Looking For Some Blue Holes

We've had our fair share of rain here. I don't mind it at all, other than the fact that my laundry set up is not under cover and it makes drying the clothes a longer. I just add extra vinegar in the rinse water and it seems to help keep the mustiness at bay. So, with all the rain Stella and I usually search the sky for "blue holes"

The parts of the sky you can see the beautiful blue peaking through the white and often grey clouds. Hasn't been a lot of blue holes lately, but we saw some this morning. Stella was so excited, "Oh! There's a blue hole Mama! There it is!"

The ducks are quite cute these days and follow us everywhere. Have you ever had a troop of ducks following you around?

(above: Calvin, Jemima, Alice, and Mr. Drake)

I need to weed...really, really, really need to weed, but I just haven't seemed to have found the time between shuttling the kids to and from school, helping Tommy with the business, cooking/cleaning, and all the time involved with raising 3 kids...one of whom is 2.5 and quite a joyful time/energy drain. That being said, you'll forgive me the weedy pineapple picture below.

Two cute little pineapples growing despite the weeds.
Below is Reeve doing his laundry this morning. Good thing he got it done (2 loads) when he did because now it is raining.

Reeve using the wringer. I'm starting to update our business blog/website. It's hard keeping everything up to date. I love my washer and wringer so much that I'm selling them and you can read about it here: http://www.solarrayes.com

So we'll keep our eyes peeled for those blue holes. Now, back to my Holiday card project...I can't believe how the end of the year is so quickly approaching!

Move to the Cabin with Power

We're very fortunate in the fact that the property we have has two cabins. When we moved here in June the folks we bought the property from were renting the back cabin. They moved out in August, and because we like to take things slow.....it took us until December (4 months) to move to the back cabin. The back cabin has the power, and actual bedrooms, running water, and our new refrigerator, so we're all digging our new digs.

The picture above is Reeve in the living room/office. Kyle and Stella are in the picture too, but they're behind Reeve.

In the above picture you can see what it looks like after we've had some rain.

See how big the ducks are getting! They've been loving all this rain.

Stella loves to feed them. Stella and Tommy feeding the ducks. See the hard black stuff? Yes folks, that's LAVA...about 450 years old (so we've been told).

Stella loves to feed her "Minah" or Jemima (the pretty white duck).

Roosevelt (the one looking at the food Jemima's getting) now lets me pet him (or her??).

Below is our battery coffin. It houses 8 Six Volt batteries that store the sun's energy for our electricity use. Pretty cool, huh? We were really bare bones on the electricity usage from June to Octoberish...we didn't use any! Only fired up the gas generator a couple of times to run Tom's power tools. That's it. How'd we do it, you might ask? We hauled all our water in 5 gallon containers set up on blocks in the bathroom and kitchen. These containers have spigots, so it was very much like running water. We had found an old chest freezer that we put a small cooler inside of it that held our ice to keep the chest "cold" and acted as our refrigerator. We bought about $3.00 worth of ice every week...a hassle which I'm glad I no longer have to remember to get. At night we burned candles...lots of candles...and a few oil lamps. It made for romantic dinners and fun nighttime reading. We had a wind up radio for entertainment. I wash all of our clothes in a 5 gallon bucket and have a handy hand wringer.

Now, we feel like we're spoiled! We have lights at night, a refrigerator, and running water...no more saving all the laundry water to flush the toilet! The other advantage is that we switched our internet setup (again!) and now use a mi-fi device through our cell phone company...yes we broke down and got one cell phone...a necessity (apparently) if you are trying to run a business. It's also nice to have an oven again. It's small, but I was able to make some bread. Now our stove is in the house, so we don't have to worry about windy weather wasting the propane...the stove at the front cabin is on the deck.

The above picture is of our inverter and battery monitoring screen. It's pretty cool to look at it and see what the "State of Charge" is on the batteries. I've never seen it go below 96%. We have six 190 watt solar panels and we're running one kitchen light (at night), the refrigerator (during the day only...we shut it off at night for a defrost cycle), and our laptop, mi-fi, cell phone charger, and Bose CD/Radio...sooooo nice to have music (our old school cd's) in the house again.

The above is a random picture...Stella sewing a dress for her doll Mary. Mary is the doll I made for Stella's 1st birthday. Stella is on the deck at the front cabin. See the school bus in the background? That's our neighbor's school bus.

Above is my laundry machine before I start my load...about 6" of water.

Then I add my "load" which is about 1/3 of a large washer load. I scrub out the stains with my old school washboard, then add 1 TEASPOON of detergent.

Tommy modified my pressurized plunger washer to have a handle that is easier to plunge. So easy, in fact, that Reeve and Kyle now do 100% of their own laundry.

Then I run them through the wringer, do a rinse load, and then run them through the wringer a couple more times before handing them out on our covered porch laundry line (covered because it can rain even when you think it's going to be a nice sunny day). I love doing my laundry this way. I love it so much that I don't even want an electric washer...save all that energy for keeping my food cold and listening to my music. Hopefully I won't be so long in posting again. I get into a funk sometimes and then we had major internet connection issues, which I'm hopeful are now solved.

Kyle's Acting Debut

As we approached the "KeikiLand" (Keiki in Hawaiian means kid) at the HAAS (Reeve & Kyle's school) Campus we took a peak through the emergency exit and saw Kyle in his "Menehune Corner".

This year Keiki Land takes the audience on a guided tour through all the Hawaiian Islands. Kyle was on the island of Lanai with a fellow menehune. Kyle's part was the speaking part and he greeted the audience with, "Aloha, Welcome to Lanai, where the color a'lani (hawaiian for orange) and the flower kauna'oa, is shown through the energy of the Menehunes." Then he gets the audience involved in helping them build a fish pond. It was very cute and fun for Stella.

Kyle and his fellow menehune...

Kyle showing us his costume at the entrance to Keikiland.

Kyle giving his performance for us...Stella (in the Devil hood), Papa, and Mama (with the camera).

At each island the audience receives a card from each island. At the end the Rainbow goddess asks them their favorite color and she ties all their cards together with a string of their favorite color.

Kyle volunteered to perform 6 nights! (7, if you count the dress rehearsal) from 4pm until 9pm Thurdsay, Friday, and Saturday of this week and last week. While we were waiting for him to finish his shift we were entertained by the rockin' band NYR.

Happy Birthday Kyle!

Kyle's 9th Birthday!!!!!!!!!

Kyle wrote a poem about himself just recently, using the letters of his name:
Knowledgable
Youthful
Logical
Exercising

He had his first Track Team Practice yesterday. In the picture above Kyle is a blue blur on the right edge of the group, Stella is running around in my slippahs, and Reeve is doing his homework while eating his favorite snack of almonds and raisins.

Stella found some tress to wind through. Practice runs every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 2:30 to 3:30pm.

I brought a book and my camera, Reeve had his homework, and Stella did her own thing while we watched Kyle stretch, stretch, stretch, and run, run, run.

He's excited to go again today...on his birthday. It's a busy week for him. Tomorrow he has drama practice for a Halloween Spooktacular Play that he will act in. I think they cast him as a Menehune. Should be a lot of fun. He's really coming into his own world as he turns 9. We're loving watching him grow into his own person! Happy Birthday Kyle!!!!!!!!!

Rain & Ducks

Friday night it started to rain about midnight and proceeded to pour all night long and most of the day Saturday. There would be times of drizzle to buckets and buckets of rain coming down. I can honestly say I've never seen it rain so much in my life, and I don't even think this was anything unusual for around here in the rainy season. I read in the paper that we are in a drought period...at about 56% of the average rainfall for our area.

I decided to take some pictures of our newly formed ponds. The picture above is looking at the drive at the back of the property. Below you can see Stella in the duck enclosure and some newly formed puddles in the yard.

Kyle (almost 9!!) taking care of the ducks...making sure they hacv clean water and food. They have "free choice" food 24hrs/day until they are 4 weeks old (which will be next Tuesday). Then we will feed them 3 times a day for 15 minutes each feeding session. They do wonderfully at foraging. Already we've noticed a decrease in the mosquito population and they love to forage on the ground. In the picture below notice they have their very own duck puddle. It was so much fun to see them waddle through it yesterday. Today most of the puddles are gone. The ground being mostly lava is very porous so the water doesn't stick around very long.

The boys and Tom did a great job building the duck enclosure. We've been keeping them in here at night until they get bigger and can defend themselves against the rats. I haven't seen any rats, but I'm not fooled I know they are everywhere and we try to be as vigilant as we can against them and their many diseases. Ask me another time about all those frustrating rat diseases...darn that Capt. Cook for introducing them to Hawaii.

When they are older and larger we will build nest boxes so that the hens can lay us some eggs. They should be ready to lay around my birthday in January...so excited!

 They are even cuter in person, trust me. Above: (starting at just after 6'oclock and going clockwise) Mr. Drake, Jemima, Alice, Roosevelt, Meg, and Calvin.

 Can you see the toad (or really large frog?) in the picture above? He's huge and not scared of us at all.

 Anyone know what kind of frog/toad he is?

 The ducks in their puddle. They're so fast it was hard to catch them waddling around in it.

 Jemima in the lead. She caught a worm and then raced around while the others chased her. It was really cute and funny. I love these ducks!

Well this week was quite a week. Tom had some car troubles and had a tow down the mountain. He amazingly and brilliantly fixed the Orange Crush (chevy astro) and now he says she's purring like a kitten. We've had so much rain that we couldn't connect to the internet (note the limited posts this week). Other than that everyone is happy and healthy. I'm appreciating life with limited electricity. It's fun knowing that every night I get a candlelit dinner!