The Magic Kingdom (and Disney's California Adventure)

Fall Break. Disneyland. Cousins. Grandparents. Fun.


Nothing a few years of therapy won't solve.....



Reunited and it feels so good.


This needs to be an album cover....


Prepare for blast off...

See some more here:

Disneyland 2009

VACATION !

Fall break has arrived and it's time for SoCal with a little side trip for U. Bump and myself (AC/DC in Vegas !).

Time to clear out pictures from the camera so we take a ton at Disneyland this weekend. Here's some that had been hanging around:

Hanging with the Scholly-Bromwells


North Shore shave ice


Ant's eye view


Lily's little friend Candace


Mini-golf

Skating lesson from U. Jacob







Nike Fun Run:



Finish line in sight!

Post race snacks

Squirt Gun Fight !

Locked, cocked


Ready to rock


Target acquired


Attack!


Retreat!

Model geekery:


My first Mustang. I never liked the look of the P-51 but I came around while building this one up. I showed it to Kim when it was about 90% done and she said it looked like a shark....which is cool.



A Corsair for a former Bachelor made on spec. Pappy Boyington's from a photo op in 1943.


A Yak-15 for me w/Italian marble base. Marble was detritus from fine Carrara marble that a sculptor who works at the museum had brought back. Interesting plane - At the close of WWII Russian's took jet engines from captured Me-262's and stuck them on the front of some prop-driven Yak fighters to see what would happen. What happens is that your engine's exhaust melts your tail wheel....replace with all metal tail wheel.

How dorky am I?

...enough to be excited that I finally got all of the state quarters?
...to take a picture of said collection?
...to arrange them roughly geographically?
...to post it on a blog?
...to point out that there are actually 52 quarters there (I didn't know that District and Territories were getting till today)?

Yes. THAT dorky.

Happy (Way) Belated Birthday to Lily

I try to post pics of b-day celebrations pretty quickly but we had a couple of mitigating factors.

1. My trusty old keyboard finally died. Most letters worked fine but the "1 Q A Z alt" diagonal was kaput. So needed to replace otherwise it would have came out "Hppy Birthdy Lily".

Just got a replacement and the a's are flowing.

2. Her final present only was purchased a couple weeks ago and might be her favorite ever.

Ever the creatures of habit, we did for Lily's big day what we did last year. Took her and a gaggle of friends to the Family Fun Fair at Ala Moana.







Here's a couple shots with presents



LEGO House


Mouse House


Poptart and Lily

Swimming excursion

Went swimming over in Kahala the other day with some friends.



Clockwise from left - Julia, Lily, Calvin, Jake, Kim, Zach, Charley, Courtney, Al, Kamaile, and a Hawaiian Monk Seal.

Canstruction 2009

Every year, Group 70, where Kim works, takes part in Canstruction: a fundraiser for the community foodbank. Teams of architects and those studying to be architects build sculptures out of canned (and bagged) food.

Lily, Jake, Kim and I helped out on our teams entry: Spam Musubi. I think ours is especially cool in that the musubi used the actual ingredients for the building materials (that's rice, nori [seaweed], and Spam for the uninitiated)


Spam Musubi


Aloha shirt


Train


A half finished poi pounder


Shave ice

Open For Business !

After 3 years and $20 million we reopened Hawaiian Hall last weekend.

I think there about 7 separate "special" openings - for the staff, for families, for members, for major donors, for the media, for tourism industry types, and then last Saturday, the big one - everybody.


Kim's halau provided the lei and took part in the opening ceremonies of which I saw absolutely nada: too busy running around with a screwdriver / allen wrench / cell phone / worried look.


The inside is now climate controlled (read: it has AC now) and lighting is conservation department approved. Lots of modern works of art by native artists really brings the place alive. Plus now the famous whale has some friends to hang out with now.


Uncle Dano was in charge of dismantling and rebuilding the hale pili. Pretty much everybody in the extended family helped out in one way or another: carrying rocks, building the foundation, gathering pili, lashing posts, or just sitting around and providing moral support.


Here's some people learning about the hale by playing interacting with my touchscreen kiosk. I actually changed some stuff about 3 hours into the opening day since I got to see people getting confused. Works better now. Come check it out....

Prince Lot Hula Festival

A couple weekends ago Kim's halau performed for the umpeenth time at the Prince Lot Hula Festival at Moanalua Gardens.



Only got one slightly blurry pic. They were scheduled to go on at a blissfully early 8:30 (usually they go on at 2 p.m. when it's stinking hot) but were even a little ahead of schedule. We got there just in time....



The after pics are the better ones anyways.



Homemade ti leaf skirt. And don't be fooled : those things are heavy. Once you get them moving around they want to keep going.



Time to pound poi....or pa‘i ‘ai if you want to really be correct. Step one, clean kalo.



Ready for pounding



Choose ku‘i



Check



Final instructions



Twenty minutes later....



Yum.