Emily's 14th Birthday

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 for dinner. Five of their friends joined us. Emily will have her official celebration once she is back home, but this was good for now. I forgot the camera, so all I have are a few blurry cell phone pictures to mark the occasion.

But we gave her a camera of her very own while we were there, so that will make up for it.

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Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...

Japanese Fishing Shrine

Here's an interesting little spot we stopped to see. I'd passed this many times before and had never stopped to see what it was. Since GG and Sherry were here, we decided to check it out. There is a shrine of some sort with a statue and a carved rock. There was no information on sight as to what it is that I could find. There were flowers, food and incense left around the base of the shrine. There was a ceramic statue and a rock with a figure carved into it. None of the food was old or rotting (although plenty of it had clearly been pecked by birds) and the flowers were all fresh which made me think it must be cleaned and cared for on a regular basis. After we got home, I did some research and found this article about it from the Hawaii Star Bulletin, our local newspaper (I have edited out some bits, but otherwise the article is unchanged): "Maintenance" of the monument has been assumed by a group of Vietnamese Buddhists - Shingon Shu Hawaii, the Buddhist temple th...

Mama On The Move

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