It seems like we have been crazy busy lately...
Erica needed to have oral surgery up in the roof of her mouth right behind her teeth. She had a little tooth that had to come out,
all smiles before,
trying to still smile afterwards,
HI has been feverishly getting ready for
APEC, they've spent a ton fixing up Nimitz and cleaning up after moving homeless out.
Now Evan is in the chair...
getting braces.
Saturday, while Erik worked, we went to
Punahou for Lacy
Veach Day of Discovery, they started with
taiko-amazingly haunting Japanese drums. Lacy
Veach grew up in Hawaii, he graduated from
Punahou and the Air Force Academy, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal, and Purple Heart while a fighter pilot, and then became a NASA astronaut.
the head of
Punahou School sang the school song and welcomed us.
Punahou was founded in 1841, it's a bit famous now that a graduate has become president (Obama) and it's sports program was ranked number 1 as being the best in the US with alumni winning 17 Olympic medals. Steve case, the founder of AOL is also a grad as is the founder of
ebay. The school has graduated 11 Army Generals, 3 Rear Admirals, 1 Marine Major General, and 6 Air Force Generals. I'd be here all day listing academic and other achievements.
In 1975, the land known as
Ka Punahou was taken in battle by King Kamehameha, he gave the 225 acres to chief
Kame'eiamoku for his loyalty. His granddaughter,
Liliha, gave the land to Reverend Hiram
Bingham, a Christian missionary. Students attend chapel every 6 days. Tuition is $18,000...per year...that includes kindergarten too...
Next to speak and talk story was
Nainoa Thompson who is an Native Hawaiian navigator and director of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. He used ancient Polynesian methods to navigate the
Hokule'a and the
Hawai'iloa (replicas of Polynesian double hulled voyaging canoes) from Hawaii to other Polynesian island nations. He is a graduate of
Punahou as well as a very good friend of Lacy
Veach.
A photo of the
ko'i or
adze (ax) out the window of the space shuttle as it was passing over the Hawaiian Islands. The
adze quarry was on
Mauna Kea-it was in fact a huge complex of quarries, work sites, shelters, and shrines from 9,000-13,000' elevation. Few places have the kind of hard rock needed for tools. The stone was lashed to a wooden handle and used to hollow out
koa trees.
The kids had a workshop on using GPS,
and another on tracking the sun with a homemade device.
I thought this Bird of Paradise looked particularly bird like,
the original school hall built in 1851,
a marker for where the
Bingham house stood,
the
panini o
kapunahou along the lava wall of
Punahou was planted in 1836 by Mrs.
Bingham. The
hylocereus hedge is huge-300 meters long and has these huge spectacular flowers that bloom at night,
we had a hedge of these at the very first house we lived in when we first moved to Hawaii 15 years ago, in the mornings I was greeted by these gorgeous flowers,
Dale Olive, a UH science professor and part of the Future Flight Hawaii Weird Science Team (which Owen will be going to in June) does an awesome science demonstration, here he is showing how to make and play a
Babooze bagpipe,
Okay, does anyone know what a
puffette is? We saw this really odd food truck, food trucks are hugely popular here for lunch time grinds but this one for egg puffs just was...odd...
we saw a beautiful rainbow colored cloud,
Halloween, Erica is an angel,
we have such great neighbors, the anticipation of how they are going to dress up is so exciting,
Owen's, Erik's, Evan's, and Erica's pumpkins-they drew and carved themselves.
Uncle Chris came for the weekend so we took him off to see the real Hawaii-up the Waianae side to Kaeana Point. On the way we saw this parrot in the car,
Erik regularly carries a gallon jug of water on the hikes, a couple passed us with the girl carrying the big backpack and Erik just thought that was the greatest thing,
the blow hole,
Erik had Evan set a paper cup over it, it was pretty funny watching the cup blow up into the air,
the surf was pretty rough,
I couldn't figure out what all these black creatures were all over the rocks, they were pretty resistant to the wave action,
these guys were set up for some heavy duty fishing, Erik talked to one who said they kayak out their lines and fish all night,
we've made a few jokes about this, it's not real attractive in person though,
we couldn't figure out what caused this, the way it was positioned it looked like a meteor hit it,
they saw this cave and decided to explore, I was surprised how long they were gone for,
we have our own Via Appia,
the protected Pacific Shearwater Birds, they are ground nesting and migrate from Tasmania to Alaska stopping in Hawaii, they come to the islands only to breed, they are related to the albatross-which we did not see any of this time-apparently people had been bringing their dogs which were killing the babies who just sit helpless. A giant fence and gate system has been installed, I hope the albatross return, they are spectacular,
two of the three napping monkseals,
big beautiful waves,
we saw another seal on the way back,
after the hike we stopped at the beach,
the boys were brave enough to play in the waves, there were warning signs all over the beach,
Sunday they all hiked Koko Head,
Chris decided this is something he never wanted to do again...my thoughts exactly,
Bellows was the next stop, Erica made some napping seals, 
she played in the waves too!
and caught some jellies,
one very strange looking plant,
this is the Pacific Golden Plover that lives in our court and hangs in our yard, in the summer the plovers have black faces and bellies, in the winter they loose the black and keep the brown and white specks. They are amazing like the shearwater birds in that they will fly straight from Alaska to Hawaii for the winter. We joke that's why we only see them walk everywhere now-their little wings are tired and they are sick of flying. This one is pretty fleet footed and we love that it hangs in our court.
