USA

Hi all,

Today (12/15/06) was the day that C had a bronze star pinned on him! It was during the batallion award ceremony that was held in their new company building on base. I had originally thought that I would be up there pinning the star on him myself, but it didn't work out that way.

He was the only soldier of his rank to earn this award... all of the others were higher ups; mostly officers. I was so proud!! But here is the important part... the pictures!

The actual pinning on of the star:

Alpha Company after their own award ceremony... at their Engineer's castle on base:

Tomorrow is Alpha Co's post-deployment beach party down in Waikiki. They're supplying the food and adult beverages and C and I are staying the night in a hotel down there. It promises to be a great time. =o) I'm sure more pictures will follow... ones much less formal and stern. hehehe

Our year-long deployment is OVER! C's back from Iraq, safe and sound. The unit arrived home late last Saturday night, early Sunday morning. The ceremony began at 1:00am and it was nice... short and sweet. A good friend of mine came with the kids and I and took pictures for us... so I have several to share.

These are the banners I hung outside of our house here. I later found out that other people took pictures of them, too! LOL

Here's the dress I chose to wear for the ceremony. E took this of me before we left the house that night. It was really strange to be getting all dressed up and hair done and everything at 1am. LOL! But it was WORTH IT and I'm so glad I did... not very many other wives did.

I know this is dark... all of the shots of the unit in formation were too far away for the flash to work. But here's just one so you can get an idea, maybe, of what it was like. We were in a gymnasium, spread across two basketball courts.

The first big hug

E getting her first hug

And N getting his

Here you can sort of see the posters that we made

Today's Thursday and it's C's first day back to work. The unit will spend the next 5 days or so in-processing and "reintegrating". LOL

December 15th is a big batallion award ceremony and C will be given a Bronze Star!! He was the only non-officer soldier to receive one during the whole year. And the Lt. Col. said he "would be honored" if I would be up on the stage to pin it on C myself. So that will be an exciting day. I got a new dress for that occasion too. =o)

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I mentioned it a long time ago in one of these blog posts, but don't forget that I changed my email address!! It is no longer bikergirl_brazen........... if you don't have the new one and want it... leave a comment here! =o)

What a fabulous day here. For those who have seen the movie "50 First Dates", you might remember The Hukilau Cafe!! It's the restaurant that Drew Barrymore ate breakfast at every morning, building her waffle houses!

Well, I've wanted to find this place ever since I knew I was coming to the island. Remember what it looked like in the movie? Brown wood place, roomy inside... outdoors was woodsy and open with the gravel road leading up to it?

LMAO!!! Want to see what the REAL Hukilau Cafe looks like?? I don't want to burst any bubbles... (coz believe me, MINE is burst)... But here you go:

And this is the Laie Cash and Carry shop that shares the same building with the Hukilau Cafe:

Nothing cute or quaint about THIS place!!!! What a bummer! I'd read online that their food was soooo good, so I ordered up the banana pancakes. They were just fine... nothing wildly wonderful. Served on paper plates, eaten with plastic utensils.

They had a big framed poster from 50 First Dates hanging in there, so we had to ask.... what the heck?! THIS isn't the place!! Turns out some of the movie employees would drive up to the Hukilau to eat and they really liked it. So the movie people paid the owner of the Hukilau "a LOT of money" to use the name in the movie.... but not the REAL place! All they did was purchase the right to use the name!

I wonder if the waitress heard the "pop!" of my bubble bursting?

On the drive home, we stopped leisurely for photo opportunities here and there. Waimea Bay was especially gorgeous and clear today:

That's the famous jumping rock right there in the foreground. You can see a few guys up there.

There were a couple of painters at Turtle Beach, and one of them had her canvas facing the street, so I thought this was a neat picture:

And lastly... if I'm not going to eat a good, healthy clean breakfast... why not chase it down with a fabulous Hawaiian shave ice?!? I don't see why not! So I went to Aoki's and got their Haleiwa Delight shave ice and a t-shirt.

AlooooooHA! We've been around so many tourguides lately that I keep hearing them yell out to the tourists: ALOOOOOOWWWW - HA! I don't hear that in everyday life around here... it makes me laugh every time! And the tourists all yell back, "ALOOOOOOOO-HA!!!"

Anyway! Day 3 was Pearl Harbor day! What a very busy place that is!! We showed up and scouted out the parking lots for a while but it was early enough that no one was really leaving yet, so we ended up parking further up the street and paying for the priveledge. LOL

By the time we figured out where we were supposed to go and what we were supposed to be doing, there was a 4 HOUR wait to ferry out to see the USS Arizona Memorial! It was disappointing, but sitting around on a bench for 4 hours waiting for them to call your group when you have antsy and bored kids isn't a good idea.

Here are two pictures of the Arizona Memorial for you, tho.... I took this first one:

And this second one is NOT my own photo, but I wanted to share it with you guys in case you'd never seen it. I bought a super-clear version of this picture at the gift shop while there.

This picture is chilling. I'd always known that the memorial was built right over the sunken Arizona, but I just never pictured THIS in my mind.

So after we decided we'd have to skip the Arizona memorial, we headed over to the USS Missouri ticket window. The "Mighty Mo". The Missouri was the last battleship ever built and was only in use for 11 years. It was the toughest and most menacing ship ever built with guns that could fire a 2,700 pound projectile 23 MILES!

Once you buy your tickets ($16 per person unless you're an island resident... in which case the tickets were $10 per person), you wait in a shuttle bus line. Actually it was a trolly! And it takes you from the main island over to Ford Island where you can get on board the battleship.

Right beside the Missouri ticketing window was the USS Bowfin submarine and museum.

After we finished exploring Mighty Mo, we finally got back to the van and headed out to the Ko'Olina Lagoons for a relaxing afternoon. After being around 1,000's of pushing, sweating people at Pearl Harbor, the lagoons sounded PERFECT.

When it was time to head home, I wanted to take a much more scenic and less travelled road home. It's a VERY interesting drive that starts out on the southern shore of the island on Navy property, and takes you up thru the mountains and over Kolekole Pass. At the end you're on Army property... so no matter which end you start out on, you have to have a military ID to get on this road.... hence the "much less travelled" part.

You can't stop for pictures at any point along the way except for one scenic overlook:

We all hop in the car ready to just buzz home, and after only driving a few feet, we found a peacock! LOL

Day 2 was Easter Sunday! The Easter bunny came during the night, so the kids had their easter egg hunt before we started our touring day.

After we left home, the first destination was Diamondhead Crater, on the opposite side of the island. I took the slower, more scenic way to get there... taking us thru Honolulu and Waikiki. We got stopped in traffic for a bit behind a limo that must've had someone famous in it because there were cameras pointed in the window and people scurrying around. We never saw who it was, tho.

Diamondhead Crater was last active as a volcano around 100,000 years ago. You climb 761 feet up to the summit to the most amazing views!!!

Here's a shot of Diamondhead from the distance... we climbed to the tip top of that!

The end is in sight!

The view of Waikiki and Honolulu from the very top!

The hike was great. It was the first time the kids had done it, too! They said it wasn't as hard as they'd expected, and have challenged me to find them a harder hike to do... and SOON! LOL

My itinerary for the rest of the day was to circle the island, stopping off at all of the scenic vistas and viewpoints, plus my favorite beaches.

We stopped for a fast lunch at Hawaii Kai and then just up the road was our first stop at Halona Blowhole and Beach. The Halona Beach was the one from the 1950's movie From Here to Eternity.

The Halona Blowhole is a spot where the ocean has undercut the lava stone and drilled a hole up thru to the top... so when a swell comes in, it goes into that hole and appears to erupt out thru the hole! It's like a mini Old Faithful every 15-25 seconds when the surf is high!

Here's the blowhole's eruption:

Sandy Beach is next... not even half a mile up the road from Halona

Next planned stop is at Lanikai Beach near Kailua. Last year Cosmo rated this the most romantic beach in the country... tho we can't really figure out why. It's gorgeous, that's true... but it's the amazing water and offshore islands that are so wonderful... not the beach itself!

One of my favorite shots on the whole island! Here is the shot from last year when I saw it for the first time:

After swimming and tanning here for an hour or so, we hit the road again and drove up the whole Windward side of the island. We made a quick stop at Kualoa Park to get an up close and personal view of Chinaman's Hat:

If you turn around and face the other way from Chinaman's Hat, you see this great mountain view:

After this we continued driving, stopping at Sunset Beach, and then Banzai Pipeline. Here are Mom and Dave walking out to the top of the very steep beach here at Pipeline:

When we stopped at Waimea Bay it started raining on us, and they got to see a really nice rainbow right away!

The final stop before going home was to Matsumodo's for shave ice. It was soooo good, as always! No pictures from there... we were too busy eating and being sticky and fighting off the bees!