Saturday, February 21, 2009

Aloha!

Howdy... long time no talk. We got back from Hawaii very late Monday night. Techincally, it was Tuesday since it was after midnight. The only reason that matters is I had to get up for my mega marathon school day early Tuesday morning. I haven't recieved much sympathy on that from anyone yet. Guess not getting sleep because of returning home from Hawaii doesn't rate high on the sympathy meter...

Here's a little snapshot of our trip...




Getting close... it's down there!

Finally, meeting our friends. Little Bob has on a sample of the lei's our friends greeted us with.


Our first night was on the beach at Haleiwa... just after sunset with a mai tai in hand...

Turtles on the beach...much bigger than they look.

Little surfer girl...

I love this picture of the big boy surfer heading out while the little guy is trying...


BFF's for life

The Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. Really interesting and so moving. Our friend is in the military so he was able to take us on to Ford Island and drive around. We got to see some of the airstrip and other things damamged from the attack. Also saw areas where they filmed the movie. We had to rent Pearl Harbor this weekend to see everything again now that we have visited.

My honey got his 500th find at Diamond Head. We hiked up and I thought I was going to die. SO very hot...couldn't get enough air.

The color of the water is amazing!

Kiddos at the Sea Life park.

Hanauma bay...going snorkeling.

Little Bob's boyfriend. This is how they spent most of the trip. At the luau we went to, he watched it with with his arm around Little Bob and then LB turned and gave him a peck on the cheek. He cried when she left... they are too cute!

Obviously, I say boyfriend sarcastically..they are only 5 1/2 for crying out loud but my friend and I wonder. Wouldn't it be so cute if they did end up together in the future and we have all of this footage of them?

The animal in the foreground is called a whalfin. A cross between a whale and a dolphin. It almost is double the size of the bottlenose dolphins and has a shorter nostrum. It is a beautiful animal!


Sunset at Waialua Beach




daddy and little bob at the beach...
very windy day and warning flags. on the windward side of the island that day. now I know why it's called that.

At the luau...

future hula dancers...


whales sighted... too bad we only saw their backs and tail fins this day.

last day at Aloa Moana beach... we squeezed every last possible moment out of our beach time. Was so hard to come back to the cold. At least it has been sunny this week.

I have been listening to my hawaiian CD's this week (had to buy them after listening to the same radio station for 10 days and their playlist with 5 songs... Jason Mraz's song is quite popular there!) and making tropical drinks trying to keep the aloha spirit alive. I haven't really been interested in tropical vacations prior to this one and now I'm hooked. I did enjoy not having things so planned out as well. I think the success lied, however, with our friends giving us lots of info on what to see and do. We might have missed quite a bit otherwise.

K... and the food rocked! Little Bob and daddy are now HUGE spamasubi fans. I don't know if that is how you spell it or not. Basically, it's fried spam, rice, spices all wrapped up in nori (seaweed). Wasn't my favorite but I did love the Shaimin (noodles) manaupuua, pork hash, shaved ice at Matsamoto's, kalua pork, and the best Thai food I've ever had. Apparently, there is a great Hawaiian BBQ restaurant near us. Bob went without me today after his class and is in big trouble. Did I mention that my friend is a chef? So when we weren't out at restaurants, she was cooking for us. She made breakfast every morning and had fresh hot coffee waiting. Ahhh... what a trip! Waaaahhhhh... must go back soon!


How cute are our friends? Love you guys...!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

likelike...

Coming to you live from Mililani Mauka...

Super quick note to say we're here and having an amazing time. Flying in to the airport was amamzing seeing all of the coastline and that turquoise-colored water. Beautiful!!

Our friends were waiting for us with orchid leis (this has always been my wish since watching Fantasy Island) and the kids all hugged each other, held hands and were BFF's again from word one. Oh, how I've missed these guys!

We are ticking things off of our list. Our friends have a must do list of experiences for us too. I've walked amongst the sea turtles on the beach and have a whale watching excursion planned for next Sunday. Lots of beach time... little Bob is LOVING boogie boarding. I might have a little budding surfer girl on my hands. Our friends are trying to convince us to move here so she can persue her passion.

Today we're off to do a hike to Diamond head and then off to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world - Kailua beach. It's near where the pres stayed when he was here.

I love pronouncing all of the vowel sounds here. my favorite so far is Likelike hwy. The small things amuse me in life...

Hope you all have a lovely day!

Friday, February 6, 2009

I bid you adieu

I'm finally done with THE longest week in history trying to take care of all of my school work that is due when I'm gone or right upon my return...but enough of that because I'm on vacation! Woo Hoo! Similarly to SSG, because of our twin status, I tend to take on the world when getting ready to go on a trip. I'm also usually the planner extraordinaire, but not this time. Perhaps it's our destination and I'm already on island time...?

Possibly...or the fact that we're going to visit friends and they'll have a great list of things we must see? (Our good friends and their two 5 year old kids (not twins) moved there last year and we're off to see them.) More than likely, I've been too gosh darn busy to worry about it. So, today is my one and only day to clean the house and get packed before we need to leave at 5:30 am tomorrow morning. We'll see the major highlights of Oahu I'm sure and then just hang out with our friends. I wouldn't normally head out without an agenda so this will be a new way of traveling for me. We'll see if I like it. Perhaps all of our trips now will be free wheeling, go where the wind blows us? Uh...probably not.

The one thing I'm dying to see however is....


I mentioned in a previous post that I have been on TWO whale watching adventures and have yet to see an actual whale outside of the aquarium. A friend at school just returned from Maui yesterday and reports that the whales are EVERYWHERE. I'm just hoping that all of the whales don't exclusively visit Maui as their winter destination and a few are up at Oahu. If I don't see one stinking whale then maybe it's just not in the cards for me. So stay tuned folks. I will be live blogging from the island, with a tropical cocktail in hand, and have a full report from the Bob's big adventure to the islands and all the hijinx that ensues when living with three 5 years olds.

SSG...we love ya! Have a fantastic trip to see the munchkins! Kisses to all from us.

~Aloha

Monday, February 2, 2009

Yes, I Went There...



Little Bob is star of the week starting tomorrow. She has been looking forward to this ever since the words came out of her teacher's mouth 5 months ago. Every week begins with the question... "mommy, when am I star of the week again?" Well it's finally here and that means she gets to be line leader all week, bring in show and tell, favorite books and or treats to share, AND a poster all about herself.

I try not to be an obnoxious mom...you know, one who's children can do no wrong, are absolutely 100% perfect and there is something wrong with YOU if you don't 100% adore the child, converse only about my child, etc. I really do try to pepper conversations with other interesting facts and questions about other people's lives. The blog has lots of info about Little Bob because she is a huge part of my life but I throw in other little bits of info here and there...don't I?

Tomorrow, I'm embarrassed to say, I'm going to be that obnoxious mother who waltzes in to her child's class with THE most enormous poster ever made about one little kid. I tried to trim stuff out but couldn't help it. I have little categories of info (hello...I'm anal) and already felt like I have left people or things out. I had to go back to the family category because I realized not all in my husband's immediate family were represented and grandma picks little Bob up on Wednesdays. She WILL take notes to see if there are more pictures of my family than hers and I didn't feel like dealing with her this week so I added a few more pics to include everyone. Can you see how this got out of control? *sigh*

I thought about taking it apart a couple of times today but just don't have the time or energy. I'm already having to work a week ahead in school since we'll be on vacation next week. The house is a mess blah, blah, blah. So, whatever...it is what it is. I'll be obnoxious for a day. I just hope I can fit it in the car.




Here's something fun. This is a project that I had to do for my video editing class. The assignment was to make cuts according to music without transitions or fancy editing (it is a beginners class) just straight cuts and try to edit to the music at some point. I was successful for the most part. There are a few minor blips here and there but it's pretty cute. I just slapped in photos quickly without too much thought or editing (of the pictures) since there wasn't a whole lot of time to complete and it wasn't what the assignment was all about. As far as slideshows go, there are much easier programs to use out there than Final Cut Pro but it was a good intro on how to begin to edit. I'll be using video in my next project. I burned a DVD of this movie with iDVD which has a cute little intro and menu that comes with it. This is just a quicktime movie so it will play on any computer and won't have the iDVD stuff. Side-note... one of the young men in class asked afterward how I got the shots of my plane..."Uh... dude, that's not really my plane." Yes, he was serious.

I have some fun flash videos to show soon too. Flash is everywhere now and will be really useful AND fun once I know what I'm doing. Want to see some fun flash movies? Check out this site for some really funny animated, 30-second interpretations of movies. I think Brokeback Mountain and Office Space are my favorites so far. So clever! Me...? Not so much BUT I can currently make a shape warp, ball bounce, and text flash. How cool am I?