Tandem tandems

Of all the weird coincidences in life... The friends we had met a while back with kids the same age also have a tandem. We had discovered that a while ago but they hadn't done any tandeming with their kids other than short rides carrying the youngest around the neighborhood. They got a trailer recently, so they went on their first longer ride around the area with us. We had a good time, we went down to the Pearl Harbor bike path and then out to Ford Island, since they have military ID.

Here's a shot of us all heading out down the neighborhood street by our house.


Me and Dan in front of the Utah memorial at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor.
Another family shot near the Utah Memorial. It's always handy to have someone else there to take some pictures for you. :)
It's really hard to get pics of yourself on the bike, so we were trading cameras back and forth to get pictures of us on the bikes.

Here's a gorgeous, old banyan tree that we happened to go past on Ford Island.
The ride worked out really well. The kids had fun all playing together when we'd stop and we had a nice pizza lunch on the way home. We plan to go on another ride in the near future, it's good to have someone to ride with here too.

Doing a little LOST stalking

I drove up to the north shore of Oahu today to try to see them doing some filming on the TV show 'LOST'. Turns out they were filming elsewhere today but we did see the cabins they often use in the others camp and the blue VW van. There was a work crew setting up fabric tents on the beach that I imagine will show up on some future episode. I'll have to keep an eye out for them while I'm watching the show.
We drove out to the end of Farrington Highway, I've heard that they do some filming out past where it turns into a dirt road. I really didn't want to take my car in there, so we just parked at the end and the kids ran around and explored. It was gorgeous out there...
Then we went back and tried to find what one book calls the LOST beach. Apparently they do some filming at Makaleha Beach. From the looks of it they hadn't filmed there recently but it was a nice beach. It was loaded with driftwood and the boys had a good time building things in the sand out of the driftwood.
So we didn't get to see any stars on our little outing, but at least now I know the areas to look if we know they're filming up there one day. Even if they're not filming, there's always the beach!

Adam and Cole

The kids have been a little walking disaster areas lately. The other day, he was playing in the back of the pickup truck and Adam was trying to 'help' by closing the back gate. Well Cole leaned on it and landed flat on his face on the pavement. Then Adam got a fat lip after he fell off the slide at the playground. Now this morning, right after Cole's scab on his nose came off he must have hit it on something and has a bloody gash on it again. BOYS! At least they haven't taken to breaking major limbs yet...

Adam has become quite the little helper around the house lately. He likes to wash the dishes and keeps asking if he can get the duster out and dust the furniture. I guess I should milk this one for all it's worth until the phase passes!

Arizona Memorial and the PCC

Still catching up on updating the blog from mom's visit. We didn't do much of anything last weekend, we had done enough sightseeing for a bit. While mom was in town, we went to the Arizona memorial and the Polynesian Cultural Center, more places that I hadn't made it to yet. We went to the Arizona memorial on a Saturday so that Dan could watch the kids. I'm sure that Cole would not have wanted to wait or to be respectfully quiet at the memorial so he wasn't going to go. Adam decided that he didn't want to wait in line, so he stayed home too.

I had been to the museum at the memorial once before when we did the holiday lights tour at christmas that started there. But since the kids were with us then, I hadn't had a chance to really SEE and actually READ anything at the museum. So it was nice to have some time to find out more about what happened at pearl harbor and across Oahu during the attack. They had a very sobering movie before the tour of the memorial. It was hard to believe what the harbor looked like that day compared to how it looked when we walked out of the theater on that calm, sunny morning. The tour of the memorial itself was serene and they gave you some time to look at the submerged wreck and to think about all the lives lost. It was well worth a visit there.
Another place I hadn't been to yet was the polynesian cultural center. Turns out that mom had been here 30 years ago when she and dad vacationed in Hawaii. It was a huge place and it was kind of hard to keep Cole corraled sometimes. But it was a really cool. There were different areas for each of the different polynesian cultures. Each one had buildings and demonstrations you could watch. The kids liked getting 'tatoos' and weaving fish out of reeds. We stayed pretty much all day, but we didn't stay for the luau. I've read that they have one of the best evening shows on the island, but after all day of being on the go the kids were worn out.

Grandma and the boysAdam's tatoo on his ankle below...

Boad parade on the canals at the Polynesian Cultural Center