today was a sad day

The kids had to let their new pet go. Laserbeam the Snail, formerly known as Pete the Snail, wasn't looking too good in his frisbee home so we had to let him loose.

I'm actually pretty surprised he lasted this long. Simon has carried him around non-stop, picking him up and putting him in the middle of the frisbee whenever Pete/Laserbeam got close to the edge (about every 5 minutes at first) and fell asleep one night with the frisbee tucked under the edge of his pillow with Pete/Laserbeam as close as he could get to Simon's head. Everett was really good at collecting all different kinds of food for him to eat and says he's really sad now that we don't have a snail anymore. Simon let him go near an irrigation ditch so he'd have plenty of water (Everett was busy playing Lego Starwars - shocking, huh?).

whew!

I'm so glad to be done with the bar! Now we've just got about a million other things to do - we can't wait to see those of you who are coming to visit in the meantime!

the power of ice cream

Simon: Can I have ice cream?
me: no
Simon: but my shots are hurting and ice cream heals them.

you know what happens when you don't have kids?

You never walk into the bathroom and find toy soup in the sink.

a backlog of kid quotes

Roman (neighbor kid): Can you give me a moment please?
Simon: They don't give moments on this game.

me: Be nice to your brother.
Everett: Even when he has the evil bionicle mask on?

Uncle Steven: Why are you so cute?
Simon: I'm five!

Simon: Clouds are water, but they look like milk. The sky looks blue like water, but the clouds are really the water.

four generations

My grandpa sent me this picture. It's always been one of my favorites. In case it's not blatantly obvious, it's of me, my mom, my grandma, and my great grandma.

I swim like a human too

Uncle Jon: I hear you're taking swimming lessons. Do you swim like a fish now?
Simon: Nooo.
Uncle Jon: You don't? Then what do you swim like?
Simon: Like a human.

Preparing for the Dive

Preparing for the move to Samoa has been increasingly difficult (to say the least). You would be amazed at all of the things that you have to do to move out of the country (lol). Anyway, I recently decided that I would resurrect my decade old diving license so that I can get even closer to the sharks while I am in Samoa. I had to get a new license online from PADI. It is a lifetime license, which is good and bad. Good because getting a license is expensive and bad because I got my original license when I was 14 and never dove again. So essentially I could walk into a diving store, rent equipment, and then quickly proceed to kill myself because I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. See, I knew that being a boyscout could kill me (they are still after me). Well I had to take this picture of myself for the new license at work with the camera on my cell phone.



I tried a fake smile but it didn't work out too well.

4th of July

The kids had fun celebrating the 4th. After sparklers, pop-its, and groundflowers we went to Clif's office to watch the fireworks.

And, of course, since we were outside after dark, we spotted more creepy Boise bugs. Two of these striped critters (ten-lined June Beetles) were crawling on our house.

I'm amazed at all the different spiders and beetles there are here. I guess that means that when we get to American Samoa you can expect to hear all about the creepy crawlers there!

Jon loves us

See how much Jon loves us:
We didn't make him work alone though. We helped too:

Uh, I mean, we helped too:

Now our house looks beautiful! No more two-toned house. (I know, technically it's always been more than 2 tones, but you know what I mean.)

Hooray! Thank you Jon!!

Special thanks to Charlie & Tenielle for the use of their freakishly cool ladder!

Yikes!

Last night was the night that the full moon was supposed to appear to be the largest, something about the rotation of the earth in relation to the moon and other junk. I was determined not to miss it. Unfortunately. Because in my unimpressive moon watching I nearly stepped on one of these buggers. It scared the bejeezus outta me (I know, I need to toughen up on my fright level for ferocious and freaky looking insects). I don't think the larger-than-usual-looking moon was worth it.

Clif put it in a jar to show the kids in the morning. Everett didn't really care much, but Simon carried it around all day until finally deciding that we needed to "take the beetle to the mountain." He was very concerned that the thing had nothing to eat in its little jar. So we let it go far away from our house.

After some internet searching I found that it's a prionus californicus or prionus root borer. Yes, they bite. And they only come out at night. Nasty. I'm staying in.