2010-09 SEPT

Friendship Garden 15 images

1 Sam playing his new guitar - Daddy came home with a new drum set and a new guitar as a big surprise! Sam has been playing drums for about 18 months on second-hand drums from his friends. One of the sets made it all the way across the island to Goodwill where I hunted it down by phone and had them hold it for mom who grabbed it for Sam! So now we have three drums sets, only one of which we've purchases. The second-hand ones are very very worn, though, and too rickety to stay together. Ben's set has only one intact side, the other is blown out, but he doesn't mind a bit :)	2 Sam has been so very happy to have a guitar to play as well as his uke. He is very good about alternating instruments despite being enchanted with his guitar. He has been playing uke while Dad plays guitar at night in the "studio" but now they can both play the same chords.	3 Putting the new set together with Daddy.	4 The garage band - Sam and Ben playing drums with Daddy on guitar :)
5 Out mountain biking with a new friend, Sabrina, who is a longtime friend of Angel's. I was supposed to run with Heidi, then Heidi invited Sabrina. Turned out that Heidi couldn't come. Then I popped in at Angel's and she said "Oh you're running with Sabrina tomorrow!" Guess I should be on FB then I would have known all this :) It was fun this way, though, not knowing who would be pulling up into the driveway :)	6 There's Sabrina! She was such a trooper out in a bit muddier conditions than we anticipated!	7 There we are 4.5 miles later!	8 Cute fishie - not sure who this is.
9 Out at North Beach where we hooked up with Michelle's family and another of Sam's friends (Andrew and his mom). Great morning! I saw a number of neat fish.	10 Including this really large redlip parrotfish - I swear it's 4 ft long but Dave has his doubts about me and my large parrotfish. This is the second time I've seen an enormous one!	11 Ben learning to ride on mommy for snorkeling time. He likes to steer me :)	12 The menfolk like to build "tall tall towers!" and big bathtubs that they jump into.
13 Dave and his boys :)	14 Another super cool fish sighting! Two Great Barracuda!!! Hard to see but look for dark dorsal fin and dark tail fin slithering along in the middle of the screen.	15 Dinner and volleyball at Mike and Angel's house over Labor Day weekend. It was so great to have the A Team together for our first team sport! (April in back, me and Angel in foreground.) We've known each other since NR1 days in 2001 and now we all live in the same town in Hawaii! How fantastic is that!? There's Sam helping us out :0	16 We did some synchronized swimming, too - making an A here. This is our halftime show :)
17 Rich and Mike - the hubbies - taking on the A team with Sam's help.	18 And big Ben! The boys spent literally 2 1/2 hours in the pool! It was so great to have them corralled so we could talk. That's on top of 2 hours at the ocean in the morning! They were tired that night :)	19 Ben looks like a little coach, doesn't he?	20 Go Sam!
21 Out on a jog on the beach - we found General Grievous some weeks ago in the beach park, so he rides around in the stroller with us. We had to ask around to find out what he was! Jogging with Ben on the beach is a great workout, and a really nice way to start the morning. We drop Sam off at school and keep on going down to the beach. At the other end of the beach we get out and do some "football practice" (funny running moves and stuff) on the sand, build towers and sometimes go get coffee and muffin to share afterwards.	22 After-school swimming time with Andrew and Claudia. Ben is cleaning off after a big wave - that's a smile and a laugh :)	23 Sam and Andrew sizing up the waves. They are a good pair.	24 Ben looking all cute and that's my buddy Claudia in her new board shorts (she managed to forget swim bottoms so she bought some at the corner store!).
25 Lots of romping and tossing for these boys! They had a great time. Went for pizza at Bob's afterwards. I've never seen two young boys eat quite so much!	26 I got a bit wet photographing them :)	27 And got wiped out by a wave! this one almost took my bottoms off!	28 Ben enjoyed himself immensely!
29 Little guy in a bed of foam!	30 And ta-da! He's up!	31 Birthday party for Andrew at Bishop Museum - he is 6! Theme was space...so these are rocket caps.	32 Little cutie :)
33 Sam and I decided days ago to make Aidan a Uranus orb from blue Jello with a rocky core (peanut butter cookie remolded into a core). Now, I Googled this, and much to my dismay I've never seen a Jello orb made - like a sphere. There was no record of such an endeavor. So we opened up the test kitchen and tried several things. Next time we will just scoop out an orb of Jello because trying to get it to come out of a mold is very hard. Perhaps there's something I could buy, but the blue orb split open when we flipped it over and plopped it out. After dusting with sugar (methane gas) Aidan took a bite - despite his premonitions (he went "Uhh!" when it dumped out) he seemed to enjoy it!	34 Do you see the methane clouds? Isn't methane the gas that comes out when one - ahem - passes gas? This is all getting too funny!	35 My boys were not afraid of eating Uranus' rocky core!	36 Decorating rocket cakes.
37 Sam played "Happy Birthday" on his uke for Aidan.	38 Doesn't he look relaxed and comfortable with his uke? He is really quite amazing doing chords for a new song in front of friends.	39 In the lava show after the planetarium. It was a very busy day. Duke Aiona (candidate for gov of HI) was also doing a fundraiser there. That's a stream of lava coming out of a 2000 degree cooker thing.	40 Took the boys to see Jupiter from a good vantage point on base. This is the moon and Arcturus (or Hokuleia - the Hawaiian wayfinding star in the western sky).
41 And the speck in the middle, above the lights, is Jupiter! It blinked out at us from the clouds a couple times and by the time we got home it was high enough in the sky to see from our deck. Very cool way to end the busy day.	42 The highlight of this weekend - getting to meet a baby octopus! A fisherman found it and brought it to us. It was so nice of him - they did not kill it, they just let us see it then release it. See the jet? That's how it propels itself.	43 Very sticky tentacles - very very sticky!	44 That's Claudia and Andrew pointing.
45 Sam very gingerly trying to transfer it from Claudia's arms. Wish human babies were this sticky - it'd make it a lot easier to get household chores done if they could just latch on with 8 arms!	46 Trying to transfer it to Andrew...but it slipped away very quickly!	47 Off to do some jumping...this is "Jump Rock".	48 Andrew doing his first rock jump!
49 Ben flirting with a new friend, Lily.	50 Sam jumping again!	51 The boys had so much fun horsing around with moves and faces on top of the rocks - posing for pictures. Loved to hear their laughs!	52 More jumping together!
53 Shimmying up a 12' pole - no problem! He did this enough times that we got a chance to add up his total linear feet - 41 ft climbed!	54 Joe Cool on da bech with mom for a jog :) We got to watch the Blue Angels flying overhead as they practiced for the air show.