Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Did you miss me?  I apologize for being MIA but I have been in the pits of despair all week.  On Monday, I accidentally looked at a calendar and realized it was July 15th.  What's wrong with July 15th, you ask?  Well, technically, there isn't anything wrong with it, but if you're a teacher, you know where I'm going with this.  I have one more month of summer until I report for duty.  Yikes!!!  Talk about being shell shocked.  Why does the summer go so quickly?  Note to self, buy plane ticket to come home.  Is it too late to bank on winning the lottery?  If I were in Texas, I would probably be in guilt mode right now.  I would probably be thinking about working in my classroom, writing up lesson plans, attending conferences, etc.  I can't do any of that out here, though.  I'm stuck on an island for thirty more days.  Praise the Lord!!

I did manage to pull myself out of a depression to go on walks every morning.  One of my walks led me to the Diamond Head Lighthouse.  Apparently this lighthouse was built in 1899 and still uses the original Fresnell Lens (whatever that means), which can be seen up to 18 miles out to sea.

We also managed to spend a couple of days at the boogie board beach (I don't think that is its official title).  There was a pretty big swell that came in on Tuesday, which made the waves a lot bigger than normal.  It is interesting to feel the energy in the air when there are big waves.  Kids and adults were sprinting to the water and it seemed like all other daily activities ended.  

Jaden is somewhere in the mass of people

We also managed to fit in some football time, too.  I saw that they were holding a football camp for two days at Punahou School, so I signed Jaden up.  Punahou School is a very well known, expensive private school that President Obama graduated from.  Again, he wasn't there.  It is a beautiful college-like campus, and the football wasn't bad either.  Jaden had a great time and I was really impressed with how organized and well run the camp was.  I did have to sit through a mini presentation given by the booster club asking us to consider enrolling our child in their school and to give a generous donation if we were able.  It costs $20,000 a year to go there so I politely declined the way a proper southern woman would.  I told them "bless your heart"  :)

pre camp snack

A view of the "middle school" field.  Palm trees were not photoshopped in!

Beat me out the front door at 8 am.  He was excited!

 I've already thrown out the calendar and we will spend the next few weeks enjoying every moment out here.  Tomorrow is an extra exciting day for us because Chris gets here.  He'll be here for about two weeks and Jaden and I can't wait to show him all the things we've been doing.  I'm sure there will be more blogs in these upcoming weeks.  I told him he could even be a guest author!  He laughed at me.

Aloha!