Diamond Head Crater!

I realize Jason already used this picture of spam musUbi but I just wanted to give it another shout out and let you all know that it actually is pretty tasty! And according to Jason, 7-eleven carries some of the best of it's kind! This was teriyaki flavored and it deserves a second praise (contrary to some other opinions... heather... :) hahaha)

And yes, this mischievious child fits in this box for baby wipes. A couple days after this day when I first put her in this box for fun, she came and asked me to put her back in the box and carry her around the house. So I did because how can you ever turn her down?! Anyway, she loved it. Then I asked her if I should put her outside the door like a package. She said yes. I'm not sure she understood what I was getting at or if she just wanted me to carry her somewhere else because when I set her outside the door and started closing it she looked at me and said, "HEY!"

Anyway, back to Diamond Head day. We headed out and did this lovely little hike. It wasn't stroller friendly this time, but the kids had an easy time. Though you can't really read the words on here, you can see that we did a bunch of switchbacks, climbed a million stairs, walked through some long skinny tunnels and finally found our way to the top!

Heather carried Jax, I carried Flat Alix in her protective pouch (aka manilla envelope)

and Jason carried Ashlyn while dad took most of the pictures.

View from the top. You can see that we are looking into the crater... and beyond.

As every other day thus far, it was pretty windy and cloudy but nice weather for a hike. At least it didn't rain while we hiked!

Dad and I climbed the extra few stairs so we could see the view of Waikiki... but our big heads got in the way of the view when we tried to do a self shot. On J's blog, you can see a better picture of us that a nice man took for us when he saw how terribly this picture turned out. Here's what you were supposed to see behind us... At the bottom of the trail, Ashlyn found a nice bench her size to rest on. All that sitting in the backpack can wear you right out!
And look at these pretty flowers dad saw high up in the tree. Um, plumerias maybe? I'm no flower expert.
Stay tuned for even more Hawaii! Unless of course you're bored... but that's just rude. :)

Hawaii - Tantalus & Makapu'u

Everyday started bright and early. Between 7 and 8:00 depending on who you were... So we mostly got out the door by 9:30. Wednesday morning we went to Tantalus lookout. Here's downtown Honolulu in all it's glory with Diamond Head crater on the far left. It was a pretty windy day up there and as you can see, not much sun. But still a day for shorts!

Who knows what Jason is doing.... umm, eat your heart out?

We also went for a walk that afternoon to purchase some items including some swim trunks for dad in hopes for some beach weather in the next 10 days. We love Ross! Ashlyn also loves having books read to her! She would bring out her books and ask if you'd read to her, and who could turn down such a cute little face! She's definitely a smarty pants. Look at dad being such a good grandpa!

Thursday took us on a little hike to Makapu'u lighthouse. A little hike that was paved so that we could take the strollers. We first stopped at the blowhole... according to Jason's blog it's called the Halona blowhole. But I just remember it as the blowhole. Here's some water blowing out of the hole! And down below is a view of a beach... although I couldn't tell you which beach.

Though it was mostly cloudy, the sun did make a few appearances and since we were walking uphill, it did get a bit toasty. It was great weather for the hike. From looking at the picture below, you would think that Jason was very lazy since he's not pushing any stroller. But truth be told, he's just super wimpy and couldn't handle the task. Heh heh heh. Ok i'm lying, we took turns pushing the kids up, he did his part too.

Me and dad at the top. On the left is... sea world (i think) (i've been corrected.... it's sea life park...), and up the coast from there is... Kailua beach (i think) (it's not Kailua beach but it was a good guess on my part...). And that could be totally false information (and it apparently it was...). In any case, it is all very beautiful!

Makapu'u lighthouse from above.

And here's our happy cute little boy Jaxon! He slept all the way up and back down and woke up at the end in time to eat before we headed back home.

Flat Alix was also part of our vacation. Heather's niece Alix is doing a school project and so we took her around to some different places. I just thought I'd give you a sampling of some of things we did with her. Since it was so windy, we all tried to keep her from blowing into the ocean.

Flat Alix and Ashlyn on a park bench. So anyway, Flat Alix came on a few of our adventures.

When Jason went to work, dad, Heather, Ash, Jax, and I went on a walk around Magic Island and by the Ala Moana beach that Jason and Heather frequent. It was a pleasant afternoon and the sun even came out for a bit! We saw this bird on our walk and it looked like it might've been hungry. I really wanted it to swoop in and grab a little fish out of the pond so we threw in that animal cracker to try to entice the fish closer to the bird so we could see some action! The fish were smart though and stayed back a ways. But it was probably unnecessary because the bird just plopped himself there for a bit and then flew off later. Boring!

The fish did fight over the animal cracker for a while. I'm not sure if any of them were ever able to bring it down however. Oh well, it was good entertainment for a few minutes.

Anyway, next up is Diamond Head crater!

Hawaiiiii

After a long flight, we finally made it to Hawaii. I know Jason already used this picture, but it's pretty much the only picture we took on our first day. We didn't do a whole lot on day 1. Just hung out and relaxed and had a delicious meal of flounder. Here's us waiting for Heather to pick us up at the airport. Due to Jaxon's hungry tummy and Ashlyn's big poops, she was a little late, but we won't hold it against her.... or the kids :) ...huh, I just realized all my pics are on medium setting. I'll be sure to have large pics in future posts.

Day 2. We kicked off vacation with a bang... and plenty of rain. We headed up to the PCC for some fun and entertainment. On the way up, we stopped at the mac nut farm for some tasty samples and our own experience at cracking some nuts open with a rock!

At the PCC, which was way different than I thought it was going to be, we were entertained by different shows and performances. Notice the tourists in the background with their matching ponchos. I think the PCC made a killing off those $3 ponchos! We're too cheap to get them though. And we didnt' really need them anyway.

Part of the Samoa show has a guy that climbs up the palm tree in no time at all. Impressive!

Here's me feeding Ashlyn while being captivated by whatever it is that we're watching. But J and Heather are looking goooood.We tried spear throwing as well. Jason posted pics of me and dad doing it, so I thought I'd post Heather showing off her skills. It was pretty fun but we weren't so hot at it. Dad did good in his practice round, but when he went up for the prize, he blew it! But we still think he's the man.
Ashlyn was dying to go on the canoe ride, so dad and I took her. She brought along this fish that was given to her by a nice tourist who made it at one of the islands (at the PCC).
We didn't have tickets to the Luau but we still got a hearty McDonald's meal in before we headed back for the Big Show. I don't know what I'm doing in this picture but I thought it was kinda funny. It was a little chilly outside but we survived and it was a great show!
Of course the highlight of the show is at the end...
Great entertainment and I felt cultured by the end of the day.

More adventures to come!

Extended Portland Layover

So I tried to make life easier for me by sending my fellow followers to Jason's blog to read about our Hawaii adventures. Several people called me out on it and I was even labeled cheater. BOO. Hahaha, so here I go, telling all about mine and dad's adventures. It actually started in Portland, OR, where we met up and had an extended layover with Michelle and Steve for a couple of days. We kept busy eating, shopping (Steve's most favorite part was visiting every grocery store in Tigard... riiiiiight), and seeing some cool things.... like the Japanese Gardens!

Hey Annie, you should go to Portland so you can see the Chinese and Japanese Gardens. Oh wait, you are! And you'll loooooove it!

Here's a view of Portland from the Japanese gardens.

We had some apples to use up and so I made these scrumptious apple muffins. Look at my face of happiness! They turned out marvelously.

We also put together some fabulous shushi, nothing super fancy although we did buy tuna loin ...yes, loin... to enlighten our taste buds and added avocado, cucumber, egg, and cream cheese.

And this is us being silly. Not just because we're weird, but we wanted to send Ethan a fun picture for the birthday card we sent him for his 7th birthday!

Hawaii is coming up next! I'll try real hard to make mine as interesting as Jason's and to use different pics too!

Recent Happenings

Well, I just got back from a trip to Hawaii with dad where we visited Jason and Heather and Ashlyn and Jax. Jason is doing such a lovely job posting our adventures that I'll just refer you to his blog and tell you about what I did before Hawaii!

The tumbling gym. We went there for a RAH activity. There's all sorts of things to do including but not limited to:

Trampoline
Rope Swing into the foam pit

Jump into the foam pit off springboardsSumo wrestling (i win!)

And while you may not find this as funny as I did, we had a Valentine's day date night where I had the participants make valentines for each other. This valentine was supposed to be to Scott. Made me laugh.

Chinese New Year RAH Style

You may think I'm a little behind on my post since Chinese New Year was January 26th, but if you did your homework, you would know that the new year is celebrated for the next 15 days after. So, I'm pretty much on track still.

At RAH we had a Chinese New Year activity, which I was in charge of probably because I'm Chinese or something. I gave a brief explanation about it, then I taught them how to say Gong Hay Fat Choy. I'm pretty sure my tones were off, but I don't think it really matters for them. Next I showed them lucky money and had them each come up by their animal groups and had them say Gong Hay Fat Choy before handing them their lucky money (a whoppin 50 cents and a fake 50 dollar bill). Not gonna lie, it was pretty adorable especially since most of them said it completely wrong or just mumbled something. They all still got their packets.

See, here I am giving them out.

Then I taught them how to use chopsticks and they practiced on marshmallows. So yes, some of them ended up stabbing the mallow instead but hey, whatever works right? Some of them took on the challenge to pick up pieces of candy and succeeded!

Next I gave them their animal year to color listed with the characteristics that are associated with the animal.

Here's all of them (55 people) holding up their finished product.

After, I taught them how to write Good Luck in Chinese. I taught them about stroke order and did a step by step demonstration while they followed along. Hopefully I did the strokes in the right order... I really just guessed what seemed logical, applying what I was taught in my very young childhood. Too bad my characters are incredibly boxy and not very flowy like they should be.

But they did a pretty good job following along. Ok, so not everyone's character looked like this persons, but for the most part, it went over well.

Then we did the dragon parade/lantern festival. We don't have a big dragon costume, but we did have this tiny accordian dragon you see pictured that led the parade. Everyone else carried a small lantern and paraded around the room following the dragon and to the tune of Chinese music I found at the library.

Look how happy they are!

I had them hang up their lanterns in our fake trees.

Looks pretty snazy huh?

This is what they ate for dinner.... I didn't plan the menu so I'm not sure what it all is, I didn't end up eating any of it, but it's Asian food... I did pass out those tangerines though because those are good luck!