself jump off the next highest, then I could move up to the highest spot after that. I was wrong. As you can see in the picture, the spot we were jumping from slopes downward. I have to tell you, this was pretty scary. There is nothing to hold on to, and you inch forward to the edge knowing that if you slip, you will slide off the edge and possibly bounce off the face of the cliff all the way down. Then, once you make it to the edge, you look down and the water is so clear, you can see the bottom. It...

We were at one of the beaches on the North Shore on Saturday. When we arrived, a really large group of people with surfboards had gathered and I assumed it was a paddle board class. They all headed to the beach and posed for a group photo. Most of them had on fresh leis. Then they began paddling out into the ocean. I realized it was definitely not a paddle board class because many of the adults also had a child or two on their surfboards with them. Once out in the ocean, they formed a tight little group and floated there for a bit. It was then that someone near me explained that it was a memorial service to scatter someones ashes in the water. The family had a little memorial service out there on their surf boards, then they scattered the ashes and put their leis in the water. I wish I had known what was going on before they started paddling back, I would love to have had more pictures of what they were doing. It was a wonderful idea for a funeral service. I think I would like to b...

The kids and I went to a really cool science class this week. I had asked Ben's science teacher if she could teach us all about our microscope and she set up a class for all four of us! We were really excited to be greeted by two of her nine dogs. They always stand on the roof and bark at anyone who is walking up to the house. I have watched Ben enter every week, convinced that one day one of these dogs would take a flying leap and land on his head. The Pomeranians probably wouldn't hurt so much, but she has Rottweilers up there sometimes too. The class was really awesome. We learned all about how a microscope functions and then we learned how to set up slides. Depending on what you are mounting on the slide, you can add water or oil, and sometimes a drop of a coloring agent if you need to make the cells visible. The kids had to set up their own slides and look at them through the microscope. Sometimes they had to adjust the amount of light.... Or just fine tune the focus. ...

Ben's first track meet was this past Saturday. I haven't been to a track meet since high school. I prepared as well as possible, making sure we had lunch, cold drinks, cold fruit, a beach umbrella for shade, chairs to sit on, and books and games for the girls to keep them occupied. We had to meet the team at the practice field at 6:30 AM . Now, I don't know about everyone else, but getting three kids up and dressed and out of the house at that time of morning on a Saturday is not a happy occasion around here. But we did it. We met the team at the practice field and followed the leader over to the University of Hawaii track where the actual meet was being held. The problem was, the leader was unconcerned that there were twelve cars following him, and he drove like a bat out of hell all the way there. I was the third car in line, and we lost everyone behind me at some point. He was speeding, and changing lanes as though he were dreaming about NASCAR. We got to the main track...

Ben came rushing in tonight from track practice. He has to clean all the sweat off himself at top speed, throw on his scout uniform, gulp down dinner, and head out to his scout meeting. Tuesday nights are always a blur of running from one place to another. As he came dashing in I handed him his plate and said, "You've got five minutes to eat this!" "Well, that's four more than I need," he said taking his plate and running off.

Thursday, for his birthday, I took Ben to a surfing lesson. The first thing we learned was not to follow the GPS's directions on how to get there. We wound up in some top secret military area, and they radioed around that there was a strange car with strange folks in it and a man with very few teeth flagged us down and led us out of there and sent us in the correct direction. How embarrassing. The second thing we learned was that surfers should wear a rash guard shirt so they don't rub the skin off their stomachs while paddling along on the board. The surf shack loaned Ben one since we were so remiss as to show up without one. (Part two of this lesson is that if you lose the shirt you arrived in, you can't be taken out to lunch, and wind up going through a drive-thru for your birthday meal.) Ben likes this picture because the palm tree behind him makes it look like he has a green mohawk. The third thing we learned was that Ben put the rash guard on backwards. Rash guards...

Fifteen years ago today, I birthed a boy young'un into this world...... The seventeen hours of labor and five hours of pushing probably account for the somewhat shell shocked look on my face. I slept for seven hours before they brought him back to me. Man, we look like babies ourselves. We were so clueless. Ben isn't really into having a birthday party any more. He just wants a quiet celebration. His big gifts this year are going to be scuba lessons and surf lessons so for his smaller gifts we got him a couple of books and an iHome so he can take the iPod earbuds out of his ears once in a while. He wanted a cake with as much chocolate as possible on it. And - okay, I'm mean - I only buy organic cereals. So on their birthdays, the kids get to pick an unhealthy cereal. It's hilarious to me that this has become such a big deal to them. When they were young and they wanted me to buy a non-organic cereal, I would say "no" when they would beg for Fruit Loop or Co...

Yet another cool homeschool project...... The kids in our co-op built rockets this year. Unfortunately, we didn't live here when they actually built the rockets, so we missed out on that. However, we did get to join everyone for the launching of the rockets. And since all the rockets were reusable, Katie got to shoot a couple of them off as well. It's amazing how high those rockets can go. I thought they would just shoot a little way up, but those suckers took off and went so high we couldn't see them. Each time we would have to wait until the parachute deployed and the rocket had floated back down a way before we could spot it in the sky. The kids had as much fun chasing the rockets and trying to catch them before they landed as they did shooting them into the sky. One wayward rocket went too far away and landed at a McDonalds across the street. I hope they weren't alarmed.

I was talking with a neighbor and her twelve year old daughter today. The daughter was telling me that her mom had taken away her phone for a month because she had been texting excessively (over 2,000 texts a week which I didn't think was humanly possible). When she finally got her phone back, she lost it again within 24 hours for the same reason. She's twelve . Then her mom was telling me that the daughter had asked to have a MySpace page, the parents said "no", and the daughter set one up anyway and claimed to be eighteen on it. The parents found out about it, shut it down, and the daughter said (right in front of her mom) that she plans to set it up again. She's twelve . Then, the daughter tells me that she "only" wants to have her belly button pierced, two piercings on her back, and to have her own name tattooed across her lower back. She "might" have these really cool stars tattooed around her belly button one day too, but her mom won'...