Mama On The Move

While Ben and Emily were at camp, Katie and I spent a lot of time doing things together, just the two of us. Being the youngest, she's rarely had time alone with one person. She usually has to share us with her siblings. So I tried to do things with her that we wouldn't normally do. I took her for her first pedicure. She giggled a lot. Apparently it tickled her toes. We ate lunch in a local restaurant and tried on the silly hats they have there. Katie tried on LOTS of hats. And we saw a dinosaur exhibit. We also played board games, went to the beach, shopped, made cupcakes, went kayaking, made s'mores over a bonfire, ate at her favorite Thai restaurant (and Starbucks, and McDonalds, and Subway, and Dairy Queen, and a sushi restaurant where she would only order french fries), saw Hoodwinked Too at the theatre, played video games, and had play dates with several friends. She's happy and I'm exhausted!

Emily got a short sassy haircut again. She's actually trying to grow it out, but in order for it to grow out evenly, it had to be cut shorter to get rid of all the layers. Sleek. Smooth. Sassy. Short. (The hair, not the girl - she's taller than I am.) I think she likes it.

Kerry has a new job and a new office. I went with him to move all of his personal items to his new digs. His new office came with a fancy chair. I told him it looks like a throne. King Kerry He says he likes the sound of that.

All three of my progeny had to have TB tests this week. The phlebotomist drew smiley faces on their arms with the nose as the injection site. He kept calling Katie "Kat" and we all smirked at each other every time he did. I have no idea why he thought we call her "Kat". Katie's looked like it was winking and Ben's had a bloody nose. They all turned out to be TB free.

Although we took Emily to dinner and gave her a camera on her actual birthday, her party wasn't until the weekend. We tagged on Katie's idea and also had a spa party for Emily's group of friends. They played with each other's hair, painted their nails, and waxed and waxed and waxed their hands. I've never seen girls so thrilled with a hand waxer . They used up all the plastic bags which cover the wax once it's on your hand. Then they left those same plastic bags lying all over my living room floor. Katie gathered up all the wax after it was used and molded it into a giant brain. On of the guests coiffed Emily's hair into a whale spout. I think twenty years from now she's going to look at this pictures and say, "WHY was I wearing my hair like that?!?!" Actually I don't think it will take twenty years. Katie got to live out her life's dream by giving a dozen or so pedicures. Kerry went ahead and cut the cake before we could sing ...

Katie decided she wanted to throw a "spa party" for some friends who are moving off the island. Bless her girlie little heart, she researched every possibility of things we could do and laid out a floor plan of who would be where doing what throughout the entire party. She planned homemade facials of honey and oatmeal or cucumber and yogurt, manicures, pedicures, foot massages, and handwaxing. We purchased scented lotions, sugar scrubs, headbands, and nail polishes. Katie goes all out (with my money) when she plans a party. As a special treat, one of Emily's friends came over and offered to do face-painting on the girls. Almost every girl chose the same pattern of flowers. I had thought for sure someone would choose butterflies or rainbows. One of the girls chose to have a panda and a penguin painted on her arms. Very cute and it matched her tee shirt! Katie went back and had a necklace painted on as well. It lasted for days! Katie particularly enjoyed giving ever...

I've written before about our love of pickles . It's not natural. I know. I'm aware. But it still just is a fact of life around here. So you can imagine the anguish when, while carrying in the groceries, one of the bags split completely open....... .....and the jar of pickles shattered in the street. Katie actually suggested that maybe we could wash the pickles off and they would be okay. She clearly didn't foresee the complications of me trying to explain to the police why I fed my children pickles with crushed glass in them.

Emily is now 14. Of course, this always inspires memories for me and Kerry of what we were doing 14 years ago. Emily arrived in a hurry. I was only at the hospital for a couple of hours and a nurse asked came in and asked how I was doing. I told her I was starting to feel the need to push. The nurse took a peek and said, "Honey, don't push! The baby is right there !" She made a quick phone call and the room filled up with nurses and assorted folk scurrying around and setting up. The doctor walked in the room, held his arms straight out, a nurse whipped a surgical gown on to him, another one snapped on his gloves, he leaned over, caught Emily and held her up. He was in the room less than a minute before she arrived. I'm telling you, that girl saw light and she ran for it. This is her today, fourteen years later. She and Ben are actually staying on the other side of the island this week so we drove out there to pick them up and take them to a Mongolian BBQ ...

One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things about Hawaii is that there are NO snakes here. (Actually, that isn't quite true. There is a tiny "snake" with a forked tongue and scales, but it's a little smaller than an earthworm and most people aren't even aware that it's a snake so no one treats it like a snake.) We hike through a lot of grassy areas and rainforest areas and it's nice to know nothing is going to come slithering up at us unexpectedly. Until now.

There is a boy on our street who is having a birthday next week. He's going to be nine. It's been a while since I've had a nine year old boy so when I saw him outside today, I decided to ask him what sort of toys he is interested in. "Hey, Milo, what do you want for your birthday? Do you like Legos? Bionicles? Nerf guns?" He wrinkled his nose in a "you're gross" kind of way and said, "No. Not really." He thought hard for a minute and then offered, "I'd really like an iPod." Yeah, that's going to happen.