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.