ulu tree

6 months into our Olohio adventure and we finally put an ulu tree into the ground!  Our friends down the road donated it to our farm, and we spent Sunday evening clearing out a dead lime tree and some guinea grass (not california grass) in order to locate it in the perfect spot.  Now we just have to wait 2.5-3 years (according to google) for our fruit to appear!

For those who don't know what an ulu tree is, it's breadfruit.  The large, green fruit grows from the tree branches and can be easily picked with just your hands.  We usually leave it outside to drip it's sap for a night and then we wash it, coat it in olive oil, wrap it in aluminum foil and then bake it at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.  It can then be chopped up and eaten as is (tasting like a potato), or it can be chopped, tossed with spices and more oil, and baked again at a higher temperature to make fries, which is Gordy's favorite.  We also put the fruit on salads once cold, put it in burritos and chilli... it's delicious almost any way you eat it!

1st tooth fairy visit

For the last week and a half, Gordy has been working on his wiggly tooth.  He's been asking for carrots and apples in his lunch, he's been rocking it back and forth and twisting it side to side.  Finally, last night at dinner, he'd had enough of it, so he gave it a solid twist and then proudly held out his prize and smiled a holey smile.

Even though it was statehood day and Todd was pretty sure that the tooth fairy didn't work on holidays, Gordy packaged up his tooth in his tooth fairy bag and gently hid it under his pillow.

And thankfully, the tooth fairy does work on holidays, so Gordy woke up to a crisp $2 bill and tiny note from his fairy.  His second wiggly tooth is already here, so get ready tooth fairy!

wiggly tooth

At Gordy's dentist appointment after he made 6, the dentist told him that he should expect to start losing teeth soon because most kids started losing teeth at 6 or 7.  And then, for the last 2 years, he has watched everyone in his grade lose teeth while his stayed firmly cemented in his mouth.  He even started questioning whether or not he had grown up teeth under his gums at all... until now.  We have a wiggler - bottom front left!

speedo boy

Our swim team had a swim meet this weekend and they all had a great time.  Gordy swam in the 4x25y medley relay, 100y IM, 25y freestyle, 25y butterfly, 25y backstroke, and the 1x25y freestyle relay.  The medley relay was first and our kids were very much not awake enough yet for that race.  Then, Gordy started his IM swimming freestyle and realized halfway through that he'd done the wrong strong and was disqualified.  (Poor guy, he was super devastated and embarrassed.) 

But, by the 25y freestyle Gordy had found his groove and he did well for the rest of the day.  He ended up getting:

- 7-8yr freestyle, 2nd

- 7-8yr backstroke, 3rd

- 7-8yr butterfly, 3rd

- 12 & under freestyle relay, 3rd

crazy couple of months

 The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind...

- Gordy made 8 and spent his birthday in a bounce house / water slide with his closest friends.

- Gordy finished 2nd grade.

- Todd made 57.

- Todd and Gordy had speaking / stunt roles on a tv series shooting here.  They got to play a father and son who get swept out into the ocean on season 1, episode 10 of Rescue High Surf which should air sometime this fall.

- We sold our Kaiea house and went all-in on a 2-acre property on Olohio.  The property has 1 acre of lime orchards, so between that, the run-down house being landlords to 5 other units, and the overgrown rest of the property, we have our hands full.

- Gordy completed his first ever week of junior lifeguards and he absolutely loved it.  After a few days of badly losing the run-swim-run, he finally learned that swimming with your head down is significantly faster that swimming with it up.  So, on the final day, he swam head down and made third out of the 8 yr olds in the iron guard (run-swim-run-paddle-run) race.

- Gayle lost her battle with cancer.

There's so much more to say about this last one, but neither of us are quite ready to write it.  Another time.

i ate drugs?

Today I got a call from Gordy's day camp manager.  He started off the call by saying, "Gordy is fine, happy and healthy".  He then continued with, "but I need to tell you about an incident that happened at camp today".  My immediate thought was that something happened between Gordy and this girl who he refers to as "the bully".  However, I was wrong.  

I was informed that one of the kids in Gordy's group had found a container of something on the ground.  The kid supposedly thought that the contents of the container were mints, so he shared them with his campmates.  The camp leader eventually stopped the kids after one kid tattled, and the upon inspection, the leader saw that the container was ZYN cool mint nicotine pouches.  Apparently Gordy was involved in the taste testing and the camp manager wanted to let me know that they'd been monitoring him for 60 minutes for signs of poisoning and he appeared to be fine.

While this didn't sound too bad initially, I started thinking that there was a chance that this container actually contained something different than what was on the label and that could mean some potentially dangerous things.  I also became very frustrated that the camp had known about this for 60 minutes and had decided on their own to monitor my kid without letting me know.  From what I can gather on the internet, if what Gordy had ingested had contained fentanyl, he could have died in that 60 minutes.  So, I hopped in the car and drove to the camp ready to severely scold my kid for being such an idiot to ingest something that his friend found on the ground and to let the camp know how unimpressed I was with their response to the situation and how potentially dangerous it had been.  Turns out I wasn't the only parent doing all of the above.

After I picked Gordy up, I asked him what had happened at camp.  He very honestly had no idea what I meant.  I had to specifically ask him about the "mints" in order to get him to understand what I wanted to know.  He said there wasn't much to tell except that a few of the older kids (10ish yr olds) had some mint candies that they wanted to share with the younger kids.  They told the younger kids (Gordy included) to hold out their hands and they dumped the pouch contents (white chunky powder) onto the kids palms.  They told the kids to lick it, and the younger kids did.  Gordy said he only tried a little bit, but that he dumped the rest off his hand because the mint taste was too strong.  He said that was pretty much it.  He had no idea that the pouch contained nicotine or anything else dangerous until I showed up.

At that point, we had reached our car and I broke down in tears.  I told him how dangerous something like that could have been and he became very sad and apologetic.  He said that those kids were his friends (one is actually on our swim team) and he trusted them.  He never would have thought that the stuff was anything other than what they had told him.  

Since he told me the truth about what happened, we decided that he didn't deserve a massive punishment.  He did, however, need to spend an hour in his room by himself to think about what happened and to understand how much worse it could be.  He was quite upset about the whole thing, and said he understood and that he was sorry.  He couldn't believe that he had "eaten drugs".  We agreed that he should NEVER accept any candy, mints, or other things from anyone except from people who we agree ahead of time who we trust.  Instead, if someone offers him candy and he is sad that he has to say no, he should tell us and then we'll buy it for him if that's what it takes.

A few hours later, the camp called to say that they took the container to the police and a pharmacy for inspection.  The police said that they had no reported incidents including fentanyl and that type of nicotine.  The pharmacy said that they sold that same type of product and that it did not look like it had been tampered with and that the contents looked normal to them.  So, Gordy likely only ingested a small amount of nicotine and nothing else.  Thankfully, this whole thing was a very good lesson for everyone without too much harm.

Tofurkey Day

We started out our Thanksgiving Day with an early wake up by Gordy.  He had gotten himself dressed in his running gear, and had started making his own breakfast in preparation for the community turkey trot.  He was afraid that we were oversleeping and, more importantly, he wanted Todd to make him a coffee (foamed milk with cinnamon) to "give him some energy".  

After a quick breakfast and hydration, we hopped on our bikes and headed to the start of the race.  No preparation occurred in the weeks leading up to the race due to Gordy being sick for the last few weeks, so we took it out slow.  Apparently we found a good pace because Gordy was able to keep it up for the full 5k which he completed in 31 minutes.

Gordy loved the race and is pretty sure that he's going to do it every year.

We spent the rest of the day being fairly lazy and then had a delicious vegetarian dinner (baked breaded tofu, green salad, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, etc.) with Nana, Rik, and Aaron.  We are very thankful for so many things in our lives, especially our friends and families.  We love you all and we hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.