Mahalo.ne.Trash

some fellow moms and i are attempting to establish an early sunday morning routine of hiking a kid-friendly trail. the last couple sundays , we've gone with some great pals up the manoa falls trail. it's a two mile, up-and-back hike through the jungle, including a stretch of bamboo forest. owen and his little pals (6 kiddos total, all under age 4) love exploring the trail and he's made it up to the waterfall without asking to be carried. the last stretch of the trail is relatively steep for short legs, but it sure is fun on the way down when he pretends that the big rocks are slides. last sunday , we encountered a little green friend on the trail- a chameleon ! we heard a "THUD" and one of the mom's exclaim "no way! oh my god"... we proceeded to examine him a little more closely and he was rad. here's a few pics: it wasn't until after we'd sent our little green friend back into the jungle and returned home to tell our tales to t

i've written before about my grocery shopping woes since leaving the bay area. it's true, shopping will never be the same. i DID have a glimmer of hope this week when shopping at the times grocery store. they had SOY-VAY! an easy weeknight standby for us over the years has been a quick teryaki stir fry using this yummy sauce. thanks to the times, it's back! this time with onion, ginger, carrot, broccoli & beef. no leftovers from dinner tonight!

I felt the little guy kick today for the first time! All stretching out in there, growing so fast. I hear it gets really humid in those uteruses. Kinda like St. Louis, but with better scenery. Random information: Erin and I have taken to calling him Li'l Brisket because an email conversation that started out about where in Houston one can get good BBQ morphed into our impromptu baby announcement.  Now, without further delay, brought to you by SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY, we proudly present Li'l Brisket in 3D! I hope they can surgically separate his elbow from his knee.

Erin went for her ultrasound last week and the results are in: we're gonna have a healthy baby boy! They gave us the pictures on a CD, which is funny because the 14 JPEGs only take up 0.3% of the space on the disk. Where's a 3.5 inch floppy when you need one? So here are the snap shots of BabyJohn V2.0: Baby's foot. Notice the five toes, for maximum traction when running through the house screaming. Baby's side profile. Check out that noggin! Head. Move. Now! Freaky looking face-on view. The doctor assures us that the baby won't actually look like a bald Chucky. Money shot. BAM! This is view from under his booty. Check out his thigh bones! I didn't realize how much I wanted another boy until we got the results. But I am SO excited. Three more and we'll have a basketball team! Just kidding, Erin. It'll actually be a little less than half a football team.

Please, god, don't let that be poo... please, oh, please, oh, please... What tha... The Hawaiian doodoo nut strikes again! Actually, I have no clue what type of nut/fruit these things are. They're all over the sidewalk on the way to campus and there's just no way to photograph them where they don't look exactly like turds. Owen picked some up from a walk one day, and the following morning I found them on the floor. My mind was racing to figure out how he pulled off his pants and diaper, took a dump, and then dressed himself again. But something about the way the light shone off their identical surfaces tipped me off before I panicked. That was a close call. However, Owen is potty training at the moment, so we're still not out of the woods yet...

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Clover8: The Double Figure-Eight Cloverleaf Supplies (Thanks to Auntie Amy and Uncle David): 2x IKEA LILLABO 20-piece basic train set 1x LILLABO Rail expansion set 1x LILLABO 12-piece train set w/ bridge, tunnel This design is a variation of the popular cloverleaf layout, however it utilizes a double figure-eight. Similar designs had been attempted previously, but ran into compatibility issues near mid-track where female-female and male-male track ends meet. This problem is overcome in this design by using a secondary overpass, seen just to the right of the primary overpass. Due to the proximity of the two overpasses, Van Hook shims were utilized on the primary to allow tank cars to pass under on the way to the secondary, yielding a tight 2 mm clearance. The innovative curved bridge lends an organic feel to the track, with order arising from the apparent chaos near the triple pass. As Owen put it, "Two tunnels!" Take that, Thomas the Tank Engine!