Summertime!

Oh, summer!  School is officially out today, and Emi is no longer a third grader.  Instead, she's a not-quite-fourth grader with a huge pile of old papers, projects, half-broken crayons, and work books that are sitting on the counter.  She doesn't want to throw this stuff away yet, because it's all so sentimental still.  Gradually, we'll sift through it and the best things (plus ALL the awards) will end up in the chest of 'special' drawings and work that may some day fill an entire garage the way Emi and Charlie produce.  Every picture is a special one, of course, even the hundredth tentacle alien monster (Charlie) or the twentieth lovely mermaid (Emi).  So here I am, facing summer vacation.  I have yet to make my phone calls begging to borrow a kid or two for playmates, but we're setting up our summer schedule, which will include many trips to the beach, tide pools, and parks.  Charlie already has a plan for tomorrow.  We'll go walk along the flat cliffs, exploring the tide pools and the wild feeling place that is right around the corner from the Warm Pond.  We walked out briefly yesterday and he was so excited because it seemed so strange and different, even though we were less than five minutes from the parking lot.  

Today I went in to Emi's class for the last time this year.  I did some inventory work for the teacher, and brought in a big batch of popcorn.  I've become fond of that group of kids, though!  I don't see them every week day like their teacher, who is just tired and ready for the summer.  I see them once a week for an hour and enjoy every one of them, especially those two trouble makers that end up under their desks on a regular basis- two boys that can't keep their to their seats and are ready for anything physical at a moment's notice.

I'll keep you posted on summer plans!  Emi and Aaron are intending an Oregon visit, with details still a work-in-process but nearly solid.

Mid-May

It's been a busy few weeks, with a visit from Chris and Deanna, the final weeks of my school term, and then (oh, yes, we did) a new little rescue dog.  The visit was fun, with snorkeling at the tide-pools down by the vacation rental where Chris and Deanna stayed.  The house is perched right there on the edge of the tide-pools, overlooking the black lava and the ocean.  Then we culminated the visit with a much anticipated stay over at the Hilton Waikaloa, otherwise known as "the water slide hotel".  The kids were awake at dawn, ready to ride the tram that runs the length of the hotel, walk around, and then watch cable cartoons while waiting for the water slides to open at the reasonable hour of 9 a.m.  There's nothing reasonable about our two kids, though, so dawn it was! 

This photo is from our drive out to the lava viewing place.  And no, those glows aren't the lava, but the reflectors shining the flash back at us.  But the lava has slowly crept towards the lava viewing area, but moving so excruciatingly slow that it's almost all crusted over and black except where the edges glow orange in thin cracks.  There were some trees still alive in kipukas (pretty much the opposite of a hole, or puka, this is a place where the lava has previously flowed around a hill or area where there is relatively older vegetation), but this vegetation would occasionally burst into flame.  It was a bit like watching a distant bonfire, because of course the county civil defense keeps people inside boundaries, and well back from that fresh flowing lava with its thin black crust of cooled rock.

The end of my term has been fairly uneventful.  I can say that now that it is over.  The classes were both intensive, so the finals were more presentations of the work we had done over the term- more a process of organization than anything else.

So....the new dog.  The dog was a rescue that Emi's teacher took on, but her husband realized that he isn't much of a dog person, especially a fairly energetic, skittish dog.  I half-in-jest said, "Oh, we've got a great place for dogs.  Let me know if it doesn't work out."  Well, it didn't work out, and now we have Maizy.  Or Mixie, depending on who you ask.  The dog is a terrier, and I'm enjoying her.  She's still a pup, only five months old, and while shy, she can also be quite a funny little thing, racing around the house with Sparky until I have to kick them outside into the yard.


Last of all, I wanted to post a link to photos.  This is the Shutterfly site that I've used a lot before, but I just added a couple hundred photos.  My Dad took a whole bunch of pictures of the big birthday bash, which were pretty fun.  Enjoy!  http://riccisinhawaii.shutterfly.com/?role=-1