Honolulu thus far

Holiday Honolulu Christmas Decor. I love how Santa is riding a wave pulled by a team (pack?) of dolphins. The Shaka Santa and Mrs. Claus. Each of the figures, 21 feet tall, 15 feet wide and weighs 4,000 pounds, is lugged our annually to make appearance at the Honolulu City Lights. Kenz makes the shaka sign (“hang-loose” sign to us mainlanders) now whenever she sees or hears of Santa. It’s pretty cute.

A holiday village set up for the Honolulu City Lights.

Rides at the nighttime festivities.

Christmas trees Downtown.

Poinsettias all over Downtown.

Fire-dancer from the Honolulu City Lights parade on the night of the official city lighting

Christmas crafts at the library, all of which have since been destroyed.

At the Triple Crown surfing event in Sunset Beach.

This picture was taken before the largest waves in decades hit about a week later, making the beach access now a cliff. This dog kept coming up to us with a coconut (see between his legs) which we would throw into the ocean and he would retrieve (knocking K over a couple of times in the process).

A rainbow from our apartment view.

At any moment it is not unusual to find stray chickens wandering on the beach. If I were a bird of any sort, I'd live here too. No migrating necessary.

Our winter snowman. Some tourists from Ohio even took a pic with it. Next time I'll charge.

A beautiful sunset.

Crazy banya trees at Ala Moana Beach Park.

Greeted by some friendly faces outside the Polynesian Cultural Center. The beautiful temple.

Pineapple fields on the way to the North Shore.

Eating some Matsumoto's shaved ice in Haliewa. Not as good as Bahama Bucks in Mesa, but I won't complain. Our favorite flavor is lilikoi (passion fruit). The real die-hards eat their Matsumoto's smothered in sweetened condensed milk. The waves at Waimea Bay seem to break right at the shoreline. In 1978, Eddie Aikau, the first lifeguard at Waimea Bay and well-known surfer, was part of an canoe expedition that was following the ancient route between Hawaii and Tahiti. The canoe ended up capsizing so Eddie decided to go get help by paddling on his surfboard towards the nearest island. The crew was later rescued by the Coast Guard, but after the largest air-sea search in Hawaii History, Eddie Aikau was never located. So in his memory, the Quiksilver Big Wave Invitational in Memory of Eddie Aikau at Waimea Bay was created. As a requirement, the event only occurs when the waves reach a face height of over 30 feet, which has only happened eight times since 1985 (one of those times was a couple of weeks ago when swells reached record heights in decades!). His memory also lives on in the saying "Eddie would go".

Kenz and Dad at the beach.

At the BYU vs U of Hawaii basketball game. BYU did us proud.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

If children could get drunk off candy, this is what they'd look like. Notice the smeared face paint and glossy neck from haphazardly consuming anything wrapped in a bright package.Two princesses... I guess with Aunt Rachel that makes three. I was busy handing all of her candy we had just acquired out to late trick-or-treaters. Meanwhile, she was making a deal with Dracula. Good thing Dracula wasn't up for a fight because Snow White was going through withdrawal (she hadn't had candy for about three minutes). Finally she left and Dracula had all of the candy to himself...-ah!-ah!-ah!

This is the sunset at sunset beach. Pretty beautiful place.

This is the temple in Laie. They are doing some renovations so there are scaffolds up.

This is Kaneohe beach. My company had a party last week on the island you can see. It was pretty cool.

This is Pali Lookout. It is up next to the top of the mountains. This is looking down on the windward side of the island. Honolulu is on the other side.

Here is another picture from Pali Lookout. The wind really blows up there.

Kahuku CACTF job

Here is a picture of part of the jobsite where we will be building the Combined Arms Collective Training Facility. As you can see, it is pretty thick. Lots of dense trees and undergrowth. It's on the north shore of the island. You can see the ocean in one of the pictures below.

Batch plant for mixing concrete on site. We are so far away from concrete mixing yards that we had to set up a batch plant on site. We have two concrete trucks on site. This plant adds the right quantities of aggregate, cement and water.

Here is a look at our storage/lay-down yard up there. We cleared this area and put down a good layer of rock. One thing about this area is it rains a ton. We need a good clear area that is rocked for storage of materials and equipment.

Here you get a pretty good look of the surrounding area. This is actually a helicopter landing site that the military maintains. This is an active training area, so if anyone is injured they are taken to this clearing where they can be air-lifted to a hospital. As you can see, it is the only clear area around.

Our last hours together

Here are some pictures one of my childhood bff's took so Boe wouldn't forget how darn cute his family is. Check out her talent at shutterblissphotography.blogspot.com.

We are moving

This will be our new home for five years. I guess it's okay.

So adios to my beautiful cacti:

And Aloha to Honolulu.

The reason for this unexpected but exciting change? Boe is starting a project somewhere in/around Honolulu at the end of August that requires a move on our part. Unfortunately, I attend a silly graduate school that requires me to stay in Arizona. Thus Kenzie and I invite you to a pity party we will be hosting for the next four months until December when our family reunites in Honolulu. We are actually excited to spend some time with Kenz's aunt, uncle and cousins while Boe is away...Kenz will have a dog to bother/torture and all the cheetohs, chocolate milk and princess movies her little heart desires.

Did you know they have castles in Coronado? We were lucky enough to spend some at this one. Some of the festivities included long-boarding (I showed up Boe in this sport), kayaking, speed-boating on the Casino Royale boat, dolphin-watching, inflatable ball olympics, and enjoying some local Mexican shrimp burritos. A funny story: One of the boats docked next to the castle had a nest of some endangered bird on the top of its mast. The government won't allow the owner to move the boat until the bird leaves. Two years and many bird droppings later, the bird has decided the life of luxury on Coronado Island is quite appealing and is subsequently taking advantage of the no-eviction perk of being endangered.
Can you see the seals that were striking a pose for the camera?
In one twist of fate during our Casino Royale boat ride, a life-jacket (unattached to anyone in the boat) flew overboard. We quickly turned to retrieve the jacket when no more than five feet from the vest was a pod of dolphins. Boe's brother wanted to create a magical moment and swim with the dolphins, so he quickly jumped in, nearly missed landing on one! In my heart I like to think that the dolphins were coming to save the person (if there had been one) in the life-jacket...why else would they have surfaced at this exact moment around this exact object?

Two powerhouses four-wheeled it up Powerhouse Mountain.

Picking wildflowers in the Idaho mountains.

Something more spectacular than sparklers was happening in the sky.

Kenz getting friendly with a dog at the fair.

Buried treasure at AZ beach

This past weekend weekend we spent some time at the beautiful beaches in AZ. Yes, that is water. I think I even saw a couple of dolphins. Maybe not. At one point during our trip to the AZ oasis, Boe disappeared underwater. On the shoreline at the time, I yelled out to a friend who was in deeper waters with Boe to inquire if he had gone looking for "buried treasure". She replied a very honest, "yes". Little did I know how honest this was. A couple of minutes later Boe appeared out of the water, borrowed some children's goggles from a family camped next to us, and disappeared back into the water. Did he really expect to find a pirate ship with undiscovered booty, or even better, an old football? Apparently, luck was on his side...he struck gold. His own gold, that is. You see, smarter beachgoers would be sure to remove their wedding rings before treading unknown and dark waters, but not Boe. Donning pint-sized goggles he swam back to the x-marked spot where the ring was lost and proceeded to make a number of nose-to-lake-bottom dives. I'm still not sure how he managed to locate the ring. Perhaps the spirit of Jack Sparrow guided his hand to that oh-so-valuable treasure, and perhaps Jack also lent him the courage to share his discovery with me.

Wicked...hairbows...

In preparation for our attendance at Wicked the musical, we have been listening with wreckless faith to the Wicked soundtrack since Kenzie was born. Yesterday she surprised us with some sing-along during "Popular", prefacing her solo with "he coms, he coms, he coms" (trans. "here it comes!!!!!!!!") She's no Mariah Carey, but we were proud.


Aunt Sara made some hairbows the other day, Kenz was kind enough not to rip this one out.





My attempt at a hairbow.


Not the best hiding spot.