Thursday, January 28, 2010

ohana means family.

lilo said it best : ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. or forgotten. in the hawaiian culture ohana means family. in extention includes blood-related, adoptive, or international. it emphasizes that family are bound together and members must cooperate and remember one another. i intitially thought about ohana when i picked my blog photo. i couldnt find a decent photo with all 5 of us. it was either Him and the girls, or me and the girls, or just the girls. i unintentionally left His name out of my profile info. even the blog name alone excludes daddy. He kept saying, this is your blog, yours, yours, yours. no it's our FAMILY blog i kept saying. i felt like i wasnt including him, or worse maybe...EXCLUDING him. then we looked closely at the profile pic. we noticed that if u looked VERY closely...at my sunglasses...his reflection is in there. my rock,...there as always.  members must remember one another. no one gets left behind. or forgotten.
ironically as i was researching my new fave little definition this morning, it came in quite handy. i read it aloud when my girls were fighting over toast. yes TOAST. one put theirs on the right side in the toaster...or was it the left... and the other grabbed it...whatever! the point is they were arguing...over toast..."the memembers must cooperate" part. read aloud again, when they were arguing over a pencil. yes A PENCIL! read aloud later when the "no one gets left behind" part fit as we heading out for an afternoon walk. one of our ohana members, very vocally, didn't want to go. i could have used it ALL days today. some days this is how ohana goes. this handy little defintion is definately going on a post-it!...ooooh and maybe t-shirts....and....

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

this was our classroom





homeschooling sweet homeschooling. there are more than many reasons homeschooling works for us. who wouldn't love this classroom? on monday, last minute, the girls and i packed up our school work and headed to the beach. beach chairs were our "desks" for the day and the beautiful blue ocean was our teacher. while building sandcastles we identified the shells we collected and used to dig holes. a woman found a dying starfish and took the time to bring it over for the girls to examine. we had previously (like 10 minutes before) discussed starfish in our book, but to actually see and touch the rough exoskeleton, many tiny tube feet, mouth, flexible arm tips... learning doesn't get more real. we got to see how the weather really affected the beach physically ex: the washed out shore, the huge crashing waves. it became a lesson in how everything is connected and affected by each other. also our role and responsibility in that interdependency. we took a moment to thank God for lovingly creating HIS ocean, which we adore, and that HE allowed us the blessing of that sunshiny school day to enjoy it. that days blessing also came with the responsibility to "leave it how we found it" or better. in other words :: pick up the trash ;)
P.S. i didnt even mention the seagulls, flocks of pelicans flying overhead, rocks to classify, masses of kelp...i could just keep going...

Monday, January 25, 2010

seriously serious


ok so about a year ago i decided to do a blog. 6 months later i REALLY decided to do a blog. 3 months ago i said i was SERIOUSLY going to start my blog...see where this is going. about a month ago i got SERIOUSLY SERIOUS about starting my blog. BUT this time i made a mistake and told people. so of course they held me to it, and made me do it! after 2 weeks of stressing and over thinking i finally did it! i think this blog will be a great way to journal our family, our life, where we've been, where were going and the little moments that make it all special. wanna join us?