Thanksgiving and Stuff

Somehow most of Thanksgiving passed without us taking many pictures, but here are a few (click for larger version):

This is our dinner.  Chiharu is just out of frame.  Not intentional, just poor photography by yours truly.

Dinner.  Chiharu made fondue which was delicious and a lot of fun.

More recently, Noa took a class trip to Chuck E. Cheese.  I chaperoned.

Here's Noa's class.  His teacher is Ms. Sanchita.

Noa loved playing with the water guns.


Noa and Tyler played air hockey.

Reina is great big sister.  She is really good at calming Noa down and taking care of him.  Here she reads him a book.

The Kids

Some pics of the kids. As always, click on the image to open a larger version of the photo.

Reina did well at her local swim meet so she got invited to the island-wide meet. She had a great time. She got to ride the bus with all of her friends to the meet, and the instructors brought homemade spam musubis and doughnuts to eat after the races. There were lots of heats however, so we don't know how well she did.

Reina had a birthday party, so we took Noa to Chuck E. Cheese. He got so excited when he scored a goal in air hockey.

Chiharu took some pictures of the kids at the park:

Halloween!

Halloween, that magic time of year when kids (and adults) get to flirt with fantasy and the dark side. It starts with the carving of the pumpkins (As always, click on an image to see a larger version):

Reina carved the whole thing by herself.

Given that she wore these glasses most of the time, it's amazing it came out as well as it did...

Here's how it came out.

Here's the one that Chiharu did.

My favorite part of carving pumpkins: pepitas!  I tossed them with olive oil and salt, and roasted them at 325 for 25m or so.  They were so good.

Trick or treat!

Mmmm, candy...

No bad guys will escape Batgirl tonight!

After trick or treating we headed to Waikiki.  The whole area turns into a giant block party with some of the best costumes anywhere, even though we're not seeing them in this shot.  Noa was getting tired and decided he didn't want his picture taken.

We were hot, so at the end of the night before going home we got some frozen yogurt.

Reina's Hula Performance Oct 2010

On October 3, Reina had a hula performance at Iolani Palace. The performance was part of a youth festival.


This is the first dance they did. The "sticks" they are using to keep rhythm are called kala'au. They are the first learned of many implements the dancers use as they advance at hula. The song is "Likelike."


There are two songs in this video. The first song is the traditional "Kawika". The second is the hapa-haole standard "Keep Your Eyes on the Hands."


This is the hapa-haoule song "Ulupalakua." The song is about the Ulupalakua ranch on Maui. If you watch closely you can see the dancers slinging breadfruit and making paniolo lassos over their heads.


This dance is to the song "Royal Hawaiian Hotel." Reina says this is her favorite hula song.


Here's the keiki dancing to "Tutu E". Sorry for the jittery start: I had to move b/c I couldn't see Reina. This song is about "grandma" who drinks some rum and does hula. Reina loves doing the "drunk" part.


The last song they danced to was "E Huli Makou"

Next up are some stills from the day (click to see larger image).

Reina, mid-performance.

Reina watches the older students do a song in between sets.

While waiting for Reina's performance to start, Noa and I checked out some fire trucks.

After the performance, Reina and Karen got to meet Jake Shimabukuro. If you don't know who Jake is, he's a kind of mix of Eddie Van Halen and Chet Atkins on ukulele. Here's a video of him covering the Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps (which he performed right before Reina came on and I was too dumbfounded to record it):

Camping!

Long time no post. Last weekend we went camping up at Kualoa beach park, Friday thru Sunday. Click on the pic to see a larger image.

Here's our home away from home. Ugly, yes, but effective. This site is only about 100 feet from the ocean and the wind comes off the ocean at a steady 10 knots with occasional gusts twice that. A wind break is essential for both the tent and the fire.

Kids hangin' out on the air mattress under the sunshade.

Noa being Noa.

Reina and Noa wash the veggies. After we cooked lunch and the coals had burned down a bit, we wrapped these in foil and stuck them on the grill with the lid on for 3 hours. They slow cooked to perfection and we had them for dinner.

After dinner we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores.


On Sunday we went to Kualoa ranch and the kids got to ride horses.

Reina's Swim Meet

Well, as soon as I promised to myself to blog more, my machine got eaten by a virus. It was so bad it couldn't even boot. It took three weeks to get it right. I think I got it while I was looking for a streaming version of the NCAA final game in which the UConn Women's basketball team played. Word to the wise: free streaming TV sites = trouble.

Bottom line, more catch up to do. Reina had a swim meet two weeks ago. One of Reina's favorite things to do when there's a meet is to meet the pool staff at our pool (Manoa pool) and ride the park bus to the meet pool. A lot of the kids and the pool staff ride the bus, so it's a fun time (as always, click the image to see a larger version):

It was a division meet in which 9 or 10 pools participated. In such large meets, there's a lot of hanging around. Here's Reina waiting for her first race:

It was actually a pretty cold day, and the race was in Palolo valley near the mountains so it was cloudy with intermittent showers. And the water was a bit cold, too.

In her age group (ages 7-8), Reina took first in the freestyle 25m, third in the backstroke 25m, and sixth (I think) in breast stroke 25m. Somehow, I missed her freestyle race, but here's her backstroke race (click to watch the video):

And here is her breast stroke race:

Reina's most favorite part of swim meets? All the goodies the parents bring to share at the end. She has a musubi (rice and spam wrapped in seaweed) in one hand and a doughnut in the other.

Well, I got behind in posting and so I'll be posting some things that happened several weeks ago over the next few posts.

A few weeks ago, we went snorkeling and Reina did her first open ocean snorkel.

One of the first things she saw was a sea turtle. There were several out that day:

She even took off her life jacket and dove deep to get a closer look at the fish and other sealife:


In addition to the turtle, here are some of the other things we saw. This blue bird wrasse was strutting around flaring out his pectoral fins:


Here's a Moorish Idol:


And of course there are lots of sea urchins:


In the end, she said it was so much fun, even better than the water park. And that's saying a lot.