pedaling downhill

Simon on Cirque de la Symphonie

2011-12-18T13:22:00.001-08:00

Minus the music, it was awesome!

sorting through stuff

2011-11-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

I used to write down the funny things Everett and Simon would say. In the midst of digging through old possessions, I found a stack of paper scraps with amusing kid quotes on them. They'll show up here soon, but I'm going to back date the posts. So what I'm telling y'all is look at the old stuff later today. You'll laugh. At least once.

just a little afternoon nerd humor

2011-08-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

In between punching each other, poking each other, and denying verifiable facts, Everett and Simon have some really entertaining things to say. Like, "In a fight between infinity and zero, zero wins." At least when that fight is in the form of multiplication. And outrageous laughter follows.

It's nearly as good as the time they couldn't stop laughing about both of Everett's bishops being on black when they were playing chess. "Ahahahahaha! HOW did that happen?!"

this'll keep cps away

2011-05-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

me: Now I just have to feed my children and put them to sleep.

all growed up

2011-05-05T18:33:00.001-07:00

Simon: My keychain does have some adulty things: I have a thumb drive, a key I don't know what it goes to, a library card...

that hot stuff... it's not so hot.

2011-02-23T14:58:00.001-08:00

Everett: I have another project for school. We're making posters for an anti-tabasco campaign.

reading, sleeping... it's practically the same.

2011-02-05T20:40:00.000-08:00

Everett: Why am I not in bed?

me: I don't know. Why are you not in bed?

Everett: Because no one woke me up from my reading.

of course they did

2011-02-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

me: Hey, no parkour in the house!

me (as they run outside): Or jumping off the deck.

Everett: oh, we already did that.

I don't even know how to argue with this.

2010-12-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

me: Lets go to the sand dunes tomorrow.
Simon: Yes!
Everett: I'd rather stay home and learn calculus.

how many words would wordle wordle if a wordle could wordle words?

2010-03-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

Wordle is fun.

And YES, I know. I haven’t blogged in months and now my first post (in months) just says that Wordle is fun. But it IS. And maybe someday I’ll be motivated to blog again, but I’m having too much fun right now to spend any of my valuable time on it!

because we have RULES at our house

2010-01-15T11:39:00.000-08:00

Simon (complaining to friends): My mom won't let us be vegans.

hiking again

2009-12-20T16:23:00.000-08:00

Because frolicking around on red rocks is what we do in St. George.

And part of that includes squeezing ourselves through ridiculously narrow slot canyons.

And then the camera battery died. So I have no pictures of the rest of our hiking antics... for that day anyway.

I went home for Christmas!

2009-12-19T00:28:00.000-08:00

It was pretty amazing to experience the wonders of the mainland. Like friends and family. And hiking and rock climbing and snowboarding and Disneylanding. Of course, being me, I forgot to take pictures of half of what I did, but here are a few of the first couple days.

I had a great time catching up with Amy and Amy and Amberly.

And hiking with the family.

Everett and Simon had a blast playing with Josh.

And Ruth and I found a rock teeter totter!

dudes, Jesus is the answer

2009-12-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

To the age-old question of "what should we put on a billboard to make Vegas seem less like Sin City?"

It's totally working too.

simon's spider

2009-12-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

sunrise

2009-11-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

Aunu'u is awesome

2009-11-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

Aunu'u is a tiny island off the tip of our tiny island. A group of us headed over because sometimes you just need to get off your usual tiny island and visit another (even smaller) one. Aunu'u is about 1/2 of a square mile and pretty easy to hike around in a day. It's also ridiculously beautiful.

Although I think the most important thing to remember about Aunu'u is that when you come to the quicksand lake, you need to step in it. You should remember to have your children step in it too. It's the responsible adult thing to do.

Everett cut his foot gallivanting around in the quicksand lake so Keala carried him for a bit. Simon realized that being carried was a legitimate option so he got in on that too. Poor Keala had a kid on his shoulders for most of the day.

Again, ridiculously beautiful:

perhaps I need to get out more

2009-11-24T12:41:00.001-08:00

Because, yes, I'm blogging about the arrival of an airplane. I know it's absurd. But I remembered to take pictures! And I don't know what to do with them. A blog post seems like the best answer.

So the biggest airplane in the world came to American Samoa to deliver generators. There was a lot of airplane talk around ASPA just before its arrival. Everywhere I went I seemed to hear "I heard it was built to carry a space shuttle!" or "Did you know that it burns X lbs of rubber every time it lands?!"

Naturally, I was curious to see something so big land on our tiny runway. So I hung out at the end of the runway in order to be directly underneath the beast when it landed. It was pretty incredible.

tsunami pictures: 2 days after

2009-11-16T19:33:00.000-08:00

So the day after the day after the tsunami, people were burning all the piles of trash that had accumulated. It was a cloudy day anyway, but the smoke coming from the harbor area definitely added a gloomy feel to it all.

This is Josie and her office. The ceiling kind of slid down the wall, which is why it looks like it's about 5 feet high in there. Her windows were all blown out and most of the furniture that used to be in her office was swept outside or into the main office area.

Most of my files ended up like this: wrapped around trees and bushes outside. So much for confidentiality.

The front desk was swept outside too, complete with telephone and computer in a tangled mess underneath it. I just love that David decided to make the most of its new location.

About 6 cars, a couple portable generators, and our security guard shack were all pushed behind the building by the force of the wave. Several of these cars had people in them at the time. Luckily everyone was fine.

tsunami pictures: the day after

2009-11-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

I know, finally! These were taken the day after the tsunami. I was on my way to salvage what I could from my office, which means that all of these were taken from a moving vehicle.

And this is what my office looked like:

I, obviously, enjoyed digging documents out of the muck.

But a long day of cleaning actually made a difference!

piracy on a tuesday

2009-11-03T19:47:00.001-08:00

2009-10-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Everett: I'm not really a strong guy. I'm more of a strategy guy.

tsunami clean up

2009-10-02T01:15:00.000-07:00

Cleaning up is no fun. When your office looks like mine does, it's even less fun.

To borrow Jer's turn of phrase, my office is fucking fucked. There really aren't words to describe it. One of my four windows is broken with my chair halfway out of it. There is a layer of glass, mud, and books covering the entire floor. My desk is at an angle on top of my printer and telephone. Bookshelves, office supplies, filing cabinets, and files are everywhere. Words like disaster, chaos, and destruction start sounding like understatements in the middle of all this.

I've spent the last two days cleaning up all the salvagable, or remotely salvagable, documents from my office. Most files were backed up on the server, but the server was also taken out by the wave. So the water-logged hard copies are all we have left, some of which I found wrapped around brush outside as if my office documents were used to toilet paper the ASPA grounds.

I have photos to upload, but the upload keeps failing. Hopefully I'll be able to post some of the 300+ pictures I've taken soon.

surviving the tsunami

2009-09-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, I was lazily dragging myself out of bed, attempting to begin the morning rush of getting ready for work when an earthquake hit. It took a minute for me to recognize it was an earthquake, but eventually we stood in the door frames (funny how that training from elementary school comes back to you!) to wait out the quake. Having just gone through a tsunami warning a few months ago, I assumed that we needed to get to higher ground. As we left the house, I tried to call everyone on the island to tell them to head to higher ground. I couldn't get through to anyone!

As we headed up the mountain, the radio announcers said that there was no tsunami warning in effect. I felt a bit foolish for rushing off so quickly and was thankful that I hadn't been the crazy person sounding the alarm without a warning in effect. Immediately after the announcers said there was no warning, someone called in saying that the ocean in Faga'alu had quickly dropped and that people were running for high ground. A few minutes later, the announcers were yelling that there was a tsunami hitting their building. I listened to the panic and chaos over the air until the radio station cut off.

The kids and I had driven up the road to Aloau. We met some friends there and hung out for hours until the warning was lifted. I figured I had nothing better to do than make sure I stayed alive. Other than a sunburn (me) and some minor swordfighting injuries (the boys), we were safe and sound during the entire ordeal. In spite of the fact that my house is on a peninsula and the ground floor is only 5 feet above sea level, it was fine too.

because nothing spreads joy like mock piracy

2009-09-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

As most of you already know, I'm strangely obsessed with pirates. Although I never need a reason to fill my weekend with piratey goodness, I've discovered you get more people to join you if there is one. Good thing someone created International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I planned a party, which is fine and great and pirate parties are fun and blah blah blah. But Charlie had the genius idea to have a raft regatta before the party! So we celebrated by building rafts, except the viking who built a boat... because he's a viking and he can, I suppose.

I hatched a plan and persuaded a crewmate to sail a fridge with me. Fridges float. I see them floating by my house all the time, usually with a bunch of kids climbing on them. But then I realized that I had island connections! So instead of a fridge, I was able to get my hands on bamboo and plastic jerry cans. It seemed like a slightly more reliable set of supplies for water transportation than a discarded refrigerator. One that would ensure I actually keep my crewmate on my team and, more importantly, alive.

We set off and everyone stayed afloat!

We claimed Coconut Island. Then we sailed around to the back of the peninsula. And after the raft building, we parrrtied!!

Dr. Mike even brought a pinata so the kids could let out their pirate angst. It was excellent planning ahead - especially by a guy who has no children.

when a computer can't connect to an Aussie thumb drive...

2009-04-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

Simon: maybe it can't read Australian?

after a whole YEAR of kindergarten

2006-06-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Everett: I feel bigger than a six-year-old. I feel as big as a ten-year-old!

who's the superhero now?

2006-05-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Simon: I had a dream that grown ups were evil forces and they put me in the garbage. Then I just punched the garbage can and it turned into little pieces and they didn't know I could do that!

Why yes. Yes, I am.

2006-04-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

Me: You're such a sweetheart.

Simon: You're such a mom.

even I didn't know that

2006-04-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

Everett [to Simon]: Putting on socks is part of being a superhero. Did you know that?

already too big for his britches?

2006-03-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

Me: How did you get to be such a smartypants? Where did you get those smartypants?

Simon: I don't know.

Me: Did you get them from me?

Everett: No, he gets them from me after I get too big for them.

I was wondering how that aging thing went down

2006-03-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Everett: Teenager is when you are in the teens and after the teens you are a very old person and then you always stay a very old person - oh, I mean, grown up.

drawing with markers

2005-12-01T13:51:00.000-08:00

Simon: This one is all out of mark.

ok ok, it's not funny, but damn if that isn't excellent understanding of language at four years old!

Isabel

2005-05-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Everett: If I keep loving her this much, I'll just have to marry her.

But are they delicious? Hmmmm?

2005-03-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

Everett: Mom, those are cucumberous clouds!