Happy Bithday Batgran!

August is birthday month for the Mano'o clan and today is Batgran's turn. Happy birthday Mom! Hopefully this is the last birthday that the Washington, D.C. crew will miss. I hope you get spoiled with some nice chicken wings, rice and potato salad today. Just don't let Sachi cook and everything should turn out good!

Much alofas from all of us in D.C.

Outsmarting His Old Man

Last week, Maddy found out that one of his bowling friends, Charles, got a dollar for every strike and 50 cents for every spare he got during league games and practice as an incentive. It didn't take him long to ask me if we could do the same because we did something similar during the basketball season.

I thought it would be a good way for him to continue to learn the value of money and earn some extra pocket money during the summer so I agreed. Maddy is a miser when it comes to his money. He has no problem spending our money though. I told him if we were going to do this, he would use his own money to buy the things he wanted, like video games, Beyblades, Pokemon cards etc. With visions of the new video games he was about to afford to buy, he quickly agreed.

There was one twist though. I told him that he would owe me 50 cents for every gutter ball he threw.

Our first outing was a practice last week where he threw 5 strikes, 1 spare and 12 gutter balls. It was an 'off' day for him and he wasn't too thrilled when I told him he owed me 50 cents.

Without missing a beat, he walked over to the table, pulled 2 quarters from my wallet and handed them to me saying, "Here you go, Dad".

Happy Birthday Papa!

Dear Papa,

Ia manuia tele lou aso soifua! We hope that you have a wonderful day and may the Lord provide you with many many more birthdays in the future.

If you're still in Samoa, have a koko Samoa, luau and fasi talo for us!

Much alofas from the Washington, D.C. crew