Monthly Archives: January 2008

Sam is THREE!

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“This is how daddy sleeps!”

We just got back from a wonderful camping birthday party! This has become a birthday tradition and it was so fun. Thankfully this time we weren’t accompanied by 30 drunk Marines listening to Metallica as we were last year … that was totally crazy! We were on Bellows AFS and had the best campsite on the planet. Spacious, raised, private, and mostly sheltered. Despite forecasted rain we had really great weather, especially today. Sammy’s hiking buddies joined us for the camp-out – Anneliese and her sister Calleigh (with mom and dad of course). It was their first family camping trip and they had a great time as well. I’ll post pictures as soon as I can later today… Dave did a wonderful job cooking and setting up camp and then taking it all down again. The kids had fun just playing in the sandy soil, hide and seek behind the trees, making bubbles and hanging out. We had Gramma with us as well making this really special. We were also joined by some special friends – long-time friends Mike and Angel and their son David and his friend Nick came for s’mores, and my friend Dana made her famous carrot cake (Sammy’s request) which was decorated by mom and me with some rather unconventional stuff (log cabin, snowman…Sam and I were hankering for winter!). After s’mores, the kids went to bed an the grown-ups had a nice time chatting in complete sentences by candlelight. Poor Sam has a cold and a persistent cough, but he did great sleeping through it all. I went to help him at one point with a sip of water and he said after a little bit “OK mommy, go back to your room, I’m going to sleep all by my SELF.” SO cute. I didn’t sleep a whole lot due to the coughing and rustling, Ben wriggling in my stomach, and Dave snoring (softly) just as everything settled down. Oh well – the smells and rituals of camping are irresistible and we had a fantastic time. We almost stayed another night but decided to plan a longer outing next time. Pictures are up – just click on the photo above.  (Note: in the above picture mom had just asked him “How does daddy sleep?” and he made snoring noises 🙂 hee hee!)

Mt. Sammy erupts

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We had a great morning at the beach today. Dave took Friday off work – he’d been working swings since last week and hadn’t had a day off in a while, so it was a real treat to start the weekend a day early. Sammy just started digging himself into sand yesterday and enjoyed being covered up. Today he wanted to be totally covered, up to his chin. We kept asking him when he was going to “erupt” (since he’d been building a volcano) and he said not for a while. Then he said “would you wipe off my chinny chin chin?” since it had gotten sand on it. A few minutes later he said he was in his chrysalis, so when I asked how long he would be in there he said “40 hours.” When he finally squirmed out he flew away like a butterfly. We were laughing so much at how long he wanted to stay completely immobilized and kept saying he’s not ready to come out yet!

molting monk seal visits our beach

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This is “Chester” – a monk seal who has been resting on Kailua Beach since Jan 1. He is molting, a process which lasts 5-10 days or so. He just started molting on Saturday, so he’ll be returning to the water soon. He doesn’t eat while he’s ashore, so he’s lost quite a bit of weight. He’s fine, though – this is a natural process. The monk seal guardians roped off the area to keep people from trying to move or feed the seal. Hard to believe people would interfere with nature, or presume to act before getting a bit more information. Thankfully the volunteers who stand guard around the clock are very knowledgeable and nice people.

Christmas campfire!

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Here’s a new tradition I really enjoyed – my boys, too! Chop up the Christmas tree and have a campfire! It’s perfect for boys – creates excitement out of a task that is otherwise a bit sad. I managed to convince Dave to let Sam and I do this – needles catch fire easily, it will be fun, have a hose nearby, and don’t load too much in at a time. It was smokey and actually smelled like the Krug family was smoking something else entirely… Sam enjoyed helping me chop up the tree with his “saw.” Dad – I taught him how to hold the saw with his other hand far from the blade 🙂 Dave and I came up with a new risk scale – 0 to 10 on the risk scale. We both provide an estimate, then depending on where the risk falls he will approve or disapprove my proposed scheme. I rated it a 3-4, he rated it a 5. I passed – we got to have a campfire. I asked at what point on the scale my proposed schemes would not be approved and he replied “that’s classified” in true Dave fashion 🙂 So just now I asked how his overall experience was (figured a debriefing was in order). On the “harebrained” scale it was a 7, on the fun scale it was a 5… I really enjoyed it and plan to build another Christmas campfire next year. Maybe we’ll have a group campsite at Bellows, invite friends to bring their trees and have a big bonfire! No, I haven’t mentioned this idea to Dave yet 🙂 We could combine that with our Burns night festivities and just bump that up a bit earlier than Jan 23 when we usually celebrate. FUN!

family time

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We had a nice weekend – no remodeling obligations and some sunshine to enjoy 🙂 We escaped the house yesterday morning for a hike up a favorite trail, and today we took the trail-a-bike out again for a ride around town. Dave picked up a mirror for my bike so I could keep an eye on Sam riding behind me. He also redid our pantry closet to provide more storage, and wired up our built-in desk/laptop garage by the bar. It is so nice to have everything within arm’s reach. Tonight Dave made Sunday family dinner – a tradition he started a few months ago and really relishes now that the kitchen is open, airy, not hot and not disgusting 🙂 He made spaghetti with homemade meatballs. Sam really devoured them! The thumbnail above opens very large if you click it – you can see Sam enjoying one of his presents from Uncle Dan and Aunt Heather, with Dave cooking in the background. The little hiker is also featured climbing over one of many boulders along the way. At the end of the hike we saw the largest moth on the planet – I think Dave was actually a little freaked out by it. He kept saying to move out of the way of some other hikers (Sam and I were intrigued by the very hairy legs on this thing) but I think he really meant was get the heck away from the prehistoric creature before it flies off with you!