random smiles

We survived the whole week.  A whole week of moving stuff around, figuring out school, homework, church stuff, trying to settle in, and all that.  We even managed to have some good times.  We are getting good at that.  Making good memories amidst chaos and, well, chaos.

Want to see something so gross?  But almost kind of cool and kind of funny but mostly gross? I am so sorry if you don't.   But I just had to share.  This is what a cake looks like that you bake, then take camping, then your baby gets hurt so it sits for months in your garage.  Yummy.  Who wants some cake?  Makes my skin crawl just to scroll over it.  Thanks, now I don't have to suffer alone.  

The kids made it to their first days of school.  It was a success for both of them.  Eva did have to stop by the nurse's office for a tooth ache and Samuel cut up his foot pretty bad, and maybe I forgot that school gets out at 2:00 and not 2:30 but even with all that they were both very happy.  In fact, I have never seen Samuel happier about school.  Such a relief. Big smiles for mom, here. 

We made it to our favorite shave ice spot, Uncle's Shave Ice.  Macadamia nut icecream on the bottom, sweet cream on the top.  And two popcorns.  Smiles all around.

Horrible photo quality, I know.  Sorry.  I left the real camera in UT on accident.  Along with a billion other things.   Not that I am above crappy phone photos.  I am not above much these days.

Aloha Friday Night.  It all started with a sign when we first moved here.  Ever since then my family thinks it's fun to go into town, see who is performing, eat,  and go to Costco and Kmart.  Really.  That's it.  That's all it is.  And that brings lots of smiles.  

Karl and the kids dancing to the old school dance band.  

The farmer's market.  My kids get excited because they relate it to buying a chocolate covered banana.  Even if they have to buy it themselves.  The kids got to try fresh sugar cane for the first time.  And Samuel loves star fruit.  Okay, and that candle?  For whatever reason he wanted to buy a beeswax candle.  And the super nice patient guy taught Samuel how to bargain.  Like teaching him how to name a price and everything.  It was cute and very aloha. Smiles.

Karl took Samuel fishing tonight and snapped this photo.  Samuel in his favorite "I love bacon" t-shirt.  Last night, about a half hour after he went to bed, Samuel came down to get a drink.  I noticed he had his bacon shirt and some shorts on under his pajamas.  Cracked me up.  He said he wanted to be fast in the morning.  That is totally something Karl would have done.  

With no beach time and no pool time, there seems to be plenty of other things to do. Karl has taken Samuel down boogie boarding (we seemed to have lost our good boogie boards in this fiasco.  Hope we can find them)  and gone surfing with friends.  And Samuel has gone with his school.  Another time, when I was getting a little sad about missing out, my friend texted out of the blue that she could take Eva and Samuel, and it pulled me right out of the blues.  In the mean time, I will just keep working on my farmer tan while Maximus and I stay high and dry.  As soon as the little sore on his hip heals (his donor sights itch so bad that he scratches holes in the fragile skin), he can go.  I am looking forward to that day.  I am looking forward to showing off my awesome farmer tan. 

And here is something that has been making us smile all week.  This is how Maximus says, "soup."  He even uses his eyes.  We were eating a local/Korean place where they bring soup out at that beginning of the meal.  Maximus was cracking the waitress up with his requests for "soup" and loud, "thank you!"s and just being him.  She was happy to bring him a second bowl when he asked in his own silly language.   

Things seem a little crazy.  And I feel like I have to stay up late just to get the house in order, just to have it get out of order as soon as everyone wakes up.  But I just keep plugging along.  

The training wheels are kinda coming off and we are going to have to figure out how to do this.  That's the natural progression of things, I guess.  Dang it.  

Plugging along.  Grateful for the random smiles here and there.