Mama On The Move

This was Emily's fault. She was surfing the internet and found a recipe she wanted to try called Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie 'n Oreo Fudge Brownie Bar. Well, of course she's allergic to all dairy, so we had to make some adjustments. And I really, really, really didn't want to go to the store, so we had to use what was in the house. But first, Emily wanted a nap, so Ben and Katie actually ended up making the recipe because they didn't want to wait. First, they made chocolate chip cookie dough from scratch. "From scratch" in our house means grinding wheat into flour first, but we used store bought eggs instead of going outside and chasing down some chickens. We used the recipe off a bag of regular chocolate chips......... ......but we substituted dairy-free chocolate chips and vegan butter. This particular recipe didn't call for milk, but we would have substituted almond milk if it had. We spread the cookie dough in the bottom of the pan, then p

Located in Central Oahu, not far from Dole Plantation, the Royal Birthing Stones are one of the most historically significat sites on the island. Ben declined to accompany us as he didn't want to go "out in the middle of nowhere to look at a bunch of rocks." The stones are easy to find but there are only three parking places and you have to walk a short distance down a dirt road to get to the entrance. There are two large boulders at the entrance. Only the high chiefs, the expectant mother, and the women who would be assisting in the birth were allowed past this point. This was considered to be a very spiritually strong area. It is eerily quiet and the air feels oddly dense when you are there. It's easy to see why the native Hawaiians felt that there was something different about this spot of land. This site was first used for the birth of Kapawa, the son of a high ranking chief, in or around the 12th century. It was used for the births of royal children for seven ce

Katie got a new bike. The poor kid had just barely gotten the hang of riding a bike when we moved here three years ago. Most of our bikes were mangled in the move. Kerry was deployed and I was overwhelmed with the move and repairing/replacing the bikes was low on my priority list. So now, three years after she learned to ride a bike, we got her a new bike and she has learned to ride it again. The only problem is.......it's pink. While Katie used to be the queen of pink, she has now moved into that territory of pink being a "little girl" color. And she does not want to be in that category. However, the bike was a fabulous price, and we advised her that it was this bike or no bike, as all the others were easily double the price of this one. Fortunately, Emily came to the rescue with her massive pile of duct tape. The girls set to work......... .......and glammed up that bike. It's still got a good bit of pink, but it isn't completely pink and now it's als

Ben had a follow up appointment today to check his eye. Amazingly, he woke up pain free and with almost normal vision. The eye doctor confirmed that he is healing very quickly and should only need antibiotics in the eye for two more days. He's enjoying all the horrified attention he is receiving.

Today, as I was dropping Ben off at the bus stop to go to class, he had a little accident. He has this cross necklace that he never, ever takes off. A while back the cord broke and the only brown cord I could find that would fit through the catch was a stretchy elastic cord. So today, he was brushing the dog hair off his shirt when his ring caught on the cross. As he looked down to see what his ring was caught on, the cross came loose, snapped back on the stretchy elastic cord and hit him right in the eye. "Ow!" he was laughing as he rubbed his eye and told me what had happened. His eye was watering profusely. "Are you okay?" I asked. "Let me look." "No, I'm fine, it just hurt. There's my bus!" He headed off toward the bus as I drove off. I could see him still rubbing his eye. Four hours later I got a phone call from him. "Mom, can you bring some eye drops when you pick me up? My eye is killing me! My Spanish teacher dism

We've discovered something new here on the island..... Speed. There's a Podium Raceway over in Kapolei. On a very small island, with rather short roads, there are not many places where you can drive over 35 mph. It's actually exhilarating to get to the highway and go 55. We'll probably freak out when we get to the mainland and get on one of the stretches of highway where people drive 70 mph. We definitely aren't going anywhere near that fast here, but because you are low to the ground, it feels like the Indie 500. Katie is rather intimidated by the speed. She hunches down like a turtle and drives slower than the rest of us. I will be grateful for this when she is sixteen, I know. We all yell encouraging statements as we pass her. "You're doing great, Katie!" "You can go faster, Katie!" "Eat my dust, Katie!" She has reason to be a tad nervous. The first time we went, she drove headfirst into a wall and got stuck. She coul

Since this is Ben's senior year in high school, I have been going back through old baby photos and videos trying to find the best ones of him. We are finding so many things that we had forgotten about over the years. This particular video really tickled me when I saw it. This is when my sister Sherry arrived to see Ben for the first time. He was twelve days old. Our parents were with us at the airport to pick her up. What tickles me so much is that she and I both center all our attention on Ben. We don't look at each other, we don't hug, we just have intense focus on the newest member of our family. Such is the power of a baby. When I showed this video to Ben, I told him, "Look how we were so completely focused on you!" "Yeah, what's up with that?" he responded. "Why did you stop?"

Emily asked me to take her to the library to get some of Shakespeare's works today. I keep telling her it's not normal to like poetry or Shakespeare, but what can I do? The girl is just weird that way. If she were in public school, she'd probably get the crap kicked out of her every day if she weren't so pretty. Anyway, I wasn't sure if Shakespeare was kept on some special shelf reserved for nerds or if it would be in regular fiction, so Emily and I headed straight to the information desk and asked one of the volunteers. "Um.....Shakespeare?" she asked me looking around the library as if hoping to spot it. "How do you spell that?" she finally asked as she decided to type it in on the computer. I spelled it for her and she said, "Shakespeare.......that's like, who wrote it, right?" Emily and I froze with pleasant expressions on our faces. I knew if we made eye contact with each other we would burst out laughing. "Yes,"

Kerry took two weeks off during December. We planned to have a staycation and do some of the things we haven't yet on the island. One of our top choices was to hike Diamond Head. It's one of the "musts" when you visit the island. We've been here three years and haven't done it yet. So we got up early one morning, full of plans to head down and scale that bad boy. But we somehow wound up at the Hale Koa breakfast buffet instead. Ah well. Que sera sera.

A year ago, I took Emily to Waikiki and we had a "girls only" weekend where we discussed the facts of life and the birds and the bees and all that. Well, ever since, Katie has been champing at the bit to have her weekend with me. She's a couple of years younger than Emily was so I didn't quite get into the nitty gritty details the way I did with Emily, but we will cover all that in another year or so. I had planned to do this in January or February after the holidays, but at the beginning of December, the Hale Koa offered 50% off their rooms for kama'aina (people who live on the island) so I jumped at the chance to have a quick vacation in the middle of Christmas. We hadn't been to the Hale Koa during Christmas before. It was fun to see all the decorations. We forgot to make our gingerbread houses this year, but at least we got to see the big fancy ones! The closest thing we get to snowmen. We walked over to the Sheraton to see their sand sculpture. Last