To Grandma and Mrs. Jackson (by Tatum)

Hi grandma...I'm only doing this for you! This is a big sacrifice for me and I get a dollar! 

So, it's the best experience when you don't have school for 4 whole days, since our summer seemed to be sucked away!!! (away in a good way)

This weekend I played soccer, tennis, and even washed 20 cars. My soccer team did a car wash and yes I actually helped!! um, other than that I have loads of homework and yes, Mrs. Jackson it's all good for you to look at my posts! I'm suprised you think my life will be that interesting! Your homework assignments are making me think and I'm running out or interesting stories to tell!

In Young Women's I got a chocolate bar for reading my scriptures every day for a month! Right at this very moment Zach is making a bagel, and everyone else is sitting. I read a book this weekend for the first time since summer started! Its the Maximum Ride series. I recommend it, but it's kind of science fictiony.

Well, love you Grandma. Thanks for reading my posts! Here are some pictures of me playing soccer yesterday.

Enjoy!

Back in the Saddle Again

The soccer saddle, anyway.

We began our Saturday with an early morning soccer fundraiser for Tatum's MYSO team, not to be confused with her AYSO team.




Then it was off to Kapolei, an hour drive away, to watch Zach's game.

Note: Sometimes on long drives we like to amuse ourselves by plugging random destinations into our GPS and listening to it mispronounce all the Hawaiian street names. We also like to hear it say, you are off course. (Wouldn't it be cool if someone created a GPS that would notify you when you're off course in your life? I'm going to add that to my good ideas list along with a beeper for the T.V remote control and mascara containing super glue.)

When we arrived, the game was almost in media res--that's literary-speak for nearly half-time. (I really hate it when things start on time because then it makes me look tardy.)

Oddly, someone has pulled the spark plugs on Zach's team this year. Or maybe they just haven't hit their stride yet. Even though they went into the 4th quarter trailing 5-1 and came out with a 7-5 victory, it was a ho-hum game.

Any suggestions for a caption? I was thinking "Boom Chica Boom!"

After the game it was off to Costco where we worked up a sweat dodging carts to each sample station and we drop kicked 68 bucks at the gas pump.

I was so worn out I dozed off on our way to Tatum's game and awoke with a raging Mt. Dew addiction flashback that I couldn't shake. The heat didn't help. It was soooo hot three of the players burst into flames on the field.

(oops, I just remembered that I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on this blog. Okay, they didn't actually burst into flames, but their uniforms do have flames on them so it's only a small stretch). And, figuratively speaking, the girls were smokin' up the field. These girls aren't afraid to break a nail, (or a nose). The final score was 0-0, but what an exciting zero to zero it was!

Here's a peek:

(Notice Tatum's tongue in the first shot. She is so related to me).

A Photo Nutshell

Don't even say it! I can tell what you're thinking by the look on your face. You think that now since I've sworn to talk about the kids and nothing but the kids on this so-called family blog, I have nothing to say, right?

Come on, you know me better than that. I always have something to say.

It just so happens that I started teaching again on Wednesday night, which means that I'm wearing make-up again, and my favorite corky wedges. I have two classes and 44 new people from all over the world in my life. Because I don't hang out at my office much, I tell them they're welcome to contact me anytime, but they rarely do. Until this semester. I've already received 4 calls, 10 emails and 2 texts.

Plus, the kids icee business is booming so when they're not around to serve the customers I only get to sit down and write in 2 minute intervals. Not complaining though since the money they're earning will get us back home to see our family again next summer.

To top it all off, the kids were out of school on Friday, which is not unusual here in Hawaii, so we've been partying, which is also not unusual here in Hawaii. (Just perpetuating the stereotype there--we honestly only party on rare occasions because we're very busy stressing out about life).

The partying consisted of the boys inviting a few friends to sleep over. (Tatum will be noticably absent from the pictures)

Here they are at 8pm.

Here they are at 10pm.

Here they are at 11pm

Here they are at 7am

And here is Zach from 9am-3pm.

And now for Tatum:

She got to indulge herself in a book.

And in her art.

Don't you just love her suns?

She draws the coolest suns.

Wyatt spent some time catching skinks.

And making cookies to sell with the icees.

And Garrett, who is still suffering from Olympic Fever, spent a lot of time doing roundoffs in the living room.

Until our cute neighbors came over to play and said "let's read!" (What great friends!)


The reading was a highlight of the day!


(Okay, I admit, this photo was staged. These two didn't read at all.)

And that, my friends, was our day off in a photo nutshell.

The Spirit of the Law

I'm thinking of a quote. "I think I'm going to DIE, right now!

I'm trying to remember who said it. Oh, yes, it was my brother-in-law on the first night of his last visit here to Hawaii. He was lying in our guest room underneath the whimpy ceiling fan.

I would like to borrow that quote from my brother-in-law, because "I think I'm going to DIE, right now!"

Yes, according to the letter of the law, summer is on its way out, but according to the spirit of the law, summer is just beginning to heat up for us here in the middle of the Pacific. 

Right now we are definitely caught up in the spirit of summer.

You know what's addicting?

Avatar.

Another Great Idea

Here's an entry for my Great Idea List: Time Breeding. Wouldn't it be great to take 2 hours, put them together in a room . . . alone, with a little candlelight and Michael Buble, until they multiplied and replenished the earth?

Family Fun

They say that families who play together stay together, so yesterday we had a family fun day.

"Where are we going?" the kids asked.

"To the movies," I said, "and if you're really lucky you'll get to see a double-feature."

We checked them out of school, deoderized them, clipped their toenails, cleaned out their ears, flossed their teeth and plucked their nose hairs before arriving at our destination by 8:30 am.

"This isn't the movies! This is the dentist!" said the kids.

"No, this is where we come to watch movies, and they clean our teeth while we're at it," I told them, but they were so on to me.

"This is supposed to be our family fun day!" They whined.

"Then I suggest you have fun!" I whined back.

We ended up watching a triple feature, (if watching The Bee Movie twice counts) because our dentist had extra time to fill our cavities. (bonus! more free toothbrushes, play money and light up yo-yo's to give away at birthday parties)

Fortunately I got the quiet hygenist so I didn't have to worry about making chit chat with a suction tube in my mouth. The only thing I had to concentrate on was where to rest my eyes, which is tricky. Making eye contact with that surgical mask and plexi-glass face sheild gives me PTS C-section flashbacks, and if I look at the bright overhead light for too long I swear I can see those who passed before me comin' for to carry me home. I steadied my eyes on a stuffed monkey in a Huck Finn hat and a silk flower lei which was hanging from a raffia vine on the ceiling. (It's an adult-proof dentist)

Alan got the chatty hygenist. Her room is much like my own when I was 13 and obsessed with Scott Baio--floor to ceiling magazine cut-out collages. Mostly of cats. The only thing she loves more than cats and dental floss is talking about cats and dental floss, (but only when she's scraping your teeth with sharp objects. When you're right side up with your mouth shut she's aloof).

Having the chatty hygenist clean your teeth takes twice as long as the quiet hygenist, with much more eye contact. She brings out flow-charts and flip-boards and power-point presentations to teach you how to properly floss your teeth. (Did you know, btw, that your middle finger, not your index, finger, is the most effective finger to floss with? Double dog dare you to try it sometime).

Once the training is complete the flossing commences, and as soon as your gums are adequately bleeding, she begins telling you stories of how her favorite cat was once in the hospital in a coma for 3 months. Her heartless husband kept telling her it was time to pull the plug even though she could feel the cat wasn't ready.

Usually I ask her to tell me the one about how she brushes her dog's teeth every morning and night and buys big doggy toothbrushes by the bulk--1000 at a time. I just love that story.

Yesterday I could hear her telling Alan about a trip she is planning to Asia, where you can adopt an elephant. First she will get to catch the elephant, then wash him, feed him and ride him through the jungle for 10 days.

Whodathought Dental Hygenists led such exciting lives?

Overall, it was a successful family fun day. For only $342.40 we got 3 movies, 6 flouride treatments, 32 x-rays, 5 fillings and a purse full of cinnamon dental floss.

Score!

Plus I don't have to feed the kids for a week. (wouldn't want to get their teeth dirty)

Me no speaka algebra!

I'm totally having a snow-globe moment. It's not the first time. It happens whenever I snorkle too. There's something about gliding along with all the humuhumu's and the nukunukus and the apu'a'a's in their underwater animation, that makes me think, Hey, the world doesn't actually revolve around me! How 'bout that.

It's a real fish-out-of-water feeling. Like when I was in China last year visiting Xian University and 99.9% of all the students I met were English majors who could quote Hamlet better than me.

I was in China for 2 weeks and I went to lunch with students, played ping pong with students, danced with them, sang with them, and even bought pirated movies with them. And what did they want to talk about? Avril Lavigne. They all talked about Avril Lavigne. And Prison Break, and 24, and David Letterman, and George W. Bush, and of course, Hamlet.

My point is, I didn't feel like a stranger. Imagine how strange that feels in a strange land!

I call that a snow-globe moment. It's not the same thing as an ah-ha moment--no sudden striking realization. It's more a flickering, when your little bubble gets shaken and you get an inkling that there's a big wide world out there who knows the punch-line to a joke you've never even heard. And when you finally hear it, you scratch your head and think, huh?

Well, that's how I've been feeling lately.

It all started on Friday after Tatum performed with the dance team at the Kahuku Football game. Afterwards, one of her dance mates rushed towards her mom bubbling, I did a perfect Barrel tonight! Good job, said her mom, and I hit a perfect E. Yea! I can't wait until I can hit a perfect E! she gushed back.

Don't worry, I didn't get it either. But they did. They understood each other!

So I said, "Tatum, you hit a perfect baby-doll tonight."

She looked at me and with that mom's-are-from-venus-dad's-are-from-mars" face and said "What's a baby-doll?"

I began illustrating (until her eyes bulged out of her head). "That's NOT a baby-doll. That's a toe touch!"

"Well, in my day it was called a baby-doll."

TIP: Never say, in my day, around your teenager.

She rolled her eyes. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

That was the first flickering. But last night I had another. It all began on our living room floor.

Like this.

A classic Dad-helping-daughter-with-her-algebra-II scene. I wasn't paying much attention, but somewhere in between killing a cochroach and throwing out the moldy rice, their words began coming through in waves. Words like point slope form and slope intercept form.

Did you know that when a negative crosses the equal sign it becomes a positive? Did you know that anything squared is a curve? And did you know that when the line is perpendicular to y = x – 2 the slope is the negative reciprocal?

Neither did I.

(Snow globe moment!)

They were plugging a point into the slope–intercept formula, and solving for X. They were adding 2's and replacing y's and plusing b's, and she was saying hmmm and ahhhh and I was saying Did I give birth to you?

He was saying that an equation for the line parallel 2y=2x-2 is y equals 1/2, and she was saying oh, that makes sense now and I was saying and a baby-doll doesn't?

It's all Greek to me, and not Greek in that imaginary-romantic-encounters sense of the word.

Long story short, I'm feeling all alone in my little snow globe world, where negatives don't get to be positives just because they cross the dadgum equal sign and squares have to stay straight because they're just not supposed to curve.

The Guilt

If there's one thing I feel guilty about, it's refusing to get my boys a dog.

They've been begging and pleading for a dog for years, but our yard is the size of a postage stamp and our neighbors are an arms length away in all directions.

We're justified, right? Right.

But there are moments when I waver. Like when I get on the computer and find an open Craig's list window of puppies for sale. That gets to me. Or the time when Zach gave me an ultimatum, "Either we get a baby or we get a dog!" That gets to me too. Or like yesterday, when the twins came rushing in the house out of breath and tripping over their words because they found two lost puppies.

I admit I was melting. I mean, is there anything cuter than little boys and little dogs?

But what really got me, was Wyatt coming home from school today and putting one of the flyers we posted on the street poles last night on the fridge next to our family picture.

Rocky and Balbo (by Wyatt)

Today we found two lost dogs at the temple. One dog had a white nose and we called it Rocky and the nother dog had brown fur and we called it Balboa. He really likes to bite and he is really cute. They are really nice. We gave them pieces of steak. We gave them a lot of water. Later we gave them cat food and they just ate it so fast and then we took the dogs outside for 30 minutes and another dog came and they started to fight so we stoped them. This is boring without the dogs. I wish the owners didn't find them so fast. Right when we were putting up the signs they found them. If we had them right now we'd be playing with them. I wish we could have kept them for another day.

This Summer (by Zach)

This summer I went to Yellowstone. It was awesome. We saw Old Faithful, and a lot of animals including, elk, deer, black bear, grizzly bear, fox, wolf, and moose. It was a great experienence. It was also fun getting to stay at a big cabin with all my uncles, ants, gramma, grampa, and cousins. We were having a family reunion. The cabin had a pool table and I love pool. My uncle Ned brought his boat because our cabin was right by a lake. We went boating, tubeing {don't go with Jeremey or Chad, they're crazy}, wake boarding and swimming. We also brought up some 4 wheelers. We would look for trails and explore them. It was really dusty. Those were the fun things we did in Yellowstone.