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.

The Wateringcan Man

"The Wateringcan Man"

2006

Acrylic on canvas

Artist: Eli D. Kirk

Hi everybody! Work was incredibly busy this week, so I'm just getting around to posting last weekend's events. First, on Friday after dropping Reina off, Noa, Chi, and I played at the park next to Reina's school:



Then we ran around. Reina's school is in the background:



I spent much of last weekend fixing the light fixtures in the house. Reina was bored, so she played dress-up with Noa:



Then she read Noa some books. Here she reads him The Lorax:



We did manage to get out a bit. We went to Kakaako park. The park has some grassy hills where kids slide down on cardboard boxes. First we ate some lunch in our boxes:



Then we slid down the hill:



Here's a vid:

Lastly, the shrimp that Reina caught last week is pregnant.

What We Have Been Up To

Over the weekend, we went to the stream to get some fish for the tank. In Hawaii, people have dumped dozens of different species of freshwater fish into the streams, so there's lots to choose from, if you can catch them. Noa and I are ready to go (click for larger image):



Reina caught a bunch of freshwater shrimp.

Here's the tank. Chiharu caught a beautiful orange swordtail. We also got some guppies, some catfish, and some shrimp.

We also did some "camping" in the bedroom. Chiharu set up the tent so the kids could camp out over the long weekend.



Tonight, Reina got her homework done early, so we played a game of Upwords. It's similar to Scrabble, except the board is smaller and you can stack letters to make new words. She won, of course.

Reina's Commercial

Reina was in a commercial last year. It has finally come out. You can view it on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3XbWmz6sgI

I've also posted some stills from the commercial:

Happy New Year!

On 12/31 we went to Reuben and Mari's, friends who host a mochi party every new year. Mochi (pounded sticky rice cakes) is traditional New Years food in Japan, and Mari makes it fresh every new year. It's delicious.



After eating mochi, we did fireworks outside in the afternoon. On Hawaii, fireworks are the traditional way to celebrate the New Year, probably adopted from the Chinese custom of fireworks on New Years.





It was a full moon and this is what it looked like from our apartment rising over the mountains. We also did a bunch of fireworks at night to celebrate the new year. Our friends who live next door came over too.






The next day, we watched the sun rise and had traditional Japanese New Years food called osechi ryori. Our bento box here has rolled Japanese omelet, sweet black beans, white beans with konbu seaweed, tied bundles of konbu, white fish cake, carrot and radish vinegar salad, and special glazed chestnuts. We ate this with ozoni, a special New Years soup that has mochi in it. Chiharu's a great cook, so everything was fantastic!