At the Waikiki Aquarium for Marine Munchies - a private tour of the aquarium during feeding time!

I was afraid I’d forget this entire chat on the way home from an aquarium tour – a private tour! – we’d arranged for some friends on a day off from school. So I jotted things down immediately.  The tour was at 4:30-6pm, for 7 boys age 7 and under. What were we thinking? It’s happy hour at that time for boys. Just wild-making time. But they did really well overall and it was a great tour for all…especially the octopus opening a jar! We loved seeing the fish eat and learning so many things from the guides, Mary and Kanako. So here’s the chat about boys…

“Wild?”

“Yeah. Why when we arrived at the aquarium were you all jumping off anything you could find, twirling around and yelling?”

“That’s just how boys are. We are wild”

“Is that just how you are? What else do I need to know about boys?”

“Well, we are big. And we eat a lot. And so we have a lot of energy. The highest maintenance age is 1. When you are 1 you can’t do anything, you don’t know all the rules. You just eat. When you are 6 or 7 you’re not as high maintenance, it gets lower, then when you are much older, like 99, you are very high maintenance again like a brown a dwarf, or any star – you have a lot of fuel to burn.”

“OK. Thank you Sam. That clears it up.”

Ben: “Our dad is in uh…JAPAN! Yeah. Now you listen here young man!”

Cute boys - Ben, Henry and Camden - on a "palm motorcycle" while out on a hiker hui outing this morning.

Sam remarked about the earth treadmill tonight while we were reading up on fever and how the body manages homeostasis unless challenged. The challenge might be an infection – the fever denatures the viral capsid coating so it can’t take over your cell’s machinery to churn out more viruses. This was particularly relevant because Sam had a fever today so was home from school, lounging. I love sick days, except I feel bad for the kiddos if they are really feeling awful. Thankfully it’s just another low fever so hopefully it will be a short course for them.

Back to the treadmill. While reading the Biology book tonight about homeostasis and fever, we saw a picture of a ghost crab on a treadmill! The ghost crabs are our little beach friends so we were curious to see what he was doing in a tank on a treadmill. The scientists were measuring metabolic output. So I explained what a treadmill is – a sheet covering two cylinders that spin around and you have to keep up on it or you fall off (like I did in ancient times past while enrolled in a running study – I closed my eyes while running on a treadmill hooked up to all kinds of equipment because I was bored  – apparently that is not a good idea on a treadmill!). Sam says “The earth is like a big treadmill, except going really fast.” I agree. Earth is spinning extra fast I think right now. I just can’t seem to keep up! Thank goodness for my mom running out for emergency supplies of all sorts – she is expecting a call around 7pm every night I think 🙂

Boys reading favorite books after dessert. On Sam's lap is a college biology book (he studies the pictures, picks a good one, then we take turns reading the captions - tonight was on lipids and their hydrophilic heads/hydrophobic tails, followed by mixing oil and water to see it in action). Ben's book is the words to their favorite CD from Eddie and Myrna Kamae.

It was the first day back to school for Sam and we were actually even on time (just barely). Ben and I enjoyed our usual jog down the beach and rendezvous with mom, followed by running errands in town, studying an FJ Cruiser going through a car wash, a digger tearing up the road, and finally home to help finish up the landscaping out front. Got it all done, Ben in bed (thanks to Mom’s help), work done, dinner made/done, dessert done, and cute boys curled up reading as above. Thinking that although I am tired, I’m really a rock star of a mom and doing just fine. Then I realized that I only had no nighttime pull-ups for Ben! Poor Mom and Richard ran out to get more and managed to come back with baby diapers (???) because mom’s cell phone with specific instructions somehow landed in Richard’s pocket…anyway poor things rescued me as  best they could. As mom walked in I was finishing up Sam’s bath – used the shower to clean off all the bubbles (the boys and I go a bit wild with bubbles – decorating each other with hats, stegosaurus plates, beards, lattes, etc.) and little black things ended up on him! Then they started moving!!! Horror! What were they? I realized they were tiny little ants literally raining down from the shower head! Time to call my knights in shining armor at Kilauea Pest to figure out where these pesky guys are hiding out and get rid of them! Otherwise I have really seen an improvement in the invaders despite the rain, which often drives unwanted guests inside. I am grateful for countless blessings, including the people I meet on a daily basis here. I hope when we move to WA I stumble across equally amazing people…

A happy end to the day - relaxing in bath with cookies and light sabers!

UPDATE: clicking on the above picture will take you to all of the March pictures…finally ;0

We started with breakfast at Moke’s, then uke lesson, then Aikahi playground in the intermittent rain with the ever-game Tamara and company, then pool party/hot dog fest in the pouring rain, then UBERMOON with the gang, followed by lightsaber cookie bath. Whew! I will try to update the album tomorrow with all the pictures from the past week of spring break.

PB&J to the MAX! On Texas Toast, with fresh strawberries, and chocolate dunking sauce?!

It’s Wednesday of Spring Break and I am absolutely loving having these two boys all to myself! No naughty school jamming up our morning. We did have to go to the doctor this morning for an 0825/0845 checkup for both boys. Sam is proportionately off the growth curve for ht and wt (50 1/2″ and 68 lbs) and Ben is at about 95% on both (40″ and 37 lbs). They both behaved pretty well in there considering all the stuff going on. I enjoyed when the doc asked what Sam puts on before riding his bike and he said sunscreen I think… then she asked if he played any sports, like tball or football, and Sam thought for a minute then said “uh, not so much.” I had to fill in that we hike, mountain bike, snorkel, boogie board, jog, swim, scoot, play frisbee and football, chase on the playground, etc. I know she was asking about organized sports and her bias is that kids be in preschool or some kind of daycare when they are Ben’s age, and for Sam’s age it is clearly her preference for organized sports over lots of active time playing. I really wished I could have said something snotty just for kicks, like “we do (name all the above activities), but you probably mean those teams that hog two days a week and every Saturday during the hottest part of the day which caused heat exhaustion for a friend of mine’s kid…nah, we don’t do those just yet.” So I have to go back to medical records because they wrote down Sam’s PPD test as “not read” when it most definitely was. You know from previous posts how much Sam enjoys shots, so I will have to get that rectified or we will most definitely be doing another hallway chase for a PPD ;0

After a fun morning of doctor appt, then run around the fish ponds checking on our friends, a romp in the playground (the one that has rubber shavings and turns your feet black), then lunch at the bowling alley (as pictured above), I set to work on some outstanding projects which had gotten delayed from the tsunami evac last week. At about 5:30pm our night got a bit wild rounding up free boxes from a Craigslist connection (he had to fend off two other people to hold my boxes for me!) so we can clear some clutter for house pictures to list in the next couple weeks. I have to get Dave to help clean the garage first so we have somewhere to put boxes…but he has been working a lot so I am not pushing the timeline. Back from Kaneohe Craigslist box hunt, we went to Taco Bell for dinner, then finally home. Dave came home late, but in time to do some more informal hearing tests on Ben (who the doc referred to audiology on the chance that he is hard of hearing and that is why he talks so loudly). Mom and I had done some hearing tests on Ben in the backyard – with Sam’s help – and it seemed like his left ear was a bit hard of hearing. Really weird. Can you picture Ben hiding behind a planter while we had Sam hide across the yard and make noises, then Ben was supposed to point to where Sam was? It was funny. Then Sam would dart to another corner of the yard and make noises…that’s when Ben didn’t seem to hear him with one ear. So mom and I tried to do our own, the way they did on Mom when she was a kid. The same ear failed our very rigorous second level of testing. So we gave it a rest for a bit and then Ben was lying down with his “good” ear on a big pillow, so we tried whispering into the other other, and a few inches from the other ear. I would whisper to mom what to ask him and she’d be like “uh…huh? what was that?” because she is growing hard of hearing herself! It was all hysterical. Not so much to Dave, who was a little worried…and me, too…but we have an audiology referral and in the meantime Ben’s hearing seems fine. He is a wily dude. Would not surprise me at all if he was messing with us. Lastly…and there’s no gracious way to put this, after Dave did more daddy-style hearing tests, he had to locate a missing boy part (which starts with “t”) while doing bath. The doc had trouble finding one on Ben, so she said just check him out in bath. Dave goes to me “Did she TRY? Did she LOOK for it? I mean he was born with both?” I was laughing, like of course she tried! He goes “Did she get some warm water?” I’m laughing again trying to picture her running for warm water with Ben naked on the exam table and just what that might trigger. Nah, she didn’t do that. Meanwhile as I’m asking Dave to locate the other said part, both boys are on our two potties at the same time, it’s well past bathtime, and Dave is running from bathroom to bathroom with wipes in hand…it was all entropy tonight and thankfully I found it all really funny. We did end up finding the missing boy part, and we think Ben’s ears are fine. Just a touch of selective hearing but we’ll find out in early April.

Waiting to get back home...police not letting anyone into Kailua, even into the areas outside the evacuation zones. I guess they were trying to prevent looting. The boys are snoozing, finally, to the soft sounds of cars running periodically and rain falling. Really was quite relaxing if you don't try to fight the whole process and just go with it.

Our thoughts and prayers are with those in Japan. The images of that wall of water forging 6 miles inland, and the trucker trying to outrun it are just gut-wrenching. I can only imagine the fear of parents wondering about their kids, just getting out of school. Thankfully it was a very mild impact here. For posterity’s sake, here is what our night went like. . .

Dave went to the command center at Pearl last night around 9pm just as all the warnings started coming in. (He gets messages from his work, and I have signed up with USGS for earthquake notices as well as with the PTWC for tsunami warnings.) I stayed up with mom and Richard (who had to evacuate their cottage as it’s in an inundation zone). When the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center chief didn’t come back out with an update for the press after the wave passed Wake Island and Midway Island (the two islands in line before us), I decided I didn’t like all the uncertainty of the “models” and their lack of specificity re offshore topography. So while Dave said to stay put, and all the data indicated we were in no danger, I went with my gut and decided to head for high ground. There are a few things in life I am totally ok with being wrong about. And evacuating is one of them if I feel it is warranted. So I packed a bag, jackets, blankets and I woke the boys up at 2am, an hour and 21 min before the wave was supposed to hit. We went for a little drive to one of our favorite trailheads which happens to be at mom’s church. There we waited. I couldn’t call or text anyone – my smartphone must have gone into a panic and became a dumbphone. I found a wifi connection and was able to check the PTWC website, but they weren’t updating past 2:30am. With no real news I decided to start heading back at 3:57am. I realized I might not be able to get home as they were worried about people roaming around and looting. So I parked on the side of the road along with hundreds of other people in line to get back into Kailua. The boys snoozed a bit (as did I) after I sprayed them with bug spray (mosquitoes sneaking in to eat us alive). I had plenty of snacks and water for a 24 hour adventure, blankets, jackets, gas. (Dad, I had half a tank as you always say to have!) We finally were allowed back into Kailua at about 6am. They handled everything so well – I was quite impressed. They really go with the flow and just hunkered down in the truck for 4 1/2 hours in their seats while we chatted and ultimately dozed for a bit. All their travel and camping makes them pretty easy going I guess. We just called it our truck tent. There were people literally camped out in the median before you get onto H3 – a huge sun shelter erected, cars all around on the grass, lanterns on, beach chairs out. So interesting to see what everyone does. When we finally got home I gave the boys milk and a granola bar and sneaked them back into bed just as dawn was breaking. I hoped that they’d fall asleep before they realized the birds were up. They slept until 9am. So, thankfully I got about 2 1/2 hours of sleep last night. Ha! Dave arrived home at 0630 after a long night in the command center (still not sure exactly where he hunkers down) and slept until noon. I am about to go nap now if I can. When I took Ben out for a jog at 1130 am, I noticed that the water was still receding and surging. Very spooky. Ben got some nice new sand toys out of the deal – the tsunami washed them up on the sand. Oddly, one of them was an Asian soup spoon.

Thanks to all of you who checked in via email and text, avoiding the phone lines. Everything was calm here, and very well run. I am thankful that the surge was isolated really to harbor areas and seems to not have caused a lot of damage. Glad to live well outside an inundation zone, just wish the wave had come during daylight so we could have hiked up to see it like last time. This one definitely had more energy and did surge further inland than the one last year.

Aloha to all…

So happy to see our friend Neil and his girlfriend Edie here in Hawaii (at left, Josh and Ang in middle with Rachel)! We are so lucky to have both NR1 friends and Stennis friends here. Just missing a few other important USS John C Stennis folks, but we get to see Tres and Jenni in a week or two as well!

Here is a video of Sam and Ben boogie boarding. They have gotten so good at it. Ben especially is just nuts. People literally stop to watch him. He says “Oh! That one’s too small.” or “OH YAH! That’s a GOOD one!” then he spins around to ride it. His head sometimes disappears under the foam then he reappears still holding his board. It will be really hard to leave here, but thankfully the boys have gotten this place firmly under their skin. I am already grabbing hard onto memories that I just don’t want to ever fade.

Getting dual haircuts on Monday. Ben's faces are just so funny. He often does this one when he is uncertain. He says he's a "BIIIG sharkie!" and shows us his teeth - I guess. That's what we surmise he is doing.

So Sam is still sick with a cough, ear fullness, etc. Took him to doc finally today – he’s been sick since Jan 27 (his birthday – on the Big Island). Hard to tell if it’s one virus waxing and waning, or trading viruses around school. Lots of kids have had to go to the hospital with pneumonia so I decided to go have a look before the weekend. I do not particularly enjoy hanging out in urgent care or the ER. They did a chest xray – very interesting for all of us. Sam did GREAT holding still, holding his arms up, holding his breath, etc. (Picture Ben and I in a corner snuggled under a heavy lead apron during all of this.) Then to the tech’s desk (Kimberly at Kbay ROCKS!) to show us the images. We found his heart, his ribs (counting 10 above diaphragm is good – means they got a good view), esophagus, shoulder bones. He was really interested in his spine since he fell at a playground a few months ago and knocked his wind out. I guess he still had concerns about his spine. He was happy to see it all there, stacked nicely. Then we spotted a big black oval in his stomach – an air bubble! You know what that was? A burp…or hiccups! He had the hiccups all day. That’s my guess. Then to the pharmacy to wait and wait and wait for some meds (just OTC stuff, nothing “GOOD”). I declined the bronchodilator – not sure why that is all the rage now. He is having no trouble saturating his blood with O2 and the cough is productive. I can do chest PT if needed. No dilator, thanks – I guess I’m old school. So we did a mini hike in the little garden near pharmacy, found some seedlings sprouting into trees, a snail shell, and some coral. Managed to keep ourselves busy for at least half an hour. On our way home I stopped to get the boys some snacks. Sam opted for Oreos – he’s sick, so ok. We did compare labels later with Ben’s animal crackers to see which was the best bet – fat, sugar, calories. So I mentioned to Sam that his Oreos had 270 calories and 11 g of fat. He replied, “So…I will burn that off in four and a half hours.” I said “Huh?” He repeated it. Then I realized what he’d done! He’d remembered approx 60 cal/hr (that’s what an adult burns just sitting around running your body – basic metabolic processes – if I remember correctly). So that is exactly right – if resting he’d burn that in about 4 1/2 hours. Amazing. I was literally stunned. Thumped the steering wheel and hooted for him! That brain sure works well even when full of crud. After all that I managed to really bang up my leg (forgot to get me a snack) trying to rescue a frisbee from the roof. We went to the beach park with footballs and bouncy ball and played around, then Bob’s for dinner and shave ice for sick boys. They had a very good time. Finally, we wrapped up the evening with a meeting with Octopus (my little stuffed friend Dave bought me last weekend at Sea Life Park). I love the octopus – so smart and quiet. A real observer. They both love for me to make Octopus talk – the boys enjoy reporting in to Octopus on their day, doing a recap. Octopus asks if they’ve made their mom nuts or were they pretty good. That sort of thing. He also sniffs their feet to see if they’ve had a good day. If totally disgusting, brown and stinky he does foot-fives (not high-fives) with the boys. Then they romp and off to bath. I like Octopus. Very sage, that guy.

Dave got word today that it looks pretty solid we’ll be moving in June or July. We think. No orders yet but we will continue making prep so we are ready to fly into action. Come visit soon!