Turtle Bay Staycation

Last week, friends of ours were kind enough to get us the military discounted rate at the Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore, which is even much better than the resident room rate.  So we all went on a one-night mini vacation.  I tell you, we packed a LOT into 24 hours of fun.  Pool fun, beach fun, food fun, we had it all.  Here's the photo recap.  

Camping in Oct

It's great that we've found a great group of families to go camping with here.  We went camping at Ho'omaluhia botanical gardens again earlier this month.  It was right at the start of our fall break week from school, so it was a good way to kick off the break.  
The boys and I got to camp early Friday afternoon since Adam had a half-day that day.  It was really overcast and looked like it could rain at any minute.  So my goal was to get the tent up as soon as I got there.  Good thing I did, because it started raining fairly hard as soon as the tent was up.  Good timing!  I put off unloading the rest of the stuff until the rain quit.  By the time Dan got there after work, we had a nice dry setup all ready for the night.  The rain rewarded us with some beautiful waterfalls off the nearby mountains, I'd never seen that before when we had camped there.  It rained on and off all evening, but it was a good time anyways!  

The kids, as usual, spent most of their time playing with the fire.  

Of course, fire is even more fun as it gets darker outside...

And it's still fun first thing in the morning (I told you they spent a LOT of time with the campfire).  I joked at camp that I should throw out all the TVs and put in a firepit in the backyard instead.  The kids did not think it was funny.  

I love early morning in camp.  Here's a shot of Cole still trying to wake up for the day.  Great thing about a tent, the camera is always within a short reach to grab a cute shot.

Mostly, THIS is my favorite reason I love mornings in camp.  The morning light is beautiful on the mountains.  It just makes you want to sit back, drink your coffee, and enjoy the view (which is exactly what I did).

Later in the morning, we took a walk along the drive into the campsite and the roadside was filled with ripe, red strawberry guava bushes.  They were sooo tasty!  The kids (and adults) were stuffed with guava by the time we made the short walk back to camp.

Cole and I took a walk down to the lake to see the ducks.  We didn't have any bread to bring with, and Cole fed the few Cheerios we had to the koi fish along the way.  When we got to the ducks, I told Cole to sit down quietly and maybe the ducks would come check him out to see if he had any food.  So he sat and waited rather patiently, but the ducks were not fooled.

Farther down along the lake, some tourists gave us some of their bread so he could feed the ducks.  He finally got brave enough to let a big, white duck eat out of his hand.

Here is a pic I snapped of me and Cole as we walked back to camp.  We stopped to take a break since I had inadvertently taken the long way back.  But Cole was a good trooper and walked almost all the way back (I carried him up the big hills).

So another successful camping trip under our belts!

Honolulu Century Ride 2010

We did our third Honolulu Century ride last weekend, the first time for Cole to do this ride up on the big bike (the quad).  He did the metric century this past summer, so we set out to do somewhere between 50 - 75 miles on this ride.  We hadn't gotten a lot of training in this year, so we were just going to play it by ear to decide on the turnaround point.


The ride starts at 6:15am downtown at Kapiolani park and we usually like to start a little ahead of the mass start, since maneuvering a quad through hundreds of other bikes is a little tricky to say the least.  So to beat the start time we headed out in the car at 4:45am.  This is even a little early by my standards, but the kids were wide awake and ready to go.  Breakfast was in the van - poptarts...

We got the bike put together, the kids all ready to go and set out a little before 6am.  It was still fairly dark out, the sky was just beginning to lighten a little.  We had been on the road for a few minutes already when I took the pic below, so it is a little brighter.  

I think the best thing about this ride is heading up along the eastern coastline just as the sun is rising.  The colors and scenery are just amazing at that time of day.  It makes it all worthwhile.

The pics above are from the first rest stop along the ride.  We got there about the time that rest stop opened, since we had headed out a little early.  We didn't stay too long since everyone was still fresh, so we headed out after a short break.


The next rest stop was the 50 mile turnaround point, we had a nice long break there along with oranges, bananas, and cookies.  That was also when the sky decided to have a nice little downpour, so I was glad we were at the stop instead of out on the road.  We waited it out under the tents.

 After the rain was done it was time to head out again.  As usual we had a lot of people taking pictures (go figure, a 4 person bike seems to attract a lot of attention!).  So I got one of the guys to take our pic with my camera too.  I made the call to go ahead to the 75 mile turnaround, I felt pretty fresh and hadn't heard too much complaining from the kids so I figured we could make it.  

The morning was really nice and overcast until we got to the 75mile turnaround.  Perfect biking weather, but eventually the sun burned the clouds off and it started to get hot.  Not too bad though, other years it heated up a lot more quickly.  There was a playground at this stop, so we had a nice long break before the ride home.  And of course, more bananas, oranges, and cookies.  

The ride back is always fantastic views with the full sun making the waters just amazing colors of blue and green.  Here is a shot as we are approaching Rabbit island.  A little while after this the official photographer took our photo along the route, so hopefully he got a good one and I'll order a print.  We don't have a shot of all 4 of us riding on the big bike.  I hope he had his ultra wide angle lens on!

 Adam on the back, I didn't hear any complaining from him the entire ride, except when he desperately needed to stop to pee.  

We hit the last rest stop before the end and by this point me and the kids were getting a little sore in the butt.  So I was really glad to see this rest stop...

This guy with the old 1950s Schwinn rode for 50 miles on this bike.  It weighs as much as a tank and is a single speed, but he did it.  Wow!

 Here Adam was cooling down dumping water on himself.

 They had energy gel at this stop, so I let Adam try some.  He actually liked it and went back for more.  I have to admit, the chocolate flavored one he got the second time was actually not that bad.  

So after another leisurely break (and more oranges, bananas, and cookies) we headed out for the last leg of the trip.  Just looking up and seeing the mountain we needed to ride around (Diamond Head), it seemed like a long ways back to the van but the final bit really didn't take too long. We headed through the finish line for another photo-op and then hopped off the bike and walked it back to the van.  It was good to stretch the legs and rest the butt for the last few hundred yards.  


Here was a pic of the tents set up around the finish line.  

So our third Honolulu Century ride under our belts, 75 miles each time.  Probably our last?  Who knows where we will be next year this time.  Probably riding our bike somewhere...

Another month gone

Well, I've at least managed to get two blog posts up this month!  September is almost at a close and the first quarter of school is done at the end of this week too.  We've been plenty busy this month, here's some highlights of what we've been up to...


Early in the month I took Cole out to Ko'Olina and brought him out to the manmade breakwater to see the fish.  He loves to snorkel so I put him on the board to make it easier to get him in and out there.

In Sept, Monsanto also had a safety fair for the employees and families.  They brought in fire dept, police, EMS, helicopter for the kids to check out as well as food, bounce houses, games, and giveaways.  It was a really fun time, the kids stayed nearly to the end, so I think we were there nearly 4 hours.  Their favorite attraction by far was the helicopter, they got in and out several times sitting in all the various seats to check it out from every angle.  

Adam lost his two top front teeth this month too, so now he is short 3 teeth total (he has one missing on the bottom too).  His smile is pretty funny!  He missed getting this grin in his school pics by just a couple weeks, they took those in early Sept so he won't have any toothless school pics (but I think those are kind of cute anyways!).

The last part of this month we've been getting ready for the Honolulu Century ride, the third time we've done this.  The day before the ride we headed downtown for the packet pickup to get our ride numbers and all the ride info.  Since we were already downtown, we went over to the Waikiki aquarium which I had not yet been to.  I really enjoyed it!  I've heard some people say it is small and overpriced, but I was glad we went.  It was about the right size for the kids, by the time we had seen the entire thing they were ready to leave anyways.  I thought their tank displays were really incredible, plus they had a couple of monk seals in their outside enclosure.  So definitely worth a look-see if you're down there.  

 I love this pic - it looks like the fish are coming in to lunch on Adam!

The big event of the month was the Honolulu Century, I'll post another blog post with pics and the highlights...

Scrapbooking like crazy

I guess I'm trying to make up for all the scrapbooking that I DIDN'T get done last year while I was MOMS club president :)  I've gotten a ton more pages done this week.  I'm finally closing in on the end of 2009.  Whew!