The Blog Formerly Known as An Orange County Sitcom

If you ever find yourself on Oahu's North Shore...

Eat here:

Their motto is "the Best", and they are, indeed, the BEST!  Wonderful burgers and fish sandwiches on never-before-tasted-so-soft-and-fresh Kaiser rolls.  And the thinnest shoestring fries I've ever seen.

No matter how hungry you are, avoid this place:

It might seem like one of those obvious things to avoid a place that looks like this.  GWH tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted that it would be fun and funky and cheap.  Au contraire!  In case you can't tell from the picture, the building is a complete dump.  None of that Joe's Crab Shack style faux-shack stuff - this is a genuine shack that should be condemned.  And the sushi was expensive - about 30% more than what we pay at nice sushi places on the mainland.  At least we got a good laugh out of the experience.  GWH was very sweet and didn't hold a grudge.

How long can I milk the pictures from our trip to Hawaii?

For Wordless Wednesday

USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor

A belated Memorial Day tribute for Wordless Wednesday:

Diamond Head

for Wordless Wednesday

Vacationland

We have really enjoyed our stay on the Big Island.  The scenery is gorgeous, the people are funky, the snorkeling is amazing, and the house we rented is very comfortable.   Here are some pix of the house: Honu Kai. It's in an area called Vacationland, which other than being 4 syllables doesn't sound very Hawai'ian, does it? ( Hawai'ian words tend to be VERY long and have LOTs of vowels)

We've had several highlights on this part of our trip.  We spent a day at Volcanoes National Park.  We trekked through the Hawai'i Tropical Botanical Gardens.  (I hope to post some photos of this later!)  We had Mothers' Day dinner at Paolo's in Pahoa.  We've snorkeled across the street from our house at the Waiopaie Tide Pools Marine Preserve.  We visited the Mauna Loa macademia nut plantation and ate the most divine ice cream!

It's been marvelous, but I must confess that I'm looking forward to getting home to the land of air conditioning and low humidity.  I'm a little too delicate for this rainforest climate - the mosquitos have enjoyed having me here.  (what do they eat when they can't get OC Mom and her children?)

Happy Mothers' Day

Miz Booshay at Quiet Life takes beautiful pictures of her children.  When I complimented her on it a few weeks ago, she replied that she takes pictures of what she loves.  What a great philosophy; I've tried to adopt it as my own.  We attended a luau last week, and while all the other tourists were busy snapping photos of the hula dancers, flame throwers, etc.; I was busy snapping photos of my children WATCHING the hula dancers and flame throwers.  (I'm sure the people around me thought I was nuts, since my camera was so rarely pointed at the stage!)

In honor of Mothers' Day, I'm posting a couple of my favorites.

(yes, those are tattoos on Thing 2's wrist and Thing 1's arm...the kids went native!  The tattoos were temporary and have already worn off).

Happy Mothers' Day!

Close encounters

Early yesterday morning, GWH and the kids headed down to the lagoon to go snorkeling. It's a good fifteen-minute walk down to the lagoon from our room, so imagine my surprise when barely 30 minutes after they left, there was a gentle tap at the door. I opened it to find two frazzled-looking children. Here's how the story unfolded: They had arrived at the lagoon, put on their gear, and waded out into the water. When they put their faces into the water, the first thing that Thing 1 saw was...

a jellyfish. She immediately headed back to the beach, with little brother close on her heels; Thing 2 was certainly not going to stay in those jelly-infested waters! GWH decided to stay, and was rewarded by seeing fish, turtles, etc., but no more jellies. Apparently Thing 1 had found the only jellyfish in the lagoon that morning. Which is why the kids watched sea-life on Nickelodeon yesterday instead of in the Pacific.

And here's a puzzle for you:  Why is it that we can't afford cable TV at $50/month, but we can afford a 9-day vacation in Hawaii on which the kids can watch all the cable TV they want?  I hope the kids don't examine this paradox too closely, or when we get home the pressure from them for me to call Comcast will be unbearable.

Fine Art Friday, Hawaii Style

Faithful readers, you’ve been patiently waiting for an update on our Hawaiian vacation. I’ve been having too much fun to sit down and blog about it, but I opted to skip the snorkeling this morning so I have a few moments to share with you! We have been staying at the Marriott Ko'olina Beach Club for the last 4 nights. It’s lovely! There are so many things to do that I almost wish we could have stayed on-site the whole time. That’s exactly what we did on Wednesday; Thing 1 and I had a marvelous day at the resort. We started off our day with a morning massage in a beach-side cabana. Then, we took a 4 hour watercolor workshop from Don Hall, who is the Beach Club’s “Artist in Residence.” We ended up with the following finished products which I share with you in honor of Fine Art Friday:

Aloha!