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.