Pineapple paradise

Shortly after we moved here, sometime around the fall of 2008, I planted a pineapple top cut from a pineapple we got at the store.  It slowly grew out in the backyard and now FINALLY we have a ripe pineapple! 

I was getting a little worried that this little guy would get ripe while we were visiting MN. I would hate to wait 18 months for a pineapple to grow and then miss out on it!  Well yesterday we went ahead and picked our pineapple.  

We cut it up after dinner tonight and it was really sweet and tasty.  One of the best pineapples I've had, so I guess it was worth the wait.  Now supposedly in another year it might produce another one, that's a long wait!


But our banana tree has decided to produce a bunch of bananas, so in a while we'll have some more tropical fruit.  We have a dwarf apple banana tree that I put in last spring.  Apple bananas grow all over here, I don't know if you can get them outside of Hawaii but they are very tasty.  

Here is the flower pod that will produce the bananas.  You can just barely see the baby bananas way up underneath the outer petals in the pic below.  

Not sure how long it takes the bunch to grow, but I'll have to keep a close eye on it.  Them I just need to wait for our papaya tree to get bigger and I'll have some fresh papayas too.  Gotta love Hawaii!

Last day of Kindergarten page

A day on the bike path

Since we spend so much time on the bike path here on the weekends and also since we never know how long we'll be here or when Monsanto will tell us it's time to move on, I decided I should chronicle a typical day on the bike path so we remember what it looked like.


Here we're just starting out, looking out over the golf course across the street.

As we head down through the neighborhood, we go past Adam's old school...

Here's a shot of me and Adam taken from the bike along the way

Once we get down through the neighborhood and under the freeway, we head down to the Pearl Harbor bike path.  The start of the bike path begins near a 'convenience dropoff center' i.e. a place to drop your trash that can't be picked up curbside.  Then it runs along the back of some properties in Waipahu  (a different part of Waipahu than where we live) where there is a small canal with fish and ducks in it.  Many of the yards have chickens, roosters, and ducks living in them.  You can see the canal in the pic below and the bridges from the yards over to the bike path.

Once we get past the residential section, the bike path runs right along Pearl Harbor.  Here's a view of the Mid Loch, which I think is basically a ship graveyard.  These ships don't look like they've seen any action in a long time from the amount of rust on them...

A shot of Adam on the bike.

Further along, we come to the taro patch,

And the watercress farm that are alongside the path.

More pretty views of Pearl Harbor looking towards Ford Island.

This is nearly at the end of the bike path, our turnaround point.  You can see the Ford Island bridge towards the left in the picture.

And it seems that a ride wouldn't be complete without a stop to fix the bike.  This time a jammed chain.  But we were off again shortly.

Now I hope in a couple years or more we can look back at the bike path pics and say 'Hey, I remember that!'.  Because who knows where life will take us next.  It would be nice to know!

Scrapbook Fun

I've finally had time to play with Adobe this week and finished a layout.

Misc May

Just a recap of the rest of the month. Here are me and the boys on my birthday. They had a good time decorating the cake!

And the end of May was the end of school for Adam. Here he is with the pinata that he volunteered me to bring to class on the last day (without asking me first of course!). But he was so excited about it we went ahead and got a pinata for the party.
Waiting for the bus on the last day. This will be Adam's last bus ride since next year he'll be going to private school, so I'll be driving him.
Dan and Cole joined in the fun waiting for the bus and put on a show.

I went to Adam's end of school party, here was his class getting ready to put on their little program. There was a slideshow and then the kids sang through a bunch of the songs they had learned throughout the year.
Adam wanted me to take a picture of him and his teacher, but then when it came time to take it he was not happy about it (and I think the spots on his face must have been on my lens because I'm pretty sure they weren't on his face when I took the picture).

And lastly, just a picture of the boys having fun. Now I've caught up with May, I'm ready for a new month to start!

Camping, again!

We headed out for another camping trip in May after the first one was such a big hit with the kids. This time we stayed for two nights AND we had a tent v2.0. (unlike v1.0 which was too small for all of us plus it got wet when it rained). So here's the new tent looking very happy in its beautiful campground location.

There were hoardes of kids to play with again and everyone had a good time. One of the more popular activities (when they weren't running around chasing, screaming, and just having fun) was to hang out in the hammock.
And of course they got to roast marshmallows and make s'mores
Here's the first morning in the tent. Notice how short Adam is compared to the new tent!
We had a little rain overnight (and we stayed dry!) and were rewarded with a gorgeous rainbow over camp.
Morning definitely is the most beautiful time of day there, it just makes the mountains look stunning.
Then on Sunday morning we packed up early and headed out of camp as soon as the gates opened. I had to drive back across the island, unpack the car, shower, repack the car and head over to run the MOMS Club banquet at lunch. It all worked out well though, and here's a picture of my great board from MOMS Club. I'll miss having board meetings with them (but I won't miss the board meeting part).

Still catching up, so more pics to come, as always.

A little belated update on my Mother's Day. We had a nice day, Dan made breakfast and the kids were so excited for me to find my Mother's Day gifts: cards, flowers, a huge balloon and chocolates!

Here is the card Adam made for me at school. The day he brought it home, he rung the doorbell after he got off the bus and then he ran around to the back door and snuck in to hide it while I went to the front door. Pretty clever plan for a 6 year old.

I tried to get a Mother's Day picture before we headed off for church, but the kids were having none of it. This was as good as it got!
Here is a picture of me with the gigantic balloon that the kids picked out at the store...
Then we went out for a nice hike in Aiea. The weather was perfect for it.

Busy weekend coming up, we're heading out for another camping trip on Friday until Sunday, and then the MOMS Club year-end luncheon is Sunday at 1pm, so I'd better start on the packing list for camping and have all my stuff ready to go for the luncheon (since I'm running the show!). I'll breathe a sigh of relief after Sunday when the luncheon is done.

I'm sure I'll have some good pics from the weekend...

Mac Nut Farm Tour

On Friday we headed over to the other side of the island to visit the Mac Nut Farm tour. I'd read the reviews on the place and they had great things to say about it. One of the ladies in MOMS Club organized a tour and so we went along. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive so we could start our tour, the kids had a good time cracking macadamia nuts with a rock. They were actually getting pretty good at it.
For our tour, we all piled on this old jalopy of a bus. Our tour guide had a great sense of humor and had us all laughing. They toured us around the grounds a bit to see the different types of trees and plants there.

Decorative banana - nonedible

Then the tour stopped for a while down by the shore of a man made fish pond. Later in the tour they said this fish pond had been built over 800 years ago. He did a demonstration of making fire (pretty similar to the polynesian cultural center one) and then he did a nice show with twirling a flaming torch that he had lit from the fire. Adam later tried to imitate this (minus the fire, of course!)
Then he showed us how to husk and open a coconut, gave the kids a taste of the juice inside, scraped out shavings (it was yummy!) and then made some coconut milk from the coconut shavings.
Here is Cole with his pile of coconut shavings that he then handed straight over to me...
The chickens were hanging close by after the bus arrived, then we figured out why. They were waiting for coconut handouts. The kids were more than willing to oblige.
At the end of the fire-making / coconut shaving demonstrations, they had braided headbands for everyone. Doesn't Adam look thrilled with his!?
The last thing on the tour before we headed back on the bus was to take a little boat out on the fish pond. It had some beautiful views of the mountains and countryside.
I would definitely take visitors back there again. It's a long drive though (OK, by Hawaii standards). It is nearly as far from the house as you can get (which means it was about a 35 minute drive).

We had a beautiful day at the waterpark yesterday, now today it's rain, rain and rain. I hope it clears up soon!

Haleiwa Metric Century

Last Sunday we headed on up to Haleiwa on the North Shore to do the Haleiwa Metric Century Ride. We got there early to get the bike set up and get us all ready to ride. We started to draw quite a bit of attention right from the start. We headed out before the mass start, not wanting to deal with all the riders in close proximity to our big bike. It was a nice cool morning, in fact the boys were a little chilly but I thought it was perfect riding temperature.

We stopped at the first rest stop (we stopped at every rest stop to keep the kids happy...) had snacks and drinks and had more admirers of the bike. I got someone to snap this photo of us all on the bike.
Things were going well and the kids were entertained with all the new things to see since this is not a route we normally ride, so at each rest stop we decided to keep going instead of turning around to go back and finish. Here we are at the final turnaround point, the halfway mark of the ride in Swanzy Beach Park. Beautiful views of the mountains and the quad leaning against the fence below.
The ride didn't quite go so smoothly after that, we broke a spoke shortly after the turnaround point and had to stop for repairs, and cookies for the boys. We got going again after it was all fixed up and had a pretty smooth ride after that. I really didn't hear any complaints out of Adam and Cole until we got to around 53 miles (out of 58). So at that point I got out the stash of suckers that I had hidden away and that kept them preoccupied for the last 5 miles.

So this was Cole's first big ride and he did great. 58 miles in total (so it was actually a little shy of a true metric century, which would be 62 miles). Not quite up to Adam's longest ride - he did 75 miles in the century ride last Sept. So we'll have to see how many miles we can do this year in the Honolulu Century - I guess we'll shoot for 75 with Cole and see how it goes.

Here are a few more photos from the ride...

Cole with cookies from the rest stop

Adam and an orange from the rest stop

A pic from on the road - Cole in front of me and Dan in front of him