Happy Holidays! (with lights on)

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this year! Although we missed all of our NY friends and family terribly (as well as others in other parts of the country), we had a great day here in Honolulu. The kids woke us up around 7:15 - not too bad. In homage to New York, we made latkes for breakfast before letting the kids rip into their presents, something they did with the enthusiasm of Godzilla demolishing Tokyo.

Daniel, before gift opening, in Spiderman shirt and pose

Sophie and Mom

Daniel's favorite presents are a Cars game for the Wii, from his Uncle Gene and Aunt Julie, and a kids' laptop. Sophie's says she likes all her Christmas presents, including a wide-eyed Japanese-looking doll with the unfortunate name of "Poupette." (Cue nonstop laughter by Ryan, who notes that it's not just any ol' doll, it's a doll that has fragrance!  Poupette the Smelly Doll!!)  Both kids have also spent an awful lot of time playing Whack a Mole, a truly inspired game of banging large, noisy rodents into submission. Too bad it doesn't work for New York subway rats.

Daniel with his dog bank from Aunty Kitty, our next-door neighbor


Daniel playing tee ball (a gift from Dad) in our garage

Kellen and Rocky competing at Whack a Mole

After gift-opening, we spent the morning at Kahala Nui, a retirement home not too far from us, where both DeShannon and Rocky work in the activities department. DeShannon led the sixth floor residents in a game of Christmas bingo, and Sophie and Daniel joined in, with Sophie helping our tablemates hunt for their squares of reindeer, Christmas lights, and snowmen. Daniel won one round, but everyone got prizes eventually. Both Sophie and Daniel picked cheetos for their prizes. And really, how much more Christmas-y can you get than that?

We spent the rest of the day cleaning, napping, and playing with our new toys. For Christmas dinner, Ryan and DeShannon deep-fried yet another turkey, and learned this startling fact: deep-frying turkey in pieces is not any faster than cooking a whole bird. Most of our on-island cousins, plus our neighbor Kitty, joined us for dinner, and later Rocky treated us to a mini-concert of Les Mis classics.  Sophie sang "Silent Night."

The night after Christmas, we survived our first Hawaii blackout. The lights went out about 6:45. We coped by getting out our candles and flashlights and putting the kids to bed. The entire island, except for one neighborhood on the Windward side, was without power for most of the night. It was an eerie experience that really made us aware of the isolation of living on an island. I bet the astronomers on Mauna Kea loved it, though - usually the light pollution of Honolulu blocks their view of the stars.

Blackouts are a common experience in Hawaii, because of the limited number of power plants on each island -- it's not like on the mainland, where you can divert power from numerous other sources. Our power finally came on at about 9:30 the next morning, and the only causualties were a pizza we couldn't put in the fridge, and Sophie's outrage at having to go to bed earlier than usual.

So that was our Christmas. We hope yours was as fun, and as filled with family and friends (and perhaps somewhat more filled with electricity). We are eagerly looking forward to our first New Year's Eve here. Fireworks are a huge tradition, and everyone basically tries to blow up the island. For under $15, you can buy a 22 foot-long string of 30,000 firecrackers. And that's just for the amateurs.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year! We love and miss you all, especially around the holidays!

Just to make you jealous . . .

. . . a few photos from our garden:




Let you think otherwise from these photos, we do have seasons here in Hawaii. The rainy season is now upon us in all its splendid sogginess. We did get to the beach last Sunday afternoon during an uncharacteristically clear day, but we've given up entirely on trying to line dry our clothes outside due to the frequency and violence of the cloudbursts. We can't complain - we know what the weather is like in NY in December. Besides, here you can still wear slippers when it's raining, which eliminates problems like soaked sneakers and smelly socks.


Ryan's small vegetable garden has finally borne fruit. Three, to be exact. All tomatoes. A few more, plus one miniscule eggplant, are in the process of ripening. Of the three tomatoes, Daniel has eaten two of them as though they were apples: raw, and plain, biting directly into them. When I was Daniel's age, I thought tomatoes were for slicing little mouths into, squeezing really hard and pretending to make them throw up. Oh, wait, I do that now. Never mind.

My Aunty Linda (my Dad's sister) stayed with us for a few days last week. She was in town to see my cousin Grant, who is an assistant band director here on the island. She and Grant both came to Sophie's ballet performance. I think she took video. If I can track it down, I'll post it.


Sophie is finishing up her last week of school before a three-week long Christmas break and is eagerly awaiting Sunday, when the children's choir performs their musical. She asked last week how long it was until the show, and when we told her a week, she complained, "Aww, that's so long!" She's doing an ensemble number dressed up as a cheerleader, pom poms and all, and has a few solo lines in one of the final songs.

Daniel refused to join the other kids on stage, but he's been singing along to Sophie's practice CD. He's a little confused about some of the lyrics, though. Sophie's "cheerleader" song is called "Mighty God," and the second verse begins like this:

Who can set the prisoner free,
Who walked on water, calmed the sea?

Daniel's version?

Who can send the Christmas tree?

So when you ask, "Daniel, who can send the Christmas tree?" he answers right away. "God!"

At least he's connecting God and Christmas there somehow.

A few weeks ago we took a drive up Tantalus, which is a long winding road up through the mountains. At the top, you have a spectacular view of Diamondhead, the ocean and the city. Ryan was trying to get a good shot for the City Church website. It was a little too overcast for a perfect photo, but you can get a good sense of one of Hawaii's famous views.


I meant to download and post a few more photos (one of Aunty Linda and Sophie and maybe one of our Angel Tree collection day at church), and revise this blog a bit, but since I somehow managed to accidentally publish it already (I really think blogger.com was born out of a fiendish plot to drive HTML-challenged perfectionists INSANE), I'm just going to gather my dignity and finish up for now.

Stuffed (and I don't mean the turkey)

So, I'm finally sitting down to blog again. It's been a whirlwind few weeks, complete with THREE Thanksgiving turkeys (one roasted the traditional way, one smoked, and one deep-fried), a piano recital, a ballet recital, a birthday party or two, a baby shower (not ours), my Aunty Linda visiting from Hilo, and way too many leftovers for any one family to reasonably consume. And yet consume them we did. I think there may be a few scraps of ham left in our fridge, and a few tupperwares of turkey soup in our freezer, but other than that, if you cut us, we might bleed poultry and sweet potatoes, along with vast quantities of butter.

DeShannon and his favorite naked decapitated bird. Not quite as visceral as that Thanksgiving morning video of Sarah Palin at the turkey farm, but still not a pretty sight.


Uncle Soko brandishing his Thanksgiving booty. Cousin Kellan contributing to the dignity of the moment.

The Fam celebrating Carrie's birthday.

Back row to front, left to right: Grant, Kellan, Guy
Aunty Marvalee, Kyle, Christy (Guy's girlfriend), Jan
Sophie, Carrie, Daniel, Uncle Soko
(Aunty Debbie and Uncle Karl are somewhere around - it's their house.)

Sophie (who had not gone shopping with her dad) tried to help me guess what my present from Ryan was. "Chocolate?" she ventured. Daniel (who had gone shopping) said, "No, silly, it's shirts!"


Daniel blowing bubbles at Aunty Debbie and Uncle Karl's house - a very serious pursuit.


Sophie performing in her Worship Ballet recital on Sunday night. She is getting to be quite the seasoned performer: no stage fright at all, even though a few weeks ago, she had to be bribed with dessert just to play piano for our fellowship group.


The gals in purple dancing to "Joy to the World."


Season's greetings from Sophie and her face.

Gallop Pony

Here's a little video clip of Sophie's First Piano Recital Ever last Saturday. The piano music, "Gallop Pony," and "Tambourine Party," is from Faber and Faber's piano method. Sophie's long red dress, complete with rhinestones all over the bodice and skirt, is from Ross. The occasional blinding flashes from the audience are, of course, from Ryan (using the new camera lens that Darcy brought him from New York).

When Darcy and Cris Came to Town

No, that's not them. That's a crab we saw while at Turtle Bay with Darcy and Cris, our former housemates, best friends, and Sophie and Daniel's godparents. They were in town for a whole week - Darcy was on his way back from a missions conference in Thailand and Cris on the second leg of a vacation that started in Seattle. We took them everywhere . . . and fed them everything. We're all on a diet now. (We didn't see any turtles at Turtle Bay - that's what the crab is doing here. He's a placeholder.)

On Friday, we hiked the Makapu'u trail, on the southern Windward Coast. (It's name reminds me of "maka pia pia," the Hawaiian word for eye boogers.) Sophie was having a great hair day.

The view from the top.

Saturday morning we went to the Farmer's Market at Kapiolani Community College. Daniel got a strawberry mochi. You can't tell from his face, but he liked it.

Saturday night we went to see DeShannon play with his band, Bop Tribal, at the Dragon Upstairs in Chinatown.

The next morning, Darcy preached at our church. He doesn't look like a man who'd been out partying past midnight, does he?


On Tuesday, Ryan fulfilled his longtime ambition when we ate at a famous North Shore Shrimp Truck. We waited almost an hour for heaping plates of freshly-caught jumbo shrimp scampi, served with rice and mango-pineapple and coconut smoothies.

Because we hadn't had enough for lunch: dessert at the historic Matsumoto's shave ice stand on the North Shore. The passion fruit shave ice with a scoop of ice cream on the bottom was the best: tart and not too sweet. Sophie had a combination of bubble gum, cotton candy, root beer and coconut cream flavors. Sound disgusting? It was.

That's it for this round of photos! We have more that we'll put in a later post. We hope you can visit us soon, too!

Bingeing on Birthdays

With Aunty Cris and Uncle Darcy in town, Sophie had a week solid of birthday celebrations and birthday treats. Birthday Party No. 1: The Old Spaghetti Factory. Sophie slurping up her Super Refined Sugar Bomb Oreo Shake (or something like that). Definitely a once-a-year treat.

Sophie with her brother on her actual birthday morning. The pink fuzzy pillow is a gift from Mom and Dad. I think the two of them look especially happa (half Asian, half haole) in this picture. But maybe that's just because of the thing Daniel's doing with his eyes.

That afternoon, we met Aunty Jan and Uncle Ron at Waikiki for a birthday picnic (Birthday No. 2) We had malasadas from Leonard's (Portuguese) bakery, in honor of the Caires. Right after the beach, Cris and Mom took Sophie to a Honolulu Youth Theater production of A Midsummer's Night Dream. It was a shortened, kid-friendly version, generally faithful to the original, except for a bizzare interlude called, "Halibut: The Fish of Denmark," in which the only things rotten were the puns.

Tuesday night, DeShannon took us to Tanaka's, a very yummy Japanese restaurant, for yet another celebration. Who's the birthday girl, and who's the queen?

Besides the parties and goodies already mentioned, Sophie also had a brownie and pink buttercream frosting cake with our fellowship group on Friday night, cupcakes with the children's choir on Sunday, then more cupcakes with her class on Monday. And that's not counting the two trips to Yogurt Land (a place where you can buy self-serve frozen yogurt and toppings by the pound) on Tuesday and Wednesday, shave ice from Matsumoto's the following Tuesday, Japanese sweet potato and haupia pie on Wednesday afternoon . . .

Did I mention that we're all on diets?

Fun in On-oh-lu-lu

This week's blog title is in honor of Silas Wade, who brought parents Brad and Angela and his sister Violet to visit us this past week. For a nearly two-year old, he did an excellent job of pronouncing his vacation destination. While in beautiful Hawaii, his favorite outfit was not his swimsuit, but Daniel's Sesame Street bicycle helmet, worn backwards and with not much else.

The gang on the Pineapple Express at the Dole Plantation.

Daniel, Sophie and Violet with a genuine Dole pineapple. One pineapple per plant, and some of the varieties are pink!

Brad and Silas by the coi pond at the Dole Plantation. The pond was literally seething with coi. The kids got to feed them, and the little suckers are so aggressive that they flop on top of each other in huge piles to compete for food pellets.


One of several North Shore beaches where turtles come on shore to warm themselves in the sun. This one made several attempts to land, but found the surf too rough and turned back out to sea.


Sophie and Violet at the Old Spaghetti Factory. They were "twins" that day and "sisters" for the week.

Violet and Silas at Waikiki

Did we keep them busy, or what?

Myers' Funniest Pool Videos

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with experienced grandparents and very gracious hosts Ann and Jim Wills. Next week, they will host a "40 Below" BBQ for City Church of Honolulu, for singles and families in that age range. So they invited us over to "preview" their condo facilities: a fourth-floor outdoor playground, swimming pool, picnic area, tennis court, and two grass dog runs, complete with decorative fire hydrants.


Ann took videos of the kids' pool antics, so we're posting a few here for your enjoyment. Jim is in the pool in one of the videos; you will hear Ann's voice off-camera. A couple of the videos show the fruit of Daniel's swimming lessons; others show Ryan flirting with death . . . or at least a hernia.





Thanks to everyone who prayed for Ryan's sermon on Sunday! He did very well. Pastor Andy was out of town, and our elder, Simpson (that's right, we have only one!), called in sick at the last minute, so besides preaching, Ryan had to run much of the service by himself. Rocky led worship, and, at Ryan's request, sang "Rock of My Salvation," a favorite from our time together at Astoria Community Church.

Ryan says he will absolutely NOT be posting his sermon on the blog. Guess that means everyone will have to come visit the next time he preaches. We'll see you here!

Bean Bags and Band Aids

We went to a garage sale in Manoa this weekend and Sophie and Daniel each got to spend a dollar. Sophie got a "beanless (i.e. inflatable) bean bag" that came in what turned out to be an ant-infested box. Daniel got a lightsaber. I don't think real Jedis are allowed to get their weapons at garage sales. Although, come to think of it, maybe that's why there weren't many left by the time Luke Skywalker showed up.



Last week, Ryan took Sophie and Daniel to a winter league baseball game in Pearl City. The Waikiki Beach Boys vs. the Honolulu Sharks. They wore their Brooklyn Cyclones and Mets caps and still got a ball to take home.



Sophie finally finished reading her entire children's Bible (700+ pages) and thus earned her Daddy's permission to begin reading Harry Potter. I've pointed out many times that since the last Harry Potter book actually quotes the New Testament - in two places! - not to mention that Harry himself is sort of a Christ figure, the series is probably not going to lead her down the path of perdition. But making Sophie read the Bible first is Ryan's way of hedging his bets.



Please keep praying for Ryan as he preaches this Sunday! Thanks for praying for me as I played piano these past Sundays. It was a fun challenge, and I'm very glad to hand it back to the professionals!

Upcoming event to keep in prayer: This week our church will be participating in a ministry called Family Promise, cooking meals for homeless families who are being temporarily housed in local churches. A group will be staying at our host church, Central SDA, this week.

Here's a picture of Daniel praying. Actually, it's a picture of him trying to avoid having his picture taken. (He fell at Sophie's school and got a small bump and scratch, hence the band aid.) But it makes a much better ending to the blog if we pretend otherwise.