Brandon's Birthday

At Bubba Gumps

Happy Birthday Brandon

It's my son Brandon's 18th birthday. Time really does fly. I am not sure what we are doing tonight to celebrate but he did get to celebrate with his friends last night. This picture is of him and his girl going to the prom last week.

Happy Birthday Rielyn

Hoping my granddaughter has a great birthday over there in Mexico. She is 2 years old today. Praying for her to have a happy and blessed year.

Meet Savannah...

This is my son's best friend Savannah. Today I am babysitting her and her 2 brothers because her mom has an appointment for her baby sister at the neurologist. Her 4 month old sister has epilepsy. Or what they thought was epilepsy but now have discovered may be something on her brain that is causing these strange seizures. Please pray for Haley who is only 4 months old has already suffered a grand mal seizure. Anyway Savannah and Darrian are enjoying a little snack and each others company.

Day 2 Spring Break

Day two of Spring break went well. We decided to go to the pool because it was such a nice day. What do you think the kids want to do tomorrow? The Ice Palace. So much for 70 degrees and sunny.

Farrell's

Today the kids were off for Spring break. With my 12 year old off to the pool with the teen center, I decided to take my 10 and 6 year old to lunch at the local old fashioned ice cream parlor,Farrell's.

Farrell's...part 2

In search of the perfect green smoothie

Last week I bought a vitamix machine and now I am trying out every smoothie recipe for green smoothies that I can find. I think I've gotten pretty close to one my family will enjoy. The kid on the right doesn't like any vegetables at all including carrots, corn and mashed potatoes. Occasionally he will eat a salad made with only lettuce. Today I got him to drink his veggies. This smoothie contained cabbage, carrots and spinach. I'll be thanking God for this one tonight.

Spring break

The kids are on Spring Break from school this week so we should be able to do a lot of family things. Play games until late at night, go see movies, go to the beach, stay up late, and just have a fun time. The kids look forward to this and when they get back to school it will be only 2 months before summer break and 4 months until we move who knows where. Basically this is the calm before the storm. The storm of packing up and getting ready to leave. The Army still has not stationed us, but they will, they always do.

Welcome to my library

I spent a part of yesterday loading up my new bookcases. My daughter said I didn't have enough books to fill them. Obviously I do.

Yesterday I bought 2 large bookcases from Walmart. They're pretty nice and not to expensive. They should hold all of my books. My 19 year old daughter was nice enough to put them together, which only took about 4 hours to complete both. I think she did a great job. Now all I need to do is fill them.

A Little Taste of Oxaca....

My daughter Kira and her family are living in Oxaca, Mexico. I'm sharing a bit of the place not many people know about. The 5th largest city in Mexico.

I will be starting this book this week. I am a huge Danielle Steel fan. What is everyone else reading?

First Assembly of God Moanalau. Vanessa was in a human video with her young adult's (The Reef) group at church. She is sitting on the stage in the front row with her friend and she doesn't get up until about 3 or 4 minutes in. It was really good.
Filmed from the left at night service:
Filmed from the right at the morning service.

Tsunami...Not really

Well we woke up to a tsunami,or as my 6 year old said,a salami warning and then surrounded the tv at 11:05 to see what would hit Hilo. All that happened, thankfully, was 3 feet waves. So catastrophe averted. At least we know our evacuation plan works.

The monkey finally found a new tree

A little of this and a little of that...

My daughter has been practicing at church for a human video her youth group will be performing next Sunday. I'm hoping to get a clip of this for my blog next week. I'm praying it goes well for her.

Tomorrow I am renting "The Box," can't wait.

Tonight Dominic will be home late so it's just tuna sandwiches, mac and cheese, and veggies and ranch dip.

My son Darrian went to the Dole Plantation for a field trip today. He said he loved the maze and he enjoyed riding on the train. The plantation is beautiful and has the most awesome pineapple flavored ice cream. Me and dad always get this when he comes to visit.

Hope you all had a great day.

PS If you get the chance to read this post my sister did on a book and epilepsy go over and read it. It was a really good post and generated great conversation. I'm sure we can all relate to the use of labels.

relaxing weekend

We ended up going to Chilis for dinner Saturday which was a lot of fun for the kids and fun for me because I got a break from cooking. Tonight is church and Royal Rangers. I am looking forward to Tuesday so I can rent this movie that I wanted to see: The Box. I love the idea of popping a movie in, making my own snack, and being able to pause it whenever I need a break. Oh the wonders of DVD.

Update,,,,and books

Vanessa is fine. No surgery at the moment. The doctor said it isn't blood coming from her cyst but little bits of pineal fluid. It also wasn't new. Her shunt is magnetic so he put the magnet on top of her head and found out her shunt was set wrong. It was at a 2 and it should be 1.5 so he reset it. There is a little growth so they still want to MRI her head every 6 months, but hopefully the cyst will someday start to decrease instead of increase.

For you book lover's out there, here is a site I found while reading a magazine at the Dr. office yesterday. www.WhatShouldIReadNext.com Plug in your favorite books and get a list of other one's you'd likely enjoy. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like a good site.

Prayers for Vanessa

After Vanessa had her shunt done in May she had no more problems until yesterday. It seems she has a condition known as pineal cyst apoplexy. As you can see in this article under objective and importance, a pineal cyst apoplexy is rare, only 18 known cases. We are praying that the her doctor will guide us in the right direction. Her Doctor in San Diego specializes in pineal cyst, so for that we are thankful. We are having a consult on Tuesday, but for now she is stable.