Mama On The Move

Ben hiked the Stairway to Heaven once before . He did it again this past weekend. He and his friends had to be there at 3:00AM to make certain they could get on the trail. I wish I had the leg power to climb to the top, but alas, I am old and my knees are weak. If only I had lived here when I was young. I just have to let Ben enjoy it for me!

Ben was at a boy scout ceremony recently in which some cub scouts were crossing over into boy scouts. The cubs families were invited to come participate in the ceremony. Ben walked up to three of the scouts who were having an animated discussion. They had spotted the sister of one of the young cub scouts and the boys were going on and on about how "hot" she was and they were all daring each other to try to talk to her and see who could get her phone number. Ben turned to look at the girl and recognized her as a friend from ballroom dancing. He turned back to look at his compadres and with a wise, all knowing look, told them, "Watch this." Then he walked straight over to the girl and wrapped her in a big bear hug and then chatted with her for a few minutes. The other scouts now live in awe of his ability to charm girls.

People selling food out of old trucks and RV's are a pretty common site around the island. They usually look pretty run down and dingy, but sell amazingly good food. Some are better than others though and they usually develop a reputation among the populace. We know of a guava chicken tent (not a truck, just a tent) that absolutely makes me giddy with glee every time we pass near it. With this in mind, we finally stopped at one of the top shrimp trucks on the island: Giovanni's. We'd heard about Giovanni's dozen's of times. It and Fumi's are the two top shrimp trucks on the island if you're judging by number of times they are mentioned. Fumi's is about an hour away from us though, and Giovanni's is only about a twenty minute drive. Not a tough decision to make. We knew that sometimes the wait in line to place your order can be thirty minutes or more, so we went for a late lunch and fortunately only waited a few minutes. Giovanni's had thre...

Emily recently informed me that she'd been having trouble breathing for "a couple of weeks". She said she felt as if she couldn't take deep breaths and couldn't completely fill her lungs. So off to the doctor we went. They performed numerous tests on her and gave her a pretty thorough check-up including a chest x-ray. The doctor said he couldn't find any evidence of a breathing issue other than the fact that she said she couldn't breathe. This incensed Emily. They had her take an albuteral breathing treatment which made her shake like a leaf for about thirty minutes and then gave her an albuteral inhaler to take home with us. She used it for a few days, but it made her shaky and nauseous each time and left her with a headache for hours. Emily is allergic to dust mites, mildew and mold. I strongly suspected that there was plenty of dust in her room which might be adding to her breathing woes. She had a babysitting gig a couple of days later and I took ...

Is it wrong of me to be amused by the fact that Ben's Spanish teacher is Japanese and his English teacher is Mexican?

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...