Holy Hot Moly!

If you've been watching the news, you have hopefully seen what's been going on with the latest eruption of Kilauea Volcano. It's more active than its been in the 5 years we've been here and the video footage is awesome.

Going to Volcano National Park has been one of our favorite places in Hawaii. We've been there quite a bit since living here. I've seen it in all sorts of stages from quiet and peaceful, to smoking, to flowing. The volcano is truly awesome.

To see the latest updates check out this site http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/update/images.html

There is also a website with a real time camera set up, although i've been watching it the past few days, and there hasn't been much activity except for smoke from that angle. If you wanna follow the video here's the link to it

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/NCcam/

Here's a few of my favorite volcano pics from past visits too! hiking a craterviews from the helicopternight viewing of lavaChain of Craters: End of the Road.

Movie Monday Meeps

Megan has a strange hiccup disease. They are LOUD and funny sounding. They can come out once very suddenly and then never again, or they can be as long lasting and constant as a regular hiccup episode in a normal person (haha, yeah meg, you're not normal!). Anyway, Megs first week here Nora would constantly mimic these sounds, we call them MEEPS, because that's what they sound like. After about a week, we all became accustomed to the MEEPS and Nora stopped trying to make the sounds. That is until last night....we got some funny video of her trying to do it. I know there are 5 of them, they are all short. If you don't think its funny, just don't watch the other 4--though Megan, Mike and I have been watching them repeatedly and laughing. Make sure you scroll down the to bottom and put the music on pause so you can get the full effect! Happy Monday Meeps.








and Holden joins in...

The Counter

A while back, a new restaurant opened up on the island--it's called The Counter. It's a francheise operation, build-your-own burger joint. Thing is, this place is nowhere near my house and is never convenient to get to. I've been hearing such good things about it, so with Mike here, we made an exception. So glad we did. Hawaii's Counter is operated by the very Daniel Dae Kim himself. You know, Jin of LOST and Chin of Hawaii Five-O. I love that those names all rhyme---Kim, Jin, Chin. Ha. Anyway, back to the restaurant, here's the menu. It comes clipped to a clipboard with a pencil and your check your boxes and turn it in to the waite staff. Pretty Fun. While waiting for our food, we decided to give coloring a try with the kiddos. We haven't had much success in the past with coloring/drawing. They always preferred to eat/throw the crayons and pencils. Which i personally think is well within the rights of 1 year old. Although the doctor at the kids 12 month well baby visit seemed to think we were already behind the game, not having started them with "scribbling". Eh, what does a 20 something, single, no kids, resident know? But that is getting off topic....back to coloring. The babies, Holden especially seemed to be much more interested in it.

Daddy, what am i supposed to do with this thing?

an artist already

okay, so we apparently aren't quite out of the "eating crayons" stage...

trying her best

Nora loves to chew on lemons. It's not something we do everyday of course, but it is a nice distraction in restaurants. It's crazy to me that she can even tolerate it!

And now for the burger portion of the blog....

Mike with his MONSTER BURGER

Lettace, tomato, Monterray Jack, Grilled Onions, Appelwood Bacon, Guacamole, Mayo

We do love yummy Guac!attempting to stuff that Monster in his mouththe very well-documented "first bite"and my burger...it pales in comparrison really.

Cheddar, Onion, Slaw, Chili and Mayo.

I like my food to match, and we had already ordered fried dill pickles and sweet potato fries...so i went the southern route with the burger too.

the fries. they were amazing.

HRB is enjoying his portion

Nora devouring the guacamole

HRB loves the fries too!

just look at that happy face!

and just because she can...she accessorizes before we head out the door!

What does a dog say?

We went to the Humane Society back this fall to celebrate the twins 9 mo (or 10 mo, can't remember and too lazy to look it up) birthday....but that was without Daddy. Holden and Nora really wanted to show him all the cool animals so, we went back again. I think Daddy enjoyed the animals...and spending time with his faves!

rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs, OH MY!

Wanna be just like my Daddy

Dogs say....woof

Sis, watch out...that thing will LICK you!

Mommy, why don't our cats have cool toys like this?

AATTTT! as Nora would say

i think HRB likes this toy as much as the cats do!

and since we are on the subject. i have been working with the babies a lot on animal names and sounds. so far no dice with Holden, although if you wanna talk about balls and cars, he's your guy. Nora will listen and try, but the only thing that comes out clearly right now is Duck and Quack Quack. We're also working on Bird (tweet tweet) and Cat (Meow). For some reason when i meow she gets to giggling and turns into Mrs. Silly Pants...of course i secretly love this.

Well Bye Bye for now. Or as Holden would say, Ball Ball.

Electricity, Unions, Napless Days, and a Flat Tire.

The last few days have been pretty busy. We've been running errands, TRYING to keep up with kids schedules, and trying to squeeze in some fun stuff too.

Yesterday, early in the morning, i woke up to the sound of NOTHING. That's right, the power went out and the house went dead silent--no A/C hum, no roar of the fans, refrigerator and whatever house noises we become so accustomed to. About 10 mins later a few of our smoke alarms started beeping because of low batteries to which i couldn't do much about without making a lot of noise and fumbling around in the dark. Eh...throw a pillow over my ears, kick the blankets off the bead, because it certainly will heat up and try to go back to sleep. Which i finally did until 8am when we awoke to the power still off. Dang It.

Upon trying to search for the reason for the outage, I find out that a storm in the night knocked over a tree that in turn knocked over 15 power lines and blocked our main road to get in and out of Ewa. Dang It Again.

So, we decided to face the traffic, get our of Ewa, find some power, eat some banana pancakes and run some errands. Which we do and all is well until we find out that at 3:30pm a supposedly planned strike by the union workers of our ONLY power plant on the island has put all storm repairs on freeze. Dang It Once Again.

I would like to interject here, that coming from the South where Unions are not an issue, it's all a bit foreign to me. Today's issue was obviously bad timing on the 8000 homes in Ewa Beach,
but supposedly good timing for Hawaiian Electric workers. I do care about workers being treated fairly, but excuse me if I care more about getting our electricity back at the moment. If you would like to read more about what happened here are some articles. Here and Here.


Anyway, we go out and eat again, this time it's not so fun with fussy babies who have had two days of no naps. Then, we have to run to the grocery store to get ice and food that will work in a possible long-term outage. We also stop at Sports Authority to buy their LAST Coleman stove, that in all honestly we should have bought years ago...between camping and power outages, we always say we wish we had one.

Then it was home to a dark, hot night of playing boardgames by candlelight in front of the draftiest window we have. Not too terrible. That is until Megan calls us because she has been stranded downtown after a whale watching tour with a flat tire in our car. Dang It Yet Again.

We have probably had close to 8 flats on this car since living on this island 5 years. Yeah. You heard me right. Thank the Lord for Geico, and Good Roadside Assistance. And also, thank the Lord for his good timing. This whole day could have been 10 times worse without my sweet, wonderful, capable, all-providing husband. I love him. Really.

Then, at about 3:30am this morning i awoke to the sound of HUMMING. A/C, Fans, Refrigerators...and even various lights all through the house from when we kept hitting light switches trying to turn lights on throughout the day in habit.

Apparently, the 20-30 Non Union workers that HECO has working for them along with borrowed help from the local cable and telephone companies, our power was restored. The roads have not been cleared and traffic is still a problem. But who cares when you can take hot showers, sleep in the cool air, and cook your own food.

Man. We are SO PLUGGED IN! I'm the first to say i enjoy taking time out, camping and enjoying the peaceful slowness of just being with family and friends--but i love it on my terms. Not HECO's.

Afternoon in Wailua

Yesterday we went to Wailua to spend some time and have dinner at a friends beach house with some of our church family. We got to the house a little early to hopefully have some time on the beach before dinner. As we were driving though, the rain started to fall and the North Shore was completely covered in clouds, so our beach afternoon didn't go as planned. Still, we had a little time in between the rain to play in the sand with our toys.

love this one of my favorite boys
such a serious face!

big footprints, little footprints

much happier.

i heart her.

i randomly found this peice of a coconut husk that was a perfect match to my hair. weird. i know. anyway, we had to have a bit of fun with it. So meet the new Joe Dirt.

i tried to give NGB some good wispy bangs...i don't think she was interested

I also just gotta say. Very rarely do i take the kids out past their bedtime. It's just not ever worth messing up a good routine. On this day however, in order to have some good time to fellowship with friends, we kept the babies out late and they were fabulous.

Holden played well the whole time, and even made a new best friend in one of our church elders, Steve Chan. He even started kissing Steve, on his own accord, before the night was over--it was so cute. Nora was also great, when she got tired she just curled right up in my arms and went to sleep--something i thought i would never ever see her do.

When it was time to go home, they went right to sleep in the car and then after changing into diapers and PJ's at home, they fell asleep with no sound what-so-ever. We really are blessed to have 2 wonderful children.

Bananas for Bananas

we are a banana loving house for sure... here's Mike sharing his first ever banana with the kiddos and then him making his first ever Daddy Special...banana pancakes...for Saturday morning breakfast. Yes, momma tries, but they are never as good!

mmm... daddy can we do this again tomorrow?

Date Night

We got to go on a date this past weekend. Original plan was dinner and a movie, but we got a little caught up at dinner with the beautiful view and fun atmosphere and instead just hung out at our favorite Hawaiian restaurant, Dukes.