Yet Another Mai Tai

Advice Needed

Unrelated to our current fabulous vacation situation, I need help with Matilda's loose tooth situation. Her top front tooth that is super loose, is now turning grey! Apparently it is so loose the nerve must be detached and it is changing color like a dead tooth. I did not even realize this could happen, yuck. She is resolutely against any extraction-like techniques and immune to bribery. At this point, I am getting desperate and hope that some jelly beans tomorrow can help pull it out.

Hawaii Vacation Cuties

Miso soup!

Matilda is very pleased with the breakfast buffet choices here.

Volcano!

Black Sand Beach

We stopped by this beach on our drive to the volcano because it is supposed to be a good place to see sea turtles. The turtles delivered! The kids were also happy for the chance to stretch their legs and get sandy.

Birthday Luau

Matilda celebrated her 7th birthday today and had the kind of birthday that probably won't be topped for many years! We went to an amazing beach and she not only tried snorkeling for the first time, but snorkeled successfully a ton. We saw so many amazing animals and it makes me all gushy just to think of it. I was so happy for her, proud of how awesome she did, surprised by how brave she was and just crazy happy to be cruising the lagoon and experiencing it all with my big girl.

We followed the amazing beach time with a great luau. The super friendly front desk worker that Matilda befriended hooked her up with a flower lei and special front row seats for the birthday girl. Both the kids sat with their mouths hanging open for the duration of the hula and South Pacific dancing exhibition. The fire dancing finale was almost too much for them; it was so fun to watch them watching the show.

Early Birthday Present

Matilda was thrilled with her owl pellet dissection kit. We decided she probably would enjoy it enough that we got the 5-pellet classroom kit, rather than a single pellet. Luckily owl vomit is pretty cheap from the school science supply company so it wasn't much of a splurge.

I underestimated how long the dissection would take and she was very dissapointed when I cut her off tonight for bedtime. The flip side is, she will be equally thrilled tomorrow when she gets up and remembers she's still got half an owl pellet to investigate. Porter has been very patiently watching the whole process and quite accurately guessing bones using the skeletal anatomy chart.

Got Goats?

We had a crazy good time with some visiting goats at preschool yesterday. In between visiting with all the kids one goat tried to convince me to share my lunch! I did.

Cookie thief

Part of tonight's homework was for Matilda to make up some math word problems. Here's her first one:

Porter had 12 cookies. His mama ate 5 cookies. How many cookies does Porter have left?

It seems I have made quite the reputation for myself!

Beware

Random Fun

On our latest trip to a favorite park spot we discovered a rope swing and a beautiful (possibly dying) butterfly. In retrospect, I really wish we had collected the perfect specimen.