Kind of neat!

"The Hippo Roller is a simple rolling barrel device that allows the millions whose livelihoods depend on the daily fetching of water to more easily access and transport their daily water supply, and reduce the risk of long-term bodily injuries. The roller holds 3-4 days worth of water for a family of 7, about 5 times the amount of water that can be moved using traditional methods, which frees up time for more productive economic and educational activities. It’s an amazing product and an amazing story of good design enabling communities."



-http://projecthdesign.com/

I just happened upon this site by accident but thought this was a cool idea!

Spring Vaca in the works!

Mark and I have decided to go to San Francisco for vacation this year! I am very excited, as it is a place neither of has ever been to and as I look around on the internet, I am finding more and more cool stuff to do while we are there! If anyone has any tips/suggestions on places to stay, things to do, not do, etc. throw them our way! Thanks!

Fun picture for a snowy day!

-Michio Hoshino

Part 2 of Saturday-Blue Man Group!

After we saw Hannah Montana and grabbed dinner, we were off to the Patriot Center at GMU to see The Blue Man Group! I didn't think it was as good as the show I saw about 10 years ago in Boston but it was still entertaining. As you can see, by the end of the night, Amber was worn out! If you look closely at the 2nd to last picture, that is all paper flying down from the ceiling. Pretty neat looking!

Hannah Montana!

We had a fun-filled day on Saturday. We all piled into the van and went to see the Hannah Montana 3-D concert! It was actually pretty entertaining and Amber thought it was awesome! We all sported the 3-D glasses, which Amber is modeling in the picture below.

Hockey!

We have been busy with trips to Northern Virginia for different things. This one was for Luddy's 30th birthday surprise hockey game. The Caps lost :( Oh well.

Check this out!

This guy does some crazy cool stuff with paper and glue. His website is at the bottom if you want to see more of his stuff! If you click on a picture, it will enlarge it so you can see the details.


http://www.petercallesen.com/index/index2.html

Plastic Bags

Top Facts - Consumption


Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.

According to the EPA, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion)

-Source: http://www.resusablebags.com/


What to do? Purchase reusable bags! Here are some that I found:

Where can these be found?

Whole Food Supermarket

http://www.reusablebags.com/: 5.95 with a discount if you buy 4 or more

http://www.bagsontherun.com/ : about 2.00 a bag but shipping isn't too cheap unfortunately. It is still the one I went with because it still only came out to be 3.00 a bag and they said they will last at least 2 years.

http://www.grassrootsstore.com/: about 6.95, with some other cute products as well.

http://www.sayyestocanvas.com/ : Thru cafepress-about 14.99 a bag (lots to choose from)

Too cute!

Clark and Patrick!!

Anyone out there?

Hello Again,
I just thought I would throw this out there in case anyone knows of someone who could help...The Niapele Project is in desperate need of a certified Accountant who could audit their books pro-bono. Also, if anyone has frequent flyer miles that they aren't going to use or don't know what to do with, Celina and Penelope (the founders) can always use them! They foot the bill for all of their flights to Ghana so that all of the donations people make go directly to the children. Anyway, just thought I would throw that out there! Thanks!

My happy story for the day

So I have to share a great little story with y'all (just kidding, trying to act like I was born and raised in the Valley here). Ok, so when I went to Ghana, there were 2 different groups I interacted with but they didn't know each other. One was Emmanuel's group and this was the one we were with 95% of the time and the whole reason we went. But, a small group of us took a detour for a half a day and went to the refugee camp right outside the capital city and this is where we met Foley and his friends who have lived in the camp for many many years (mentioned in past blog).

To make a long story short, Foley was in a serious bus accident last week where there were multiple deaths and serious injuries. He was one of the ones injured and has been in the hospital for about a week now. He has a surrogate mother here in the states who has been taking care of Foley and his sister for many years now. She was the one who notified us when Foley was in the accident. He is getting better each day but they found out that he needs a wheelchair to get around for awhile and this would be an additional hefty expense for them to endure-350.00 to buy one or 15.00 per day to rent one! So, I just thought I would give it a shot in the dark and give her Emmanuel's contact number from their EEFSA website. I told her to just tell them who gave her the number and see if they might have a wheelchair that he could borrow. Now, the chances of someone being at the office at about 5:30 at night was kind of slim but low and behold, she spoke with Emmanuel himself and he said that he could help! He said he would call his family and plan a time to meet up with them! Crazy how things work out sometimes! I love it!

-The End-