Saturday Chores

This morning I got the girls up, 

gave them some breakfast and had them outside weeding and trimming,

 in their pajamas.  

Scott cut the grass, the felilia is pruned, the sweet potato is trimmed, 

and some of the weeds are pulled.

Later in the day we went to our ward pool party/potluck.  We have it every year near the end of summer.  The little girls love this event and Mary has been asking me all summer when it was going to be.  It was already  postponed once when Hurricane Flossie passed through.  Today when we pulled up, everyone was waiting to get into the pool, but the pool lifeguard never showed up.  No matter.  We ended up eating and visiting, while the kids played kickball and climbed trees.  I love these easygoing, upbeat people.  Nothing seems to dampen their spirits for long, and if you ever make a mistake, I don't know of a more understanding, forgiving bunch.  They are a good people to go to church with.  It makes for a good place to heal.

Since the girls didn't get to swim at the pool, Scott took them to the beach. Now he's gone to get the pastries and I think everyone is waiting on me to stop blogging so the movie can start.  Signing out, until the next time.

Recent happiness

These are some recent moments that have brought me some happiness.

The whole family was on the beach walking to our swimming spot,
and this turtle surfaced right next to the shore.  

 Its such a joy to see my family laughing together.  Mary is an old pro at using a mask, but this evening was the first time she was interested in using the snorkel.  She took to it like a fish.

 Elena and I start sanding the dining chairs.  More on this in later posts.

 Siwa, Jesse and I got up early one morning and went for a walk.  

We didn't say much to each other.

We were just content to be together.

 It was a beautiful day and I think we all really felt it.

These were picked today from a volunteer cherry tomato plant,
an offering from last year's garden.
It's a blessing to watch food grow, to see the land produce for our nourishment and pleasure.
And since this plant wasn't even planted by me, its an unexpected gift.
 I'm grateful for and to this plant.  I had some of these in my salad today.

Camouflage critters by Siwa

I found these in the yard or down at the beach. 

A Lynx Spider (Oxyopes javanus) on a dead Zinnia flower. These are ambush spiders and do not spin intricate webs to catch their prey. Instead they lie in wait on flowers and attack insects drawn to the blooms.

 A planthopper nymph.

 I found this Eared Sea Hare (Dolabella auricularia) lying in the sand early one morning. Mary is holding it. These sea hares look like their back ends have been cut off. If they have been eating red algae they can squirt a purple ink to deter predators.

 A young Pleated Rock Crab (Pachygrapsus plicatus) in a patch of seaweed. There is also a small Lined Sea Hare (Stylocheilus striatus) in the lower right hand corner.

Eight Ruddy Turnstones (Arenaria interpres) searching the tide pools for food. These birds fly all the way to the Arctic to nest every summer.

 A katydid in the grass. These can be either brown or green and make a loud chirping noise at night much like their relatives the cricket.

Ghost Ants rush around tending to their herd of Van Duzee Treehopper nymphs (Vanduzeea segmentata) on a sunflower stalk. The ants have a symbiotic relationship with many sap sucking insects like these. This means that their relationship is beneficial to both sides. Much like the relationship between people and cows, the ants protect,care for and even "milk" the treehoppers. The ants massage the treehoppers with their antennae and the treehoppers produce a sugary juice called honeydew which the ants collect and use as food.

A Van Duzee Treeehopper nymph being "milked".

Why are we here?

I've just had a very deep and heartfelt conversation with my twelve year old.  Elena said she wished she could tell everyone about Heavenly Father's plan for His children.  So I decided that today I would do it for her.  The plan, as Mormons believe it, is really very simple and beautiful.

Before we came to this earth life we lived with Heavenly Father as His children.  We were spirits without bodies, but we were literally His children.  We were happy and loved there and we inherited divine qualities like strength, courage, love, intelligence and selflessness from Him.  He knew, as all wise parents know, that we would have to go through some learning experiences so that we could grow and become like Him.  He gathered all His children to a great meeting in Heaven and proposed that we come down to a planet, a planet created and designed specifically for our use.  There we would receive bodies, and undergo testing and trial to learn to be more like Him.  These earthly experiences would prepare us for greater things and move us along in our progression.  He explained to us that our time on Earth would be a time of difficult trials.  We would know hardship, pain, sorrow, but would also know great joy and fulfillment.   The way we chose to deal with our experiences would determine our outcome.  God knew, that like all children, we would make mistakes, some of them small and some of them terrible. This would disqualify us from returning back to Him because we would now be unworthy to live with Him.  He presented the solution to this problem in the form of a Savior.  Our older brother Jesus Christ was chosen to fill that role. Jesus volunteered Himself to suffer for all the sins of His younger brothers and sisters. He was offering to literally pay the price for sins committed by others by His own suffering.  In doing so He was buying us back, so we could come home to Him and Heavenly Father.  By doing so, He was satisfying the demands of justice (suffering for sins committed) and mercy (forgiveness), two laws that our Father and our Savior live by.

 When I think of my Savior, I feel reverence and love.  I feel happy.  I feel hopeful.  I find myself quietly smiling, and sometimes bawling my eyes out. He is my hope for second chances.  He is my source of strength to make it through trials, because no one has suffered more than Him, and if anyone understands what I'm going through or knows how to help, He does.  He is my Savior because He saves me.  I cling to Him out of necessity, but also out of love.

For a more in depth explanation of why we are here on this earth, click here.

Swimming in the rain

This evening Scott came home and said, “Let’s go for a swim.”  The older girls were ready in under five minutes.  When you live in surf shorts and t-shirts and are used to swimming in your clothes, it doesn’t take that long to get ready.  They left ahead of us, and I waited for the little girls to come home from a friend’s house.  When Mary and Elena made it back, we walked down to the beach to join them, and found we were the only ones on the sand.  The sun has been setting around seven lately, so it was still daylight. The waves had washed away most of the day’s traffic but we could clearly see Scott and Siwa’s footprints.  Jesse’s prints must have dissolved.   In the distance we could discern three lone figures in the water.  Mary ran far ahead of us calling out to them and ran splashing into the water, and into them.  Elena stayed behind with me and said, “Don’t you feel like we’re so lucky to live in a place like this?”  I said, “Blessed, I feel blessed.”  After awhile it started to rain, but everyone kept on swimming.  The water became  a mixture of small choppy waves, and little pinging splashes on the surface.  The sky grew a little darker, even the air seemed gray, but still warm and soft.Finally, Scott called to the girls and we headed home.  Jesse said, “If only every day was like today.” 

Tiny shells by Siwa

One of my hobbies is collecting shells on the beach. My favorite size to collect  is between the size of a coarse grain of sand and a popcorn kernel. I find that shells this size have more intricate patterns, brighter colors and once collected take up much less space to store. For a long time I didn't know that shells that small existed, when I did figure it out it was on accident. I had taken up a handful of sand and was looking through it. It was full of tiny specks of olivine, small pebbles, bits of coral and tiny pink and white shells. After that I began to look only for tiny shells. I soon realized that the tide lines were covered in these shells. I've tried to identify a few but I'm more of a botanist than a conchologist. I've put the shells on dimes or on a pencil for size comparison.

A shell rainbow.

Barley grain trivia (Trivirostra hordacea) are a species of allied cowrie. They reach a length of 6 mm.

These are a few of my pink shells. I don't know the names of most of them but I like them best because of their beautiful patterns.

Julia exquisita, these attain a maximum length of about 7 mm.

Knobby snail (Modulus tectum)

Creativity flowing

Elena actually likes to clean.  Every so often she'll get itching to mop the floors and move the furniture.  She'll ask me if she can paint the walls and reorganize things.  She wants to clean up and fix up.  She has this yearning to beautify and create.  I believe that desire is a divine attribute inherited from our Creator and that we all came coded with it to some extent.  Our Father in Heaven is the ultimate designer, artist, thinker, creator and when we create, when we conceive worthy ideas and make beautiful things we are fulfilling our divine nature; and so we feel happy. Years ago Siwa painted a little mural on some closet doors of ours.  It was bright yellow with red hibiscus and mangoes, and green breadfruit and ferns on it.  Recently Elena asked me if she could paint it over.  I told her to go to it, and came home to find this.

Here's the other door over a few days

In the future I'll do a post on some dining chairs we're working on.  Elena asked me to teach her how to refinish furniture and so I'll be doing a joint project with my girl.  It's in the sanding phase right now, but I'll blog more on it as our ideas come to fruition.  Happy creating!

Faith over fear

During the past few days, I have been doing some serious soul searching.  I felt the Lord wanted me to blog about something, but I didn't want to do it.  I thought I knew better and didn't act on it.  The time for it came and went and now its too late, for whatever reason, its too late.  Maybe someone out there needed to read about it at that particular time and now that time is past, I don't know.  I only know it's time to move on.  I come to the keypad a more humble and sober me, determined to write about whatever He asks me to, when He asks me to, regardless of the consequences.  The only way I know how to do that is to constantly pray that He take away my fear and replace it with faith.  Its something I've been asking for a lot lately, and He has come through again, big time.  If you don't know me personally, you may not have picked up on the fact that I am a very private person.  So what the heck am I doing blogging, with my thoughts and feelings posted all over the world wide web?  All I know is that it feels like the right thing to do.  The first time I hit the "publish" button to send out a post, my hand was trembling.  And its been that way over and over again.  But I pray and the fear is taken away and faith comes to fill the void, every time.  God loves us and is aware of the details of our lives.  He hears and answers prayers, about the big and the little things.  Here's a post from a few days ago, that I didn't send, because I was busy soul searching.

The girls and I went for an early swim this morning.  I don't like the cold and so in spite of the girls asking me and asking me to come in and swim with them, I usually don't.  Today I was determined to brave the cold, I mean literally, brave the cold.  I said a prayer that I would be able to handle it (yes I know its the tropics and my cold would be considered way warm for some of you, but my cold is my cold and that's just where I'm at).  I waded in before any of the girls and found it wasn't so bad this morning.  Then I noticed I was alone in the water and looked back to shore.  This time it was the girls that were still standing on the sand looking very cold and hesitant about coming in, the opposite of what usually happens on the beach. We stayed in the water for an hour.  About halfway through Mumi (our adopted Finnish grandmother) joined us.  We swapped stories and laughed.  Then we got out and ran home.  Time to hit the books.

 Good morning

 I braved the cold.

 Lovely ironwoods, can't get enough of them.

Mary is ready to go home.

Last Week

This past week was a busy one.  Here are the highlights:

Monday- The girls start school.  For family night Scott reviews fire safety and fire starting with the big girls.  They in turn teach it to the little girls.  We are all hunched over little mini fires gingerly and sometimes frantically adding fuel and/or blowing on them.  Then success!  Mary and Elena can now start their own campfires. The girls and I also get an assembly line going and make our easy refrigerator guava jam.

Tuesday- Relief Society (the women's organization from church) holds two mini workshops- one on journaling and one on self publishing family histories. The young women of the ward (congregation) join us.

Wednesday- We prep for a baby shower.  We pick up the group gift, the cake and the rest of the yummies.  The girls help prep/clean the house.

Thursday- These ladies keep calling and offering to help with the shower.  I take them up on their offers.  One friend comes to help prep the food.  We make bread and white chicken chili.  Another friend brings homemade mango salsa  with chips, another brings a layered Greek dip and pita chips.  There's also salad with craisins and macadamia nuts, and the cake. Nancy and I decide to forgo the usual shower games, just scrumptious food and good company.  At one point dancing and singing breaks out, over all the laughing and talking.  Scott is in the kitchen with Jesse and jokingly says, "Hear that?  And all without drugs or alcohol."

Friday- Our homeschool group holds it opening social.  We sit on a mat under an ulu (breadfruit) tree reading stories to each other and eating guavas and cookies.  The kids climb trees and play T-ball, then we go inside for dominoes and scholastic jeopardy.  We end with lunch and a tour around my friend's garden.  We make it back just in time for the girls to grab their swimsuits and head over to my nephew's pool party.

Saturday- Attend the temple with another nephew and his family, and then to a family breakfast to celebrate his first time going to the temple.

Sunday- We go to church and see our ward family.  Later we have breakfast for dinner with yet another nephew and his girlfriend.  We have waffles with stawberry/banana topping and guava syrup, also sausages and scrambled eggs.  Dinner is very quiet, except for lots of mmm-mmm noises. My niece comes over and we watch clips from her family reunion in Samoa. Wish I had been there, they're hilarious.

I didn't realize it until I took the time to think about it and write it down, but it's been a great week.

Rainy day

It's a rainy day today.  It started last night and continued throughout the morning.  I love it when it rains, and even more after it stops.  The whole world seems brand new, like the earth is washed clean.  The colors are gorgeous, more vibrant and fresh.  It feels like life is about to burst forth and that a new beginning is coming.

When the rain slowed Siwa went out to explore the crystal wonderland.
Here are some close up views through her lens.

 A dessert rose about to blossom.

A new beginning.  An orchid starting all over again.

Why I pray

You don’t need to be an expert on prayer to teach someone else how to pray.  You only need to have prayed yourself, it’s that simple.  It is, afterall, speaking to another person, albeit a grand and glorious one. I find it amazing and amazingly comforting that the most grand and glorious being, the most powerful and knowing being is also our Father and that He cares about the details in our lives.  He wants us to connect with Him.  He wants us to come to Him in prayer and tell Him all about it- our troubles, our hopes, worries, fears, the things we need, the things we want, and the things we’re grateful to Him for.

I pray on my knees, in the morning and at night, but sometimes in the middle of the day when I'm in need of direction or comfort or strength.  Most of the time I pray while not on my knees.  I talk to God all throughout the day.  I send my thoughts out to Him when I'm cutting vegetables, when I'm walking on the beach, when I'm at church and when I'm driving.  I pray just before I'm about to do something really important, like teach my kids, or write for this blog.  I take my daily actions seriously and I've asked God to be a part of them and guide me in them, and He has.

Going through life without prayer is like trying to navigate without a map, not because I'm not smart or good or capable, but because I lack the bigger picture, that knowing of the past, present and future that God possesses.  There are too many variables, too many unknowns involved and without Heavenly Father's insight, I'd still be guessing, always guessing.

We each have our point of exhaustion.  No matter how strong we may feel, we can find ourselves powerless in the face of a storm, and life is full of storms.  They rage around us and turn our lives upside down.  Sometimes they wrench from us things and people we care the most about, and leave us devastated. Sometimes His answers come in the form of the storm subsiding and the sun coming out.  Often they come in the midst of the storm, in the form of reassurance anchoring us down, safety sheltering us through it, peace keeping the fear at bay, and strength, to go on in the face of great pain and loss; so that we come through it stronger and better for having weathered it.  I would rather go through life, with all its storms, with God beside me than by myself, any day.

When I pray I start by addressing Him.  I thank Him for His gifts in my life.  I ask for what I need.  Then I end the prayer.  Because I'm a christian, I close my prayers "in the name of Jesus Christ," but I believe that God's ability to hear His children's prayers transcends all borders of religion or race.  He loves us all, and is waiting with loving and listening ears, and outstretched arms to give us help.  We have only to reach out in prayer and take it.

Gratitude in obscure places

There are so many things I'm grateful for, some obvious, some obscure.  The obscure are those things that happen over the course of the day that are so natural that we often tend to take them for granted.  If we aren't looking out for them, we may miss them entirely.  Some of the obscure and often overlooked blessings I'm grateful for are:

1) My eyesight. I live everyday with color, bright, vivid color.  I know the sun not only by the feel on my face but by its light, illuminating my world.

2) Strength to get up in the morning.  There have been periods of my life when I was bedridden and helpless.  I know the sensation of strength returning to my body and of finally having it restored.  I know the joy of being able to do even the simplest things for myself and those I love.

3)Food and clean water.  I consume it everyday, throughout the day, as a matter of course. It makes my life possible.  I have never known the want of it.

4)Oxygen.  I have seen the struggle for breath in others and then, thanks to medication, lungs relax and the air slowly begin to flow more and more freely, as if life was being given back to them, and it was.  To take deep, free, breaths of air is a gift given to most of us every second of every day.

5)A smile, a kindness.  Some days these occur more often than on others.  Whenever and wherever they happen, they are reminders that there is goodness is this world, and that this life is still worth living.

I thank my Heavenly Father for my sight, strength, the daily necessities of life and this life worth living.

Moss and more moss by Siwa

Here are some closeups from yesterday's hike. One of my favorite parts of hiking is when we take breaks in the riverbeds. I like to wander off a little ways from our group to look for bugs, plants and things. Yesterday I found a click beetle, lots of different mosses, an egg in a bird's nest, striped fungus, layered rocks and so much more.

My first memory of click beetles was my brother bringing me one when we were little. My brother put the beetle on the ground upside-down. The beetle waited a moment before raising its head, then jerking it back down with a sharp clicking noise. The motion had flipped the beetle back onto its legs. That click beetle was small and brown. The one I found yesterday was a lot bigger and more colorful. I had been taking pictures when I heard a buzzing noise and saw the beetle fly onto my shirt. He allowed me to pull him off and take a few pictures.

Fungus growing on a rotting log.

Clidemia, also known as Koster's curse, is an invasive weed that has spread rapidly throughout much of Hawaii's forests.

A river stone with vervain. 

Moss.

More moss, this picture shows a part of the moss that resembles tiny rosebuds.

While we were walking through a grove of mountain apple trees I noticed a tiny bird's nest in one of the trees overhanging the path. It was made of moss, grass and a white glue the birds produce.  It was about the size of half an orange and belonged to a Japanese White Eye. These tiny birds are an olive green color, a little smaller than a sparrow, with a white ring around their eyes. The egg was the size of a grape.

Today's hike

We went on a beautiful hike today.  The day started out with scattered showers but cleared up for most of the hike.  We were under forest cover most of the time and did several dry bed/ shallow river crossings.  We got attacked by mosquitoes at one point, each person having their own personal swarm.  Luckily we left them behind after one of the crossings.  When we got to the endpoint everyone scattered to pick mountain apples and to explore the river.  No one seemed to want to go home and we ended up lazing around the river, the kids building dams in the little pools and the adults talking, for another hour.  It was a peaceful day.  I feel so blessed to live in such beauty.  Here are the pics of the day: