Roasting Deer

Sounds like a strange title for me. Let me explain a bit. My plan today was to go to bible study then take the kids to a park and have lunch and play around since we'd be out anyway. Good plan. While I was talking to the ladies at church about different things I'd like to do this summer and what I was doing after class someone mentioned that we should go to the park up the hill. No, I said we're going to go on base, they have lots of nice parks(playgrounds) there. Then I decided that sounded boring, who wants to go to a playground when you could go somewhere to explore! So up the hill we go. Usually when we go to this park we go hiking-that's not on the schedule today- so we eat our lunch in a camping area(no campers) and I tell the children they are free to play as long as I can see them. They start building 'fires' in the pits and hunting in the woods. They designate #3 to kill the deer and then the others roast it. Grandpa Tony, they ate the deer fur and all-I told them that they'd have to talk to you about how to dress a deer.
They found big stick that made good bows, tromped up and down the hillside inspected all the moss and fruits that have fallen from the trees and let there imaginations guide them.
This was so much more fun then climbing on play equipment and sliding down slides. Here there were built in slides when the hillside is covered in fallen leaves! #4 had his share of falls-he begin to have fun with it! Although if he was going a big distance he'd ask to hold my hand.
It was a good day-tiring but a good reminder of all the things that this area has to offer us and not to get stuck in a rut of the same ole easy stuff.
Btw, we don't really have deer in Hawaii(I believe they have been introduced but I have never seen one) so I'm not sure why they thought to pretend about deer today. Find that quite interesting!

Heart of the Matter

So I was going to join in the meme this week at Heart of the Matter. I am a little limited on the photos I have as my last computer crashed and the photos are still in the hard drive.

So I thought I could use this photo. This was taken on a sunset cruise after James got home from his last deployment. The only pictures I have on the laptop are from our trip(s)



I kept looking to see if i had anything else and this one had me cracking up!! But that's off subject......


Well, if you can stop laughing now.....


James, whether it's hiking around the islands, getting the children to laugh themselves silly or reading them a story before bed. You are so caring and loving and we're so glad we have you to call daddy. Love you babe!

our new van

We have a pincher in the family. a biter too. He only seems to do it to his siblings and only when mom and dad aren't looking. But I've seen the evidence, it's not pretty. A good time to use his weapons of choice is in the van, where he is seated right next to his brother(#3). So we've been debating on how to rearrange the children to keep this nonsense down. We have a 8 seater van, but we decided the best thing to do was make it a 7 seater. This seemed this simplest solution but where would we store the seat? We really lack the storage out here. James found room in the shed and we will work on "geco proofing" the chair so it's not covered in poo next time we need it. We removed the middle seat in the middle row so now no one is sitting next to each other. It seems so roomy now! Like a whole new van!

Now to work on that little guy. He must learn to use words not action and the others must learn to listen to him and not ignore. He is very cute and sweet and loud and into everything!

Helping mom

#4 likes to help. It's one of the good influences from the others. Of course at his age it's sometimes hard to find things for him to do that are actually helpful and don't create more work. But since we want to encourage this, we do our best to find things for him. Today it was vacuuming. It was very cute to watch, he required the vacuum to be on while he pushed it around. Now again because of his size he was pushing it on the back two wheels so all it was sucking was air but he was having a grand ole time pushing it around the living room while I was finishing dinner. He had a big smile on his face the whole time-I love happy helpers!

James has been working some shift work lately which means I've been getting the children down for bed. Tonight has been a long night. I believe the blame is lack of physical activity. Day's like this I am dreaming of a big yard for the children to run around in. We were going to go to the park in the a.m. but one child was dragging their feet on some work. Then I planned to take them swimming after naps but 2 children decided to take a 3hour nap and the pool is too crowded by then and it's time to work on supper......
then the crazy shenanigans happen and I realize I have a headache and it's now too dark to run this energy out! Must make this a priority tomorrow!!

Good news-James found the camera charger today! It was hiding in the printer.