tropo kid

One of our little island boys caught a fish in half of a coconut shell. He just scooped it up out of the water. He was so proud of himself.

The coconut shell kept leaking so he transferred it to a bowl we found on the beach.

Simon is Seven!

Simon woke up singing "today is my birthday, today is my birthday" over and over, but when people would wish him a happy birthday he got all shy and didn't know what to do. It was kind of cute.

We had a bunch of kids over to properly celebrate. They seemed to have a great time.

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!

gotta love this logic

Simon: You think my mom has make-up?

Friend: Yeah, all moms do.

Simon: Are you sure my mom does?

Friend: She does. Otherwise she wouldn't have a husband.

*sigh* I love that kid

Julia: We have to remember to take that fan with us when we move.

Simon: Yeah, because it keeps us warm so we're not burning burning hot. We used to be burning burning hot. *sigh* I love that fan.

close, but not quite

Simon (making cookies): We're going to put the cookie dough on the cookie mattress.

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.

hmmm

Getting cards is always fun. I just hadn't thought to make one for myself lately.

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.

what is the deal with those people and their cameras in the rain?

Simon: I hope tonight's not going to be like the last night the new babysitter came - with all the flashes and people taking pictures and thunder and rain.

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!

wacky school colors

Julia: You know how some school colors here are blue and white and some are black and yellow?

Simon: Yeah, ours are blue and wacky.

Julia: you mean, khaki?

Simon (nodding): Khaki.

oh, the technicalities

Clif: It's Thursday, right?
Simon: No, it's Thurs-night.

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!

Simon is Six!

We had a few people over for Simon's birthday dinner. He had a great time and loves all the presents.

ASSA swim meet

The American Samoa Swimming Association had a swim meet last weekend. Everett was very excited about his races, and ended up getting a 3rd place ribbon in one of them. Simon was very unsure about the whole thing, but we were able to convince him to swim in one race.

Thanks to Paul for the amazing pictures!

Christmas program at Pacific Horizons School

Simon's class (the starfish) doing "ho ho ho" at the Christmas program.

Everett had some lines to say before the song and I caught him just as he was trying to remember the last half. He remembered and did a great job!

pictures

Larsen's cove

Everett's handcrafted "berthday" card

Simon

Nu'uuli Falls

weird samoa caterpillar thing at the waterfalls

weird samoa slug thing on our house

weird samoa slug thing in our house

eight-year-old humor

Simon: Don't spell booger!

Everett: Why? It's a snotty word?