How To Tire Your Kids Out and Amuse Yourselves at the Same Time (Or, The Real Value of Wii Boxing)

In our quest to get to know as many church people as possible, we continue our parade of barbeques, outings, and Wii-faciliated socialization.




Thursday night Ryan got a group together to hear Rocky sing at the W hotel. Friday night we had the visiting pastor and his wife, and Simpson and Lori Ann Tsang over for dinner and a boisterous night of Wii boxing. Daniel, who knocked Simpson out in three rounds, kept saying, "He's dead!" And we kept correcting, "Not dead. Down."



Friday Sophie had a school holiday, so I took the kids to the Honolulu Zoo to see the (hopefully pregnant) Siberian Tiger and the mating tortoises, neither of which you see everyday. In between animal sightings, the kids climbed every tree in sight and Daniel nearly lost a finger when he tried to feed pizza crumbs to the hordes of pigeons swarming the lunch area. At least he did it right in front of the "DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS" sign.



Saturday we all went to Waikiki first thing in the morning, and ran into Craig and Mendy Landreth, friends of our NYC friends Bryan and Lisa Taylor. The Landreths just moved to Hawaii to work with a Honolulu church. They were having their monthly Body Board Outreach. I'm guessing they didn't have those when they lived in Texas.

Sophie sang in the church choir for the first time on Sunday. She sang through a couple of praise choruses and hymns, then as soon as the choir was dismissed, bolted out of the church like she was being pursued by banshees. Next time, we're recommending that she go to the bathroom before the service starts.

A friend of ours from church, Susan Yuen, has published a children's cookbook, featuring decorative bento boxes (local-style lunches, with tiny dishes of rice, veggies and meat). It's called, appropriately, "Hawaii's Bento Box Cookbook" and has such recipes as "Penguin SPAM Musubi with Macaroni Salad" and "Pumpkin Patch with Tamago and Fried Chicken." My description is not doing justice to Susan's creativity or cooking skills, but you can find the book here: (Sis, don't buy one 'cause I've already picked you up a copy!)

On a serious note: Ryan is studying for his pastoral licensure exam. He needs to complete the written component by September 2. Most people study for this test for six months; Ryan has two weeks! As someone who can't tell Habakkuk from Hammurabi, I am in awe at the amount of material he has to memorize. Please keep him in your prayers as he reads, takes notes, and consumes massive quantities of Starbucks!

For Laurel

See what we got yesterday?

Ryan and I finally got our Hawaii driver's licenses, complete with rainbow illustrations. As soon as we picked up Soph from school, she and I went straight to the library to get our library cards. We've been singlehandedly supporting our local branch's used book sales for the last two weeks (this is how I picked up the Dark is Rising sequence for $1.25) - now we can get our books for free again! Well, free-ish. I have trouble returning books on time, and Sophie has trouble finding them so she can return them. We get a lot of fines.

Ryan and I had to pass a written test in order to get our Hawaii licenses. We needed to score 26 out of 30 to pass. Ryan scored 28. I scored 26. I'm usually a good test-taker. I don't think driving is a good subject in which to become a C student. (Insert snide comment by Ryan about how my driving is actually much worse than that.)

Ryan wants to name our Flying Tofu Box "Sponge Bob Square Car." I think we should just call it "TB." That way I can say things like, "I can't bring Sophie and Daniel to church today. Her dad has TB."

You may throw virtual tomatoes as you please.

This morning, while I was volunteering in Sophie's classroom -- which, incidentally, sports more trendy names than a Manhattan preschool prep program (Harmoni. Braden. Skyler. Emerald. Alyssia, pronounced "Alisha.") -- Ryan and Daniel started a garden. Ryan sawed off the tops of plastic soda bottles and used the bases to plant roma tomatoes, sweet basil, Korean hot peppers, and eggplant seeds. He used a fork to poke holes in the bottom of his makeshift pots - and he only stabbed himself in the hand once! A small-scale version of the time he drilled a hole in his leg while putting together our kitchen cupboards.

My job will be the composting. The Waikiki Worm Company sells starter kits, complete with a supply of the wiggly perionyx excavatus (sounds like a gum-eating disease), a spaghetti-like purple-hued worm that is not native to Hawaii, but has long been established here for agricultural use. Importing your own worms, which could carry invasive species and threaten Hawaii's isolated ecosystem, is a serious crime.

See picture of the little critters here: http://www.waikikiworm.com/3wwaboutwms.html

By the way, if you're wondering why Sophie looks a little . . . ruddy in her photo, it's not because she's sunburned. It's because ever since she got her face painted at Downtown Disney while we were in California, she's been trying to recreate the effect. With Crayola markers. They say they are washable. They must not have tested them on face.

Mud, Musubi, and More Sausage

Today is our 10th Anniversary! For years, we had talked about celebrating with a huge party for all of our friends and family in NY. Instead, we had dinner at our new home in HI with just our family and a couple from church, Harvey and Kathleen (a trio, if you count Kathleen's baby, due in December). Ryan grilled. Is anyone surprised?

It was a week of local-style eating for the kids. Tara and John told us about Tanabe, a local joint just below an apartment building where John used to live, and we stopped there several days this past week. The kids tried:

- Portuguese sausage musubi (Sophie loved it; Daniel wouldn't eat it)
- Bologna musubi (Sophie loved it; Daniel wouldn't eat it)
- Chinese hot dog musubi (tougher and darker red than its American counterpart; neither kid liked it)
- and finally, spam musubi, brought by their cousin Jan (both kids loved it).


This week, we are putting them on a cleansing diet of mango and papaya. Oh wait, I forgot that we stopped by a handmade ice cream shop last night for something called, "Knock Me Up on the Blower" (all the desserts had suggestive names), a pie of whipped cream, fudge, mint chocolate chip ice cream, chocolate fudge ice cream, and an oreo cookie crust. And just now we had vanilla ice cream and pineapple for dessert.

At least we got fruit in there somewhere.


Thursday night, the cousins came over for a bbq (more sausage) and Wii sports. Sophie was a bit off her peak bowling form (hand on the hip, wild swing and hop to release ball) and scored less than 200 for the first time in forever. After the kids went to bed, we tried Wii boxing. It's amazing how sweaty you can get pretending to hit someone.

On Saturday, we went for a hike up to Manoa falls; the trail is a five-minute drive from us to the back of the valley. Every guidebook we read classified it as an "easy" hike. What nobody told us is that the trail is extremely slippery with not only your garden variety mud, but also with some kind of extra goopy clay.

By the time we got back to our car, Daniel was a mudball. He spent half of the hike holding his dirty hands as far away from his body as possible, expostulating, "Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!" every step or so. If we'd let him dry, we could've sold him as a garden gnome.

The falls are at a trickle this time of year; they will reach full force during the autumn rainy season. The water is infested with some kind of bacteria, and a several ton rockfall about a year ago prevents hikers from getting close to the pool. Also, the mosquitos were out in force. But the rain forest flora is strange and wonderful: gigantic trees with multiple trunks twisted together; others with above-ground root systems that spread out in arches like low cathedral ceilings; slender bamboo groves; fern fronds several feet wide.

(The other girl in the photo is named Isa; she is from Japan and she and her family hiked with us for a while. She looked exactly like a Japanese Hannah Montana.)


Sunday, while Daniel took a nap and I curled up with Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" sequence, Sophie and Ryan tried a new beach. Sophie didn't enjoy it much - she kept getting scraped across the sand by the heavy surf. She came home with pretty much the entire beach in her bathing suit. (Harvey and Kathleen just told us that people die at that beach all the time. Oops.)

Lisa Taylor emailed to tell us that ya'll in NY saw a rainbow today! We saw one here today, too, while we were eating dinner outside. We're posting a picture (from yesterday's rainbow, technically, but they look very similar) which does not do it justice. Somehow, when you see a rainbow in person, you mentally erase the power lines and just see the rainbow, the blue sky with its hint of rain, and the mountains behind.

Who You Really Want to See; Our Flying Tofu Box

So, here at long last are photos of the people that ACCers are really interested in: Rocky and DeShannon. We've seen them a few times this week, and finally got pictures on Sunday. Rocky stopped by our house a few days earlier to surprise us, but fell on the way over and took a dime-size chunk out of her knee. It was literally hanging off her knee by a shred of skin. Depending on your age and gender, it was either incredibly gross, or really, really cool.

On Saturday, DeShannon took us to lunch at Rainbow Diner, a favorite spot for plate lunch - a combination of meat (DeShannon had chili, Ryan had

barbeque beef, the kids had shoyu [soy sauce] chicken), rice, what passes in local food for green salad (usually a few shreds of cabbage), and the ubiquitous mac salad, made with large quantities of mayonnaise and not much else.

The church welcomed us officially during Sunday's service with floral leis for Ryan and I, a haku (floral headpiece) for me, and candy leis for Daniel and Sophie. I think Pastor Andy was trying for minor ceremonial splendor, but Daniel ruined it by
refusing to have anything to do with his lei. As soon as it was put over his head, he shrugged it to the floor. Ryan and I both tried to pull it back up, but no matter what we did or said, he kept shrugging and pouting and stepping on it. The congregation was howling. Pastor Andy couldn't see anything from behind his podium; all he knew was that he had totally lost his audience.

In return for the leis, Ryan distributed Mets baseball caps. I'm sure there's a profound cultural commentary right there, but I can't seem to come up with it.

Later that day, we learned something about island living: Whatever you do, don't try to find street parking at the beach on a Sunday at 4 pm. It's impossible. We did make it to the water finally, by parking in the zoo parking lot at Waikiki, which was not the beach we were aiming for. It has more surf, and is better for body boarding, but has a ton of rocks: not just the large ones underfoot, but golf ball sized ones that get picked up by the surf and pelt your ankles. I got a nasty bruise earlier in the week. The beach we meant to go to, San Souci, is slightly east of Waikiki, just past the Honolulu Aquarium; it has smoother sand and calmer water and is off the tourist-beaten track.

Monday, we picked up our new / old car, a 2005 Toyota Scion with 24,000 miles on it. It's got a roomy interior and good mileage, and Ryan likes its design even better than his recent favorite, the PT Cruiser. The locals call it the Flying Tofu Box.

This afternoon, we tried out the outdoor community pool. As soon as we got there, it started raining cats and dogs. Nobody got out of the water, so we stayed long enough for Daniel to get cold, get wrapped up in a towel like a burrito to keep warm, and get a nice scrape on his chin when he fell going up some stairs and didn't have any hands free to catch himself.

Now that I've managed to insert injuries into nearly every section of our post, I'm going to sign off and spend some time listening to the musical sound of my very own portable dishwasher. It's my anniversary present! Isn't love grand?