Weekend Recap

Oh so much to write about, where to begin?

Chapter 1. If offending babysitters were an Olympic sport, we'd be GOLD MEDALISTS.

It's been an expensive weekend with two babysitter nights in a row. Friday night, LW and I went to a social for the Dolphin Scholarship Foundation. We invited back the same babysitter I wrote about last time with my open-mouth-insert-foot maneuver on gaudy Christmas lights. She didn't seem to hold it against me, so that was good. She said at least the boys didn't handcuff her this time. ...Um... I'm sorry, they did WHAT???

Saturday night, we had our boat Christmas Party. Tangent: I know, it's a little late for a Christmas party. It's a bit of a challenge figuring out logistics of something like that when you've just arrived on the island, but the families are still working on moving to Hawaii through the course of the fall. Most places were already booked by the time we got here, and it just worked out better to make it a "Happy New Year" Boat Party instead. Besides, this way, we were able to present a bunch of end of year awards like Sailor of the Year, Junior Sailor of the Year, Blue Jacket of the Year, and Junior Officer of the Year. Plus we got to pin on one guys' dolphins and CAP another sailor to E-5. [Aside: The Command Advancement Program (CAP) gives Commanding Officers the ability to hand pick a very small number of sailors each year and promote them one rank.] It seemed like everyone had a great time. There were a lot of cool door prizes, and a lot of guys were getting up on the microphone singing karaoke. I'll be interested to see what videos end up on YouTube later.

Anyway, back to the babysitter story. The babysitter we used Friday night was busy Saturday night, but she told us she has a German exchange student staying with them and she would be willing to babysit for us.

Now, ES has been rather obsessed with military history, and WWII history in particular since we're surrounded by WWII history in Pearl Harbor. We keep having discussions with ES about the fact that yes, Japan and Germany WERE our enemies back during WWII, but that was a LONG time ago and they are both our FRIENDS now.

Ahem... So LW and I returned from the boat party and asked the babysitter how it went. She seemed a little sheepish and embarrassed. She alluded to ES asking her questions about Germany and WWII, but wouldn't tell us specifically what he said. I figure she didn't feel comfortable telling us about it because it was the first time we had met her that night and she didn't know us well. This morning, we tried interrogating ES to find out what he said that offended the babysitter, but he essentially plead the 5th and wouldn't tell us anything. YS in his 4-year-old confident innocence came right forward, proudly and cheerfully informing us that they handcuffed the new babysitter last night - as if it were a normal right of passage and an achievement ANY babysitter would be proud to share with her peers. We've told them that it's NOT OKAY to handcuff the babysitter anymore... if any babysitter ever agrees to come back to our house.

Disclaimer: Mind you, these aren't REAL handcuffs that would incapacitate her from taking action in an emergency. Our boys "handcuffs" are usually made of zoobs that are easy to pull apart. Still, if I were a 17 year old German girl being symbolically handcuffed and interrogated as if I were a WWII spy, I think I might be a little offended and might not go back to that house again.

Again... My mind is wandering back to the The Ransom of Red Chief for some strange reason.

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Chapter 2. Okay, clearly, I was gone for some vital portions of ES's upbringing during some very sensitive and impressionable years.

Saturday, we went to the Hale Koa Pool. This was offered up to ES as a bribe for going to the dentist earlier this week. Plus, I wanted to knock out the requirements for ES's Cub Scout Swimming Belt Loop. One of the requirements was to, "Play a recreational game in the water with your den, pack, or family." I googled "swimming pool games" before we left the house and had a handful of games up my sleeve to play with the boys when we got to the pool. One of them was called Categories. You can click on the link if you want an explanation of the game, but the point of my story is that we each had to choose a COLOR.

So you ask yourself, "Self, what sort of colors would you think a 6 year old would choose?" Yellow? (His favorite color is yellow.) Orange? Red? Blue? Nice, primary, simple colors? Oh, no, my friend. I guessed EVERY primary color and all I got was a SMIRK in response from ES and LW! LW assured me she did NOT help him and HE came up with the color he chose on his own. The colors that came from my dear little 6-year old SON's mouth were FUSIA (heck, I can't even SPELL fuchsia close enough for my spell checker to tell me what the CORRECT spelling is - I had to ask LW), and TURQUOISE, and CONSTRUCTION orange (not just "orange" mind you - CONSTRUCTION orange) and SCHOOL BUS yellow. When it was my turn, I pulled out the big guns and used PERIWINKLE. I only knew that one because that's one of the character's names on Blue's Clues.

Aside: I didn't even know roughly what color fuchsia was until I asked LW. She gave me an education on where the name fuchsia came from ala wikipedia. It's actually named after the flower of the fuchsia plant. Who knew??? For the rest of you manly-men out there reading this who also had no clue what color fuchsia REALLY is, wikipedia says it's "reddish purple."


Tangent: As LW scrolled down the Wikipedia page, she came upon the section "Fuchsia in Human Culture" where it states, "In the handkerchief code of the gay leather subculture, wearing a fuchsia bandana means one has a spanking fetish." Um... okay... if THAT wasn't ALREADY TMI, LW clicked on the "hankerchief code" link and started giggling and reading aloud what some of the other codes mean. OMG I did NOT need to know any of that!!!

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Chapter 3. People have to WAIT in LINE???

Shifting topics, but still at the Hale Koa pool, we observed something new at the Hale Koa this time around. We've been there several times, and almost always on weekends. This was the first time we've seen a LINE of people waiting to get in. There wasn't a line when we got there, so we went right in and went to our usual back corner of the pool. We didn't realize that they limited how many people they let in to the pool until we were leaving about 1:30 p.m. The lady at the entryway who checked our IDs on the way in asked if we were leaving for the day so she could take our arm bands, and there was a line of about six people waiting to get in. I overheard one person explaining to another at the end of the line that the pool area was full and they had to wait for someone to leave before they would be allowed in.

Oh, and in spite of my advice in my last post about the Hale Koa pool, we managed to time our arrival PERFECTLY so we got there JUST as they blew the whistle for the "adult swim period" (no kids allowed in the pool for the first fifteen minutes of every hour).

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Chapter 4. The Birthday Boy

Once again, I don't know WHY our boys are OBSESSED with all things STAR WARS. It's not like we encourage it or anything...

Darth-YS
That little box hanging from his neck plays
either some pre-recorded Darth Vader
sayings, or it will also alter your voice as
you speak through the mask. (LW found
it on sale at the NEX for like 1/10th what
it cost on Amazon).

Sunday, since it was YS's birthday, we gave him his choice where to go for lunch. (You get three guesses what he chose, and the first two don't count.) We went to his favorite McDonald's with the big playground over behind the NEX. Otherwise, we spent a good portion of the afternoon playing Lego Star Wars (despite my efforts to convince him we should go for a hike). My thumbs were actually getting sore from playing so much XBox today.

Since we satisfied YS's daily chicken nugget fix at lunchtime, LW cooked up some fajita steak, sweet potato fries, and corn on the cob for dinner - all things that YS has been known to eat as an alternative to his favorite chicken nuggets. He actually loved the dinner and gobbled it all down. He even surprised LW and me by asking for "one of those taco things" (tortilla) and proceeded to put steak, sweet potato fries, and cheese in it, roll it up, and eat it. I guess it's time to take him back to California so he can get a California Burrito, eh? (California Burrito is like a carne asada steak burrito with french fries inside).

The Birthday Boy
Playing his favorite Lego Star Wars and enjoying
one of his race-car birthday cookies from Grandma.

Thanks to the holiday tomorrow, we're off to do some box car racing with the Cub Scouts. We'll be having YS's actual birthday party next weekend - this weekend we just had too many other plans.