Catching up

Wow it's been a while. A busy couple of months. I took a new position at the Museum and spent most of November freaking out about it before the job began the first week of December. One of our exhibit designers left to join an exhibit design company in Vancouver and the head of the department asked if I was interested.....just means more:

• meetings


• schedules


• management


• stress


• budgeting


• emails

What it does NOT mean is (this being the Bishop Museum) more money. Sigh. Good thing I like working there.

So now instead of just helping on on pieces of exhibits like DVD's or computer interactives, I'll be in charge of planning the whole shebang. Carpet, painting, electrical, carpentry....kinda daunting but there's a very supportive and committed team down there.


Right around Thanksgiving we took our traditional surfing photo for the seasons greetings cards. Took plenny pictures of the kids playing about in the surf and it was hard to pick which one would be the winner. Here's a couple of the rejects. If you didn't get a seasons greetings card, it's probably because we don't have a real street address for you. If your refrigerator needs something to stick to it next winter, email us with your snail mail address and we'll add it to the Master List. We won't sell your information to anybody. We'll give it for free. Not really.

Lily's kept on doing keiki hula, and while Kim occasionally has to drag her to practice, when she performs she has a great time. I'll be getting a dose of that myself soon.

Next month Jake begins soccer with Keola, Alika, and Calvin. So there goes my Saturday mornings for the next fourteen years or so.



The kids came by the museum one time last month and got to help Uncle Dano prep the pili grass that will be used to reconstruct the hale that was disassembled last year during the Hawaiian Hall renovations. Some of the posts that came out may have been in use in houses on Kaua‘i since the late 1700's. The materials were moved to Honolulu in 1905 or so (IIRC) and the house stood until we took it down (Lily and Jake helped in that too). Took it down very carefully I should say. Anyway, in the next few months Dano will be leading the team that will reassbmle the hale using as much of the materials as possible, and gathering new materials as needed.

My proud accomplishment in early December was to rebuild our embarrassingly ugly/lame/rotten front gate. When we moved in 6 years ago now (YIKES) it was held together by paint and baling wire and had only degraded since then. So I finally got up the nerve to plan, paint, cut, construct, and all that good stuff. And best of all it actually works! I might get over my phobia of home improvement - I always have a sinking feeling that I've gonna do something stoopid and screw up more than fix things, but the gate's still working so I'm considering new projects. Hmmm.....new roof?



I'm especially proud of the Batman latch pull.

Next update I'll recap our great trip to Uncle Bump's house in the OC. Still working on compiling the list of things we did...long list....great pics and fun trip. Stay tuned.