Funny Food Faces

At the Stake Fun Day a few Saturdays ago we had typical Samoan fare.

Breakfast: Panikeke and Kokolaisa (Samoan donuts and hot cocoa with rice)
Lunch: Pizza Hut and KFC

Yum! But Blech! So dinner had to be light. We got out some tortillas, cheese, veggies, raisins, and ta-da! This did the trick.

Meet Ellaface

Isaacface

And Mamaface

Screen Time

I haven't posted in awhile because my kids (particularly Isaac) think they exclusively own the computer and deserve rights to the mouse anytime I sit at the computer to do anything other than type in the password to their account, which is simple to remember but difficult for them to spell, and gets changed frequently to keep them locked out of the computer, since we can't turn the computer off at all anymore fearing that it may never return to life again due to the humidity situation here.

So Isaac spends most of his screen time at pbskids.org. He really likes Sesame Street, Super Why, and Word Girl. We had a Mr. Rogers kick for about a week, and we saw how sneakers are made. (Also check out Mr. Rogers with Stomp.) He likes listening to stories on Between the Lions. And lately he's been exploring the Quests on Cyberchase, although he can't read or do math. He found this game about patterns that makes us get up and dance.

Of course, I limit his computer time, we don't have a TV, he sets a timer, yada yada yada. It's hard to feel guilty about this automatic babysitter when the babysitter is Fred Rogers.

What do your kids do with their screen time?

Fish Farm Fun

Ephraim's building a fish farm system in the backyard of his office. His building doesn't have a sign yet (it's an old house), but it has these huge tanks and complicated plumbing.Ephraim and his coworker Francis have designed, constructed, and are perfecting these aquaculture systems. They collect rainwater, clean it, and fill the outdoor and indoor freshwater systems. They also have a portable tank and pump to collect seawater, clean it, and fill the indoor saltwater system. It's been a large undertaking, and they are constantly troubleshooting, but the result will be a great demonstration tool.

And our kids like hanging out at his office, too. The ASCC Marine Science boat sits in front of Ephraim's office. It's waiting for some fixin'-up to be seaworthy again. In the meantime, how many kids get to play pirates on an actual ship?

He's 32 Folks

32 is 2 to the 5th
32 ounces (US) in a quart
32 inches is 2'8" (or 8/9 of a yard)
32 degrees Fahrenheit is 0 degrees Celsius
32 is 100000 in binary
32 is 2 2/3 dozen
32 kilowatt-hours is 27,515,047 calories
32 is the atomic number of Germanium
32 is the perfect age for Ephraim

(thanks marcie for the facts)

this is late, but ephraim had a birthday (shout hooray). here's proof.

balloonhead ella and i decorated his office

isaac helped make the cake

(he spilled all the remaining cocoa powder on his shirt, and got it on his face trying to remove said shirt. he looks he's bracing himself for a major "sasa". i'm sure i don't know why.)

anyway, three cheers for ephraim!

hip hip HOORAY
hip hip HOORAY
hip hip HOORAY

Baby Owen 4 months

he sucks on his toes

and sleeps folded in half

do babies have bones?

Amateur B&W hour in Utah and Ofu

Almost every nature shot I take here is some shade of green. Not that it's old or uninteresting, but I've been playing with black and white photography to spice things up. I have no idea what I'm doing and just change shutter speeds and f-stops and hope autofocus does the rest. I like a lot of what I get. What do you think?

These first five pictures are from Utah either in or around Uintah National Forest. I spent many days of our vacation going to different waterfalls and such. Isaac was a trooper and even finished one of the hikes with a huge blister on his heel.


In the previous post, Melinda showed y'all some pictures of Ofu. It's one of the outer islands in American Samoa. I was there for a three day environmental discoveries camp for kids but had to spend about 7 days due to the flight situation. So I had a lot of time to hike along the coasts and summitted Ofu mountain with the superintendent of the National Park Service here, Mike.

Just to show you that greens are interesting I took a BW picture of this coconut log and then a color photo because the color is unreal.