First Green

After so much of this......

We now have this!


The early willow leaves reminded me of this:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I just learned this poem is by Robert Frost. I have to admit I learned it reading the Outsiders by S.E. Hinton as a teenager and fell in love with it. Is the first poem I remember memorizing. Every spring when the leaves begin as small golden buds I remember it.  I am more grateful for spring this year then others I can remember. As the our land wakes up I keep finding treasures in my yard I didn't know were there. So far I have discovered 3 beautiful Red Lenten roses, several forsythia and a mature pecan tree!

I had no idea what a Lenten rose was until I moved to the South. They are really not a rose. They are evergreen and bloom first here. I still miss the forsythia being the first flower of the year, is that silly? These boom even before the crocus I think. I will plant some crocus for next year find out.

Mr. Luke

 Luke's front tooth is loose. It has been for a month. He won't let anyone pull it or pull it himself. It makes me laugh because it totally makes him look like a hill billy.

Luke got a special award at school last week from Mrs. Walsh, the principal. His teacher nominated him as a "Terrific Kid" for the month. I am super proud of him and how hard he tries to choose the right and help other's at school. When I got to the award's ceremony Luke came over and sat on my lap. I love that he will still snuggle me and show affection. But he won't hold my hand anymore as we walk places! He still loves to be tickled though! Cracks me up!

I need to get a picture of all of the stuffed animals on his bed. Each of them have a certain place and Luke sleeps in the middle, surrounded. His favorite right now is a Minecraft pig he named Jeffrey.

Luke is smart, funny and an awesome worker. Our family would not be the same without him. I love his sense of humor and how happy he is in the morning when he wakes up.

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2014

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We had our traditional green breakfast. Green shamrock shaped pancakes, green eggs, kiwi and green water courtesy of Sophie. School was delayed because of icy weather. I was glad we could all relax and have fun instead of the usual rush to get out the door. Grandma Smith sent the mustaches. I sent this picture to all my family and everyone else sent green mustache pictures too. It made me laugh all day long! Well, the sibs with young kids. Luke wore his all day long at school! Crazy kids. Well, at least until I picked them up at early release. It started sleeting and they canceled school. Big huge sigh... there is now not spring break at all and we are 2 days added in June. 

We celebrated Molly's "birthday" today too. We adopted her 4 years ago the week of St. Patrick's, the kids always remind me to have her party. They make a cake of sorts out of canned dog food and dog treats. I can't believe it has been 4 years that she has been in our family. Molly is sweet and funny and barks way too much at strangers and friends. She keeps me company, I call her my velcro dog, because she is always with me. Except at night when she is on one of the kids beds. She can't sleep on ours and she has figured out that people beds are much better then dog ones I guess. 

Uncle Sam is the Best

Sam arranged a business trip where he needed to come to North and South Carolina and then spent his birthday weekend with us. We had so much fun. Seriously. I can't believe he turned 30! Seems like a long time ago that I was sitting in home ec class in middle school waiting to find out if he had been born yet.

 We went to the Lego movie, out to eat a few times, and just hung out at home. Saturday and Sunday were really nice and warm. It felt good to be outside in spring like weather. Sunday after church Sam put up some swings that Grandpa and Grandma Smith sent us from Jamaica. It will be fun to think of him when the kids play on them. Jason left Saturday to fly to Salt Lake to be there for Craig's Silver Beaver ceremony. Before he left he made sure Sam had a chance to do some tractor work and heavy lifting. I am always glad when someone stronger is here then me with big jobs! Having Sam here for a few days made me miss him more. I a grateful to have family to love though, even if they are far away.

Oahu Diving

The sea turtles off of Oahu were so mellow. They just hung out, didn't mind at us all. I swam with one for several minutes and touched it's shell. That was before I learned we were not supposed to touch them. The other turtles we have seen diving take off as soon as they see you. It was really fun to just watch these guys, and they seemed to watch back too.

 These last 3 pictures were all of frog fish. The first 2 are juveniles, the final an adult. They are pretty rare. There is no way we would have seen any but the tiny bright yellow ones without a guide to point them out. Our world really is an amazing place. Seeing a fish camouflaged so expertly was incredible.

 We saw lots and lots of eels. One of the men diving with us has great underwater photography equipment, all of these pictures are ones he posted on facebook. Our first dive we saw an enormous Green Moray, probably 5 ft long swimming. It was really beautiful. Usually you just see the eel's head poking out of a coral or rock. This is some sort of spotted eel, obviously. I can't remember it's name.

 White tipped reef shark that hangs out under a wreck we dove. It was about 6-7 ft long. super mellow, just swum around as we watched it. Wreck was a WWII landing craft purposely sunk to create an artificial reef.

 Both of these are nudibranchs. Very, very cool to Jason and I. But we are nerds. They are basically an aquatic snail without a shell. We also saw several bright purple ones that looked like a spinal cord. I guess our friend didn't get a picture of them.
There was not a lot of soft coral, but the ones we saw were amazing.

 People we dove with. Whenever he sees this picture Noah says that girl is immodest. True, but I remind him that women have boobs, and that is ok. :)

 Jason in the cockpit of a Corsair, WWII airplane. During a training run the pilot ran out of gas. He survived and is living happily on Maui.

 I love how this picture captures the deep blue of the water. It really was so incredibly beautiful. And calm and relaxing once I actually got down in it.

Hawaii

We had a great time in Hawaii. We went to the Temple in Laie, visited Pearl Harbor, dove several times, slept in every day we didn't dive, ate a ton of coconut macadamia nut fudge ice cream, learned as much history as we could, and just enjoyed being in such a beautiful, warm place. Hawaii is super interesting. I was surprised how culturally different it is. I guess I didn't pay attention when I went in college. 30% of it's residents are of Japanese descent. We ate a lot of Japanese food. Practice really does help with chop stick skills. Mine are pretty killer now. It rained quite a bit, we didn't care so much. I didn't care for Honolulu very much. Big city, lots of traffic. But out in the rural parts of the island was awesome. I love the way Hawaii smells. Even in the city you can smell flowers everywhere, all the time. There is almost always a breeze blowing so it smells clean, fresh and like flowers. The colors of the island were so beautiful. I never feel like I am doing justice to the beauty I see with my camera, but it is fun to try to take some pictures to help remember how it felt to be there.

 This is a monkey pod tree. I fell in love with them. This one was in Waimea Canyon. It is an ancient, sacred site of native Hawaiians. We didn't hike up to the water fall there, it was raining and we learned that hiking in mud is just not fun, especially in flip flops. Of course we were true to ourselves and had not planned ahead. We just got in the car and went to see what we could find.  The monkey pod tree has wood of all shades, I thought that was really interesting. You will also see it's seeds made into lei's. These trees in Waimea were hundreds of years old. They were incredibly beautiful to me. There is something so timeless that speaks of enduring strength in an ancient tree.

 

 Pearl Harbor

I was touched at the Arizona memorial to see on the monument men who chose to have their remains added to their fellow soldiers who died so many years ago. Such young men who gave so much. I am grateful for those who have, and still do give, their lives to protect our country. Have the young Navy sailors sail us out to the memorial really brought home to me just how young most of these men were. 

 My favorite beach we found. It is called Makepupu. It has a small sandy beach and tons of rocky tide pools. I so wanted to have my kids there to show them all there was to see!

Jason at Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve. HUGE tropical fish. Seriously. Parrot fish that were like 2 feet long, angels almost as big. Really fun, even just snorkeling.

Valentine's 2014

This was Noah's Valentine for me. So sweet. We were snowed in still so Valentine's was pretty mellow at our house this year. We were able to get our suitcases when we dropped Grandma and Grandpa Smith off at the airport so we had a Hawaiian themed holiday with treats and presents from the islands. I didn't even take a picture of the kids all together this year. We did our traditional Valentine's breakfast. It was hurried so the kids could get outside and go sledding. Grace told me she is tired of snow and ready for it to get warm. I have NEVER heard that from her before :)