Wilbur Wright

Andrew and all of his classmates did a presentation on inventors and scientists. Andrew was Wilbur Wright. His friend was Orville. Originally, he was stoked because he thought Orville was the one with the trademark mustache, until we googled some pictures. Looks like Wilbur was the balding one. Good thing for hats.
See the resemblance?

Poor Elliott

He does this every morning when his brothers leave for school...

news

I need to stop watching the news. Then again, if I stop watching the news, will I become this naive person that thinks everything in this world is peachy keen? Gasp, these stories just seem to be getting worse and worse. They are embedded in my head when I lay down at night.

"chessed out"

I spent the day today at a 7 hour long chess tournament. At first, I was thinking, "Oh My Gosh...7 hours of chess". Then, I came to the realization that I would be there ALONE without a 20 month old climbing all over me or the structures in the building. I love my Elliott to bits and pieces, but it was nice to give Owen a little one on one without having to run after a toddler.

We arrived at 9:30 ish. We left at 8:30. It only should have taken 15 minutes to get to downtown. Where did that other 45 minutes go? Let me tell you. Being the nice mom that I thought I was being, I decided to take Owen and his friend through the Tim Hortons Drive thru for a good luck donut. The stupid good luck donut started my day off opposite of that. You see, my Owen asks for a different donut every time we go to the donut shop, only he means the same donut. Let me give you our conversation this morning "mom, I want a chocolate cake donut...the kind without frosting'. So, I ordered a chocolate cake donut. After getting the donut, I hear WAILING in the back seat and look back to see a river of tears flooding the floor. "I didn't want this kind, this is the most horribilist day of my life". Ok. After getting flustered, I whipped around the corner, and told him to get out because I needed him to POINT out the donut. I wasn't going to be the source of his most horribilist day ever. After getting in the store, he pointed out a raised glazed with chocolate frosting. Ok. This is the one that I THOUGHT he wanted and even double questioned his original choice. I just couldn't bear it, so as a punishment, I made him order the donut all by himself. lol.

We got to the tournament and there were about 140 Rookie chess players. These were kids that this was their "first" tournament. Owen and Ayden represented their school and were the youngest players there. Owen played 3 fifth graders and 1 forth grader. He won 3 matches/games of the 4. Now, this is where it gets good. The kid he lost to was a 5th grader. He also competed 3 times in the same rookie tournament. After finding out that he took 2nd at the table, Owen started to get a little attitude about the fact the kid really wasn't supposed to be there (according to the rules, but I think his school didn't offer a school wide chess tournament). Of course, they had trophies for the first placers. If you have been reading my blog for for sometime, you would know that trophies are as good as gold to my boys. I tried to explain to him the different options of why the kid may have had to be there. I mean, he was chummy with the kid the entire time...until he found out that the kid was the champion of the table. My Owen is so competitive. It is good in some ways, horrible in others.

Another funny comment from Owen was this "MOM, they (meaning the officials) keep saying that winning isn't everything. If that is really true, why do they have trophies for the kids that come in first? If it really doesn't matter, we should all get the same thing, right?".

Oh, I wanted to deck a mom (of a boy) at the tournament today. Her comment to her son (in front of his opponent) was "YOU GOT BEAT BY A GIRL!" Really MOM? There were so many issues with this, I probably shouldn't even go there.

Hawaii Part 2

I am back. Trying to finish up some things that got neglected this week. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, the whole tourist dressing in Hawaiian attire thing. It was quite funny. My nieces boyfriend wore these bright "aloha" swimming trunks and one of the surfers actually responded to him by saying "you're not from around here are you?". Another funny thing they shared with us is they visited this place called "Sand Island". Sounds nice doesn't it? Well, they were talking to this guy and saying how beautiful "Sand Island" was and how everything was so green. The local looked at them with a crouched brow and told them it was the islands landfill. Ok, that is pretty sad when a landfill looks more beautiful than the state of Michigan. Ok, enough about their trip. ;)

Some other thing we did while we were there was snorkeling. We went out on this speed boat with about 20 other people. They knew the spots to go to. The first place we went to see was a spot with a high volume of Hawaiian spinning dolphins. I think we saw about 20, some doing a pretty decent show for us. They dropped us off the boat one by one into the Pacific. Immediately, 3 dolphins swam under me and I got a great shot with my underwater film camera. Within minutes, a couple of them were spinning out of the water showing off. It was just fantastic! We also stopped at an area that had about 8 sea turtles swimming. We finished up our snorkeling adventure by swimming with some turtles which were AMAZING. They are so huge and beautiful. I liked them so much, I found myself looking at sea turtle figurines in the gift stores for my house. I passed. Lastly, we visited the reef and looked at the gazillion fish. I saw a puffer fish and got a picture of it. The trip was kind of a blur now. I remember everything, but don't remember what days we did what. It was like I was in a dream.

Again, instead of boring you, here are some highlights....

*Talking to the locals was the most beneficial thing we could do. They know all of the good eats, places to go and things to see. Hawaii could have a slight tendency to be a little Disney world-ish. Talking to the locals helps you get out of that fantasy land type stuff. One of the BEST things we did that a local told us about was visiting a lagoon that was off the beaten path. He told us there were sea turtles there. I didn't think that the second I stepped into the lagoon, a turtle would come up to see me. He wanted food. Yum Yum. We went back a few times to visit our friends. To us, they were super cool. To the local kids trying to play football in the water, they were a nuisance.
After bonding with these turtles, I actually felt bad about peeing in the ocean.

*Fried bananas are yummy delicious. Coconut milk is NOT. I thought it would be fun to pay some islander $5.00 for a fresh coconut. He did give us quite a lesson about coconuts, but the juice was just sweetened water. It is nothing like the Coco Lopez I take spoonfuls of while making pina coladas. Coconut meat is a weird texture and I just couldn't eat it. Aaron made sure to remind me that I paid $5 for it after refusing to eat any more. I will say, coconut juice is a great cleanse, if you know what I mean. Seeing so many coconuts reminded me of when Owen wanted to name his baby brother "harry coconut".

*Horseback riding was lovely. I thought I was going to have a hard time with my arthritic hips, but I was fine. I made sure to pop a few ibuprofen prior to the trip and right after. I love white horses and that is exactly what I was given. The only thing that made me nervous about the ride was when the guide told us that the bulls on the ranch may charge at us. Um, Hello? Do you realize what you just told me? I would have rather not known and been surprised.

Here are some odds and ends pictures of our trip.
Shaved ice is not a sno-cone. You will never, ever have anything like it. Simply delicious.


Look how orangie red the soil is!! No Photoshopping here people.


People just hang out on this rock. Check out the action shot! Yes, that is a person jumping off the rock.



Just outside our resort


Malsadas were also pretty stinking good too. They make them to order. Fried. They are very similar to the the Polish Paczki.


Making a Lei. If you look closely around my neck, ears and my wrist, you will see a beautiful green pearl set my fabulous hubby got for me. It was hand crafted from one of the locals. She did beautiful work and I just kept coming back to her little booth at the farmers market. I was crossing my fingers for a $30 pair of nice earings, and I got this! Aaron likes to buy jewelery for me. One day, I hope to pass these nice things onto my grand babies. I know for me, my mom's tiger eye ring my dad gave to me means the world to me.


Really, it is this beautiful, everywhere...even the landfills.

Food network spoof on Fried Bananas

Have you ever watched any of the shows on the Food Network? I really use to love them until they had this show "The next Food network Star". Basically, it was a reality show of people trying to have their own show on the Food Network. The judges/producers would watch these poor souls *be themselves* and give them feedback like "oh no, you have to be like this.......". They never stood a chance. When Aaron brought it to my attention, I started to hate watching the shows. The characteristic that stands out the most is the use of descriptive words like luscious, wonderful texture, full bodied, vibrant, yadda. I mean, have you ever described your fried egg as radiant? Anyway, here is a funny video of Aaron trying to be the next Food Network Star.
I think he did a fantastic Job. LOL

whoa, whoa Paradise....Part 1

About 2 months ago, Aaron and I planned a trip to Hawaii. Between getting our trip together, getting our kids lined up to where they needed to be, and finding time for everything in between, I didn't have much time for anything. If I did do anything online, it was facebooking. My house was much more organized prior to facebook might I add. Anyway, we had a wonderful time and an even better time knowing that all we had to pay for was recreation and food. In Aaron's old job, he traveled alot. He earned airline miles and Mariott points over his few years of traveling. Last year, the entire family went to Puerto Rico and this year was our turn. I am going to miss those accumulating points. When we got on the island, I was a little disappointed. The airport is in Honolulu, which is basically a concrete city. Not so much of the Hawaii that I see on postcards. As we traveled out of Honolulu, it became very clear why some call it paradise. We stayed on the island of Oahu in a location called Ko Olina. There were 2 Marriott's there, we stayed at the resort/time share facility. Here was our view from our room. The awesome thing is that we had a kitchenette in our room. We ended up going to the grocery store and stocking up on breakfast items and all of the necessities to make cocktails. I mean, we are in Hawaii...who doesn't want a Margarita on the beach(well, if you are me you would mistakenly purchase the non-alcoholic version and drink it for a few days thinking "this just doesn't taste the same"). Yeah, I felt like a dork. The best thing is that I just couldn't figure out WHY IT WAS SO CHEAP compared to the Margarita mix I buy here on the mainland. doi! On our second day, we went snorkeling at Hunama Bay . Holy smokes people, can we just say breathtaking! If you have never been snorkeling, beware. You can't and SHOULDN'T attempt to walk in fins while on the land. Don't say the warning wasn't ever there. It was a beautiful beach but the coral was very close to you. You aren't supposed to touch the coral let alone stand on it. It was very difficult to keep yourself calm floating on the top of the water when creepy fish and urchins are swimming all around you. They told us that there are alot of Eels in the reef and if they bite you, they don't let go. Yeah, so my experience with snorkeling the first time was a bit of a challenge, especially with trying to waddle in fins.

I don't want to bore you with all of our details, but here are a few more highlights and things we learned though out the week...

*Fresh Fish! We were tired of it by the end of our trip, therefore had Italian our last night there. Fish Tacos Rock!

*Going to bed at 9:00 the first night and waking up at 2:30 am ready to start the day. The 6 hour time change really screwed me up, I am not back to normal YET!

*After 13 years of marriage, discovering that the word "Vacation" means something entirely different to Aaron than myself. His idea: get up at the crack of dawn to head to a destination. My idea: Sleep in, relax in the hotel until the waves call my name.

*Discovering that I love GPS systems. Thanks dad for letting us borrow yours! We will have it to you in about a year.

*Knowing that you don't have to lose 15 pounds prior to your trip to Hawaii...after the fact.

*Walking on algae covered rocks with a camera isn't such a great idea. Good thing for Target and a great deal on a Point and Shoot camera. This was the last picture before my fall...

*Saying Ma halo (thank you) after walking out of a very expensive watch store with nothing in hand, doesn't mean the same as our thank you here on the mainland. They laughed at us, not a good laugh either.

*Bald guys from the mainland are a targets for marijuana dealers. While walking down the streets in Waikiki with my niece and her very bald boyfriend, they wouldn't leave him alone.

*I was reminded many times over why I married my husband. :)

*Our homeless on the mainland are not the same as the Hawaiian Homeless. They actually look like they enjoy it.

*The Pacific ocean is more powerful than I could ever imagine...especially at the shores of the Banzai Pipeline. Whoa. I went out for a leisurely swim in the "calm" part, was knocked down, swept under, and the ocean sucked up my sunglasses right off my face. I never found them. I hope you enjoy them Surf Gods, they had extra UV protection. (Check out the locals having some fun in this video). No problem Man!


*You are financially penalized for drinking %2 milk, by $5.00. Who would have thought? Obviously, not us.

*Not everybody understands that you don't HAVE to have an elaborate vacation like this every year. Because we stayed at a time share facility, we were offered a tour of the place "just in case" we wanted to buy. The Realtor kept telling us that we "owed" it to our children to do this for them on a regular basis. What we should have said was, we "owe" it to our children to not be in debt. dork.

*Spending Mother's day without a mom to call is still not easy, spending a Mother's day away from your kids is just as difficult. I was in a little of a funk this year. I will never be away from my kids on Mother's day again.

*Never judge a book by it's cover holds true in Hawaii as well. Just because a beat up trailer uses paper towel to hold their air conditioner in the window, doesn't mean they aren't WORLD known for their Fantastic Organic White Shrimp. The Best we ever had.





*Tourists wear Hawaiian attire, the locals find opportunities to laugh at them. It is like they purposely want to make us look like dorks by having us make leis and head dresses at their little luaus. See what I mean? Wouldn't you laugh too?


Part 2 coming soon. Aren't you excited?

I still exist.

It has been a while. I am not sure if I have lost interest in blogging or what. I error on the side of what. I plan to play catch up this weekend. Stay tuned.