Oct 2005

Another sporting issue to get used to here on the island.... NHL hockey games start at 2:00pm in the afternoon!!! Pretty inconvenient! LOL But at least it won't interfere with other primetime viewing, I guess.

Yesterday was opening day for the League... and the Redwings played the Blues at home... and WON. Today is game 2 and they're playing in St. Louis, of course. 2nd period and the Wings are up 2-1. Wahooo!
========

C had his laser eye surgery today and so far, so good. He specifically had the PRK.... the refractive surgery which means his cornea wasn't sliced open... it was abraided by the laser. This version of the surgery is the smart option for those with "more active lifestyles". LOL

He has the next 4 days off from work, returning on Tuesday. Doing a lot of sleeping right now.
========

Our household goods aren't scheduled to arrive until November 18th!!! Other people say that it'll come faster... but I seriously don't want to wait THAT much longer for my stuff!! I want my vacuum and motorcycle and sewing machine and clothes and kitchen stuff and computers!!!!

Just a quick note... so that I don't have to complain about not having enough picture space here on Travellers Point, I have created a Yahoo Photo album. I decided to make albums by month, instead of making 2,000 individual albums for each place visited... I have "Hawaii 1" for all the pictures from our first month here, and "Hawaii 2" for the second month.

And so it'll go. I'll continue to put a few pics here for each post, that will be my favorite pictures, but for all the rest that don't make the cut, you can see in the Photo Album, to which I'll put the link up each time.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bikergirl_brazen/my_photos

All the pics that we look silly in, but still have beautiful scenery... all the flowers and general plant life photos from the botanical gardens...

Today was a beautiful day here on the island! We decided early that we wanted to take our first hike. Since we haven't done any serious hiking in just over a year, I thought it best to start with an easy one, so we went to Waimea Falls. It's located on the North Shore (so close to home) right across the street from Waimea Bay.

This place used to be an Adventure Park where you could go to do extreme sports... but there was some dispute over some aspect of it all, and Honolulu County ended up selling the property to the Audubon Society... so now it's a botanical garden. LOL

It was extremely painful limiting myself to only uploading 10 pictures out of the 42 I took. But here we go.

Nikolas LOVES these birds. I don't know what they are officially called, but we all have adopted N's name of "Redheads"... this is changed from the previous name of "Rednecks". hehe I'm going to have a large print of this made to hang in his room.

This peacock followed me from the building to the car... sort of freaked me out. LOL!!

The Boy showing the Shaka... he's learning.

I took pictures of so many pretty flowers... I'm going to make a photo album in case anyone's interested in all the pictures that don't make the cut to get put here... they are still really good ones.

The walk was REALLY nice. A very easy "hike"... it was 3/4 mile each way. You could stay on an asphalt-paved road the whole way, or you could venture off onto little side paths to see a whole lot more and make the hike a little longer.

The park is trying to hold on to ancient Hawaiian culture. We saw men's and women's eating huts, they had game fields set up showing what the Hawaiians played a long time ago.

All 4 of us really enjoyed the walk and the park and the sights. There has been a ton of rain lately, so the waterfalls were very loud and rough... but when they are calmer, people are allowed to swim in the pool right under the falls!! We were disappointed that we couldn't, but we'll go back.

Island resident admission price was $5.00 each, the kids were $3.00 each and parking was $2.00 for the one car.

This past Monday was the last day of nice weather, thanks to what's currently known as Tropical Depression Kenneth. The past 4 days have been windy, stormy and rainy. I'm really glad we went to the beach while we could.

My neighbor Shannin and I went and we had my 2 kids, her 2 kids and 1 extra. We spent about 5 hours out there... basically from 10:30 to 3:30. The destination was Chun's Reef because that's Shannin's favorite beach on the whole island. It's where we took our surfboard out for the very first time, not too long ago!

We sat about 50 yards left of where we did on that surfing day, and it was a nice difference... less rocks. There were several sea turtles out swimming, and that freaked the kids out a little... so if they had any thoughts of going out where they couldn't touch, that nixxed it right there. Course the waves are getting rougher there on the North Shore now... heading into winter and all, and the shore break got HARSH by the time we were leaving!!

The water started out all calm, like this. And then ended up with pounding, crashing waves by 3:30!

I love looking at waves like this!! I can't wait until December when they're the huge, rolling tubes!

The kids spent at least half their time poking around the rocks, looking for crabs and other critters.

This one shows the surfers... it's really interesting how there can be SO many out in an area at one time. They do a lot of hanging out, sitting on their boards.

OFFTOPIC Note: It's October 1, so my photo uploading capabilities are back! I get to upload 100 pictures per month, and last month I ran out of space early... and I hate to post here too much with no pictures to show! So I will TRY to be a little more conservative with how many pictures from each place I put up here... but it's HARD!! I take a LOT everywhere I go, so I find limiting myself to even 10 per event pretty tough. But anyway.... back to regular programming!
===========================

Who knew that BMX and skateboard parks would be so accessible here on the island! I don't think I knew where any were in South Carolina, and here I know of 3 parks we can go to. Maybe it's because before N couldn't even ride his bike, and E didn't have a BMX bike... But now, everyone's riding, and everyone has a BMX. And a skateboard.

So the closest park we go to is right inside the gate on base! It's not really taken care of too well... meaning there are rocks all over the place. So when I get there, while C is getting the kids ready, I go out and start rock removal services. With the bikes it's no big deal, really, but w/ that skateboard! A rock will cause big problems.

Here's N getting all his pads on... god knows he NEEDS them!

The rest show the kids riding, and crashing....

E just looking cute

DOWN! But still standing!

And yes, C can still do a few things himself!