so... yeah.

When you come home and your kid is covered in charcoal and you ask him why his face, chest, arms, and legs are black, you don't really expect to hear, "I was doing it for camouflage because it was dark out, and I went into a dark room and I could hardly see myself."

But I suppose it's as good a reason as any.

just FYI

Everett would, "much rather be a fashion model than a yoga instructor."

I have no idea what brought that on, but he is absolutely certain of it.

a boy and his camera

Everett has always been fascinated by photography. When he was four we let him use our old 35mm point and shoot when we would spend weekends in Yellowstone. I loved seeing his perspective of things. One of my favorites is a picture he took of a field of grass. He was just as tall as the grass and taking the picture from that height completely changed the look of the field.

Over the past couple months, he's been carrying around our old digital camera nonstop. Simon has gotten so sick of living with his own personal paparazzi, that he won't let Everett take pictures of him anymore. So Everett's newest thing are self-portraits. I really like some of them.

school Christmas program pictures

The kids Christmas program at school was interesting this year. Simon's class sang lots of songs about Hanukkah, which seems strange to me since in spite of all the religion on this island, I haven't met any Jewish people. At least he's getting exposed to it now though.

And Everett was learning about the Great Depression this quarter so they dressed up like hobos and sang some folksy songs including "Big Rock Candy Mountain." He was very impressed when I told him I had actually been there!

if only

Everett gets on these kicks where he talks nonstop. It happens a lot: somewhere in the neighborhood of every waking moment. Oddly enough, I tend to tune him out at times. I find myself mindlessly agreeing to all kinds of absurd things, like a plan to build a rocket/submarine in order to explore the depths of the ocean and the far reaches of outer space. And then I have to quickly backtrack.

Anyway, I'm starting to wise up. This morning I was definitely paying attention. I was so amused I wrote the whole thing down while I was driving (Yes, it's entirely safe. Especially when traffic is moving at the furious speed of 15 mph).

So it went like this, "If only I were a better engineer, I could give the people of American Samoa a present - except most people here don't have coats - but I could give them a white Christmas. I'd have to fashion some kind of hyper shield or something to keep the snow from turning back into water. Records indicate there will be lots of water, I just need to make it turn into snow."

"Seriously. All I need to know is how to use some things that I'm not allowed to use yet."

Yes, there you have it. My 9-year old is convinced he can make snow on a tropical island. It's just those pesky adults and their rules that prevent all the fun. Well, and that whole thing about only being an average engineer. He really needs to get on top of that.

maybe random-sponse is more fitting

.. later on this week, still going on and on about paddling lessons.

Lisa: Wow, you're becoming a renaissance man with all the lessons you're taking.

Everett: What's a random-sponse man?

now that's a worthy aspiration

Everett: You know how I can't take sailing lessons until I'm ten? Well, I can take junior outrigger paddling lessons until I'm ten and then take sailing lessons and then I'll be this crazy boat guy!

hey, my senses don't do that

Ruth (hiking back down Mt. Alava): We're getting close to the end.

Everett: I know. I can sense it with my senses. boop. boop. boop. boop-boop. boop-boop-boop. [getting faster as he gets closer].

PHS 2008 Pacific Arts Festival

Last year when Clif and I would go to Everett's school programs and performances, we were surprised that they seemed to be essentially the same things that we had done in elementary school. Well, that's all changed since we moved here!

Friday we went to the Pacific Horizons School version of the Pacific Arts Festival. We saw Cook Island dances, Fijian dances, Maori dances, Tahitian dances, Hawaiian dances, and Samoan dances.

Everett and Simon have been busily practicing their dances over the past few weeks. Simon's class is nearly all boys so they did a Fijian warrior dance. He was very excited about it and practiced over and over at home.

Everett's class did a Samoan dance. His lava lava and tshirt have a fale and palm tree that the class printed on them. He wasn't as excited about his dance as Simon was, but the tshirt and laval lava have been a constant topic of conversation for weeks now.

me too. because that would be really unpleasant, except for the flying car part

Me: I hope you have a good day at school.

Everett: I hope you have a good day at work, better than Harry Potter in Book 2 when his parents locked him in his bedroom and his friends had to come rescue him in a flying car.

floating your boat requires advance planning

Everett (surrounded by building materials, hammer in hand): I'm going to build a boat that's bigger than our whole house.

Paul: How are you going to get the boat to the water?

Everett (slowly stalling): That's an excellent question...

we're all mixed up too

Everett (explaining that Ila's a mutt): He's all mixed up. He's all different kinds of dogs.

Airport Lagoon

It's been a while since we'd had a good snorkel day so we headed to Airport Lagoon. It wasn't the best snorkel day, but good enough.

And then Everett found a treasure at the beach! It has hardly left his head since Saturday.

Simon started dancing around on the way back.

and then turn yourself into a convex pentagon

Everett (telling Simon how to turn into a cocoon): . . . and now curl up so you're shaped like a ball and not a Simon.

the vegetarian who doesn't like vegetables

Everett has gone vegetarian. It's been a few months now so it seems that he's really going to stick to it. I'm a little surprised that he's lasted this long, but mostly impressed that he thought the whole thing out - that animals are killed for food and he doesn't want to be part of the reason. And he's only eight. I think my major concerns at eight revolved mostly around Barbies and cabbage patch kid dolls.

I'm fairly sure that this is a result of the "funeral chicken" and the fact that it actually resembles chicken, or at least, resembles chicken more than the boneless skinless chicken breasts I usually buy. I went to a Samoan funeral a while ago and, as the custom is to give gifts, I was given a huge box of chicken leg quarters, not so affectionately referred to as funeral chicken at our house. It has bones and skin and veins and all those things that pampered palagi kids like mine don't usually see. We were planning to have a big barbeque to use the funeral chicken, but we slowly made our way through it all by grilling it here and there.

Whenever I'd mention that we were having chicken for dinner, the kids would ask - funeral chicken or regular chicken? And if the answer was funeral chicken they'd wrinkle their noses and pretend to be unhappy until the grilling smell got to be too much for them and they were salivating by the time it was ready to eat. But then, when eating, they would inevitably come across veins and bones and be thoroughly disgusted and refuse to eat anymore (which I think is crazy. We are so separated from our food's original form that seeing reminders of it is enough to ruin appetites!? Clearly my children would not survive farm life.).

After a few weeks of this, Everett announced that he was vegetarian and not going to eat meat anymore. Simon agreed. Simon lasted less than 24 hours, even though he does tell people that he used to be a vegetarian. Everett has stuck with it, which is great. He's got conviction and he wants to do something about it. It makes me proud, except for one small detail... he doesn't like vegetables. He even wrote his own version of Green Eggs and Ham about broccoli in school this year. Fortunately, the broccoli book led to the same result as the real book - he tried broccoli (many different ways) and now he likes it (only when boiled). But that is about the only vegetable he'll eat.

Boiled broccoli is fine. It's just that I generally like a few more options when I'm considering what to cook for dinner. Nevermind the fact that boiled broccoli with pasta/rice/whatever is hardly a balanced vegetarian diet. So we've been doing our homework - figuring out all the stuff that the kid needs to eat now that he won't eat meat and eating much less meat ourselves because it's just easier to only cook one meal. There's just one thing left to do: figure out how to make the vegetarian eat his vegetables.

Spring (Fall) Break

My kids are going to grow up to be seriously confused. We live in the Southern hemisphere so it's supposed to be fall right now, but they just had Spring Break. And in the winter, they get summer vacation.

Anyway, Everett made some fun Bionicle creations over Spring (Fall) Break and I promised I'd post them for everyone to see. He was anxiously waiting for me to get around to taking the pictures so it was (obviously) quite a chore to pose for the photos! The first one is designed to be a hat and the 2nd has light-up eyes so it took a bit of concentration to make sure they were actually lit for the picture.

While I still had the camera out, Simon caught this tiny gecko. He loved playing with it and cracked up when the gecko climbed all around his neck and onto his head. He had just peeled an orange and we discovered that geckos like oranges -enough to lick Simon's dirty hands for a long time!

we never exaggerate

Everett: I've had this cough a really long time, like, since I was three or four.

Buried Septic Treasure!

Lately the kids have discovered they can climb our breadfruit tree. They are a little too short to get up without any assistance, but the seven foot long 1 x 4 the housing guys left in the yard has worked out well.

Anyway, they've been braving the swarms of mosquitos out back a lot lately and found treasure! There was a little hole in the ground so they started digging. They could see a square cement box and uncovered a cement slab lid. I was inside and could hear their excited comments, "it's a treasure chest!" and "oooh, mom's never gonna believe this!" They came running to show me when they had uncovered a huge cement slab lid on top of a cement box that had been under about 2 inches of dirt and grass.

They were incredibly excited and wanted to open the cement treasure chest. It turned out to be the septic system so... not really treasure. Quite the opposite, actually.

The best part is that I didn't realize it was the septic system. We pried it open and tried to look inside, but couldn't see (or smell) anything. So we went to a friend's house later that day where they found the same "treasure chest" and the friend's parent also opened it, but the friend's parent recognized a septic system when he saw one -which is a very good thing because Everett was convinced he saw tunnels in ours and he wanted to go exploring!

Christmas morning

We awoke at 1am to happy exclamations, "He came! Santa came!" In laying down the essential Christmas morning rules, we omitted one important detail. We told Everett and Simon that they could get into their stockings when they woke up, and they couldn't open presents until we woke up at 7. But we forgot to tell them a minimum sleep time before they could get into the stockings. Lesson learned. So we told them they had to go back to sleep until 4, but they actually slept until 6. They slept in the hall on the hard tile floor because they were so anxious to get back into the front room and get to those stockings!

apparently the superhero phase isn't over

Everett: But mom, why?

me: Because I don't want you running down the road without supervision.

Everett: But I have my own Super Vision inside me.