The Next Best Christmas Present

I made Ruby a beanbag chair for Christmas this year. This thing took forever. The pattern was simple enough, but I wanted to make it easy to clean. So, I made an inner bag out of muslin, and put a small zipper in it so we can add more filling later when it breaks down, and I put a big long zipper in the outer cover so it can come off and be washed. None of the zippers were in the pattern, so I had to make it up as I went along. It's made of fleece, so it's nice and fuzzy, and we just put regular re-usable shipping peanuts inside. They won't last as long as beanbag chair filling, but it was so much cheaper.

She spent most of Christmas morning sitting in it. Here she is, sitting in her beanbag chair working in her "Adventures in 'Ruby'land*" book from the Iowa cousins.

In case you're wondering, she's drawing a 'Ruby'land* dragon.

*The book is actually named using her real name and the name of her real imaginary land.

The Best Christmas Present Ever.

So, Ruby's class at school has a calendar that involves a teddy bear on the bulletin board who has a different colored shirt for each day of the week. Every morning her teacher and the kid of the day change the shirt and the day and they go over the calendar.

When I asked Ruby what she wanted to get for Sam for Christmas, she said she wanted to make him a calendar like the one in her class. So, we started planning this a few weeks ago. We went shopping and she bought the stuff she needed at Michael's with her own money. She did the design and I was in charge of figuring out how to make it work.

Here's a picture of the project as we were working on it. You can see the bear with one of his shirts. We searched on the internet for a picture of a bear to use for a template, then I helped her cut out the bear. She cut out the shirts after I drew the outline from the pattern we made. She cut out the eyes and the pink for the ears, nose and feet, and she drew the mouth with a sharpie marker.

Here's a closeup of the face.

The shirts and bear are all made of felt. The shirts are in rainbow order, starting with Sunday, and ending with a pink Saturday. The days of the week are printed on dark-shirt iron-on transfers, and ironed on. Each shirt has a little washer hot glued on and the numbers are printed on cardstock which we had laminated and used a big punch to punch them out. They each have a little piece of magnet stuck on the back so they'll stick to the washer. We put grommits on the shirts so they'll hang on the bear (at school they hang like that and she was quite determined that they hang).

Here's the finished product. The shirts hang on little cup hooks we got at the hardware store. Ruby sanded and painted a piece of scrap wood from the garage for the base, and we hot glued on the bear, then put in the screws. That way the shirts are hanging on the wood, not on the actual bear.

The months are also printed on laminated cardstock (well, printed on cardstock, then laminated) and have velcro on the back and there's a strip of velcro on the board.

Here's Ruby on Christmas Eve just before she wrapped it up.

And here's Sam after he opened it. You can see the envelopes with all the pieces of the calendar.

And there you go. Ruby's most clever and heartfelt gift. We still need to put a little picture hanger on the back so he can hang it on the wall.

Back to the Real World

Today was my first real day back in the swing of things. Yesterday John's mom was still here and she helped out a lot.

I had a fun morning helping make pumpkin pies in kindergarten. They're having a Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, so they made little individual pies. They even made the crust from scratch! I was at the pie filling table. There was another mom helping at my table, and she did the dry ingredients, while I did the eggs, milk and pumpkin. Then we had the kids each take a turn stirring with a spoon, then they each had a turn stirring with a whisk. By the time they each had a turn like that, it was just right.

Note to anyone cooking with kids: If you have them keep the spoon/whisk touching the bottom of the bowl, it greatly diminishes the slopping out of the bowl.

There was a lot of licking of the batter going on, so I really hope no one gets salmonella poisoning.

Trip Wrap-up/Random Notes

We're at the airport now, waiting to go home. Thanks to John's Red Carpet Club membership, we're luxuriating in the Club while we wait. They have snacks and drinks in here. While we've had a great visit here, it's time to go home. We miss the kids, they miss us, Bobby misses us, PapaJohn misses Bobby, and it's time for everyone to go home.

Anyway, I had some random things here and there that I forgot to put in a post or didn't have a place to fit into a post.

First off, at the Marriott resort at Ko Olina, they have what is probably the coolest plasticware we've ever seen. Everything, cups, straws, forks, spoons, knives, plates, is not only recyclable, but biodegradable! The "plastic" cups are made of cornstarch, and we were told that they hold up very well to cold things, but if you put something hot in them, they'll just disintegrate. They look just like regular clear plastic cups and straws.

We had noticed a lot of people walking around the whole island with badges on, and I assumed they were just part of the same touring company. But, as it turns out, there was a Jehovah's Witnesses convention in town this week! Once we found out what it was, we noticed them everywhere. We saw a bunch at the PCC, but that was before we found out what group they were with.

Oahu has awesome public transportation. The buses run very frequently into Honolulu and you can get all around the island by bus. If we had wanted to, we could have foregone the rental car, but we're still glad we had it. Next time we're in town, we'll probably wait longer to get a car and not have one at all in Waikiki. There's just no need and it's a little difficult to get around Waikiki by car. Too many small one-way streets with lots of people walking around.

All the signs around here are in English and Japanese. It's a change from California, where all the signs are in English and Spanish. At least in CA, you can learn some new words, but if you can't read Japanese characters, you're just out of luck here. I'd say that more than half of the tourists around Waikiki, and more than half of the people working here are Japanese or part Japanese. Every store and restaurant has at least one Japanese-speaking employee. Some stores even have signs saying they accept Yen!

If you were lucky enough to get a post card, please take a look at the post card stamps that are available. It's a weird choice for post cards from Hawaii (if you weren't on the post card list, don't be hurt, we sent out 25 just to family, and you can probably go to the postal service's website and see what the post card stamps are.)

As far as rain goes, we saw very little, and what rain we did see was sprinkles. We heard about giant storms on the other side of the island, but we didn't see any big rain. Probably the longest rain we saw was when we were in Honolulu, and even that was just sprinkling. This is probably due to our staying on the leeward side of the island, where it's pretty dry. Kind of looked like home in the summer.

Hawaii is just as beautiful and friendly as everyone says it is. The Hawaiians really have this hospitality thing down. Even the busiest people working at the busiest counters in the busiest places aren't grumpy or surly. People are just friendly and all the staff at all the hotels or stores we went into were just as friendly as the last place. Even in Costco!

Speaking of people working in stores, even the uniforms are Hawaiian. At Target, they all had red Hawaiian shirts with little Target symbols amongst the flowers to wear with their khaki pants. It was the same in all the other chain stores we were in (Costco, Safeway, Outback Steakhouse, etc.) they all had Hawaiian shirts with some sort of detail relating to the store/restaurant. The Outback Steakhouse shirts were funny, since it's supposed to be an Australian-themed restaurant.

On Friday, when we were trying to find John a new pair of swim trunks because he dropped his somewhere (they never did show up in the lost and found and we're not sure what someone would want with John's old beat up trunks, and no, Daddy, he didn't drop them while he was wearing them), they had about three or four Target employees just inside the entrance playing Hawaiian music on steel guitar and ukuleles. They were playing and singing, "Come Sail Away" by Styx. They stopped right before they got to the spaceship part. John though that was because that part isn't very Hawaiian. He predicted they'd stop before that. He was right. He's very smart.

John read a book. He can't remember the last time he read a book for fun. He's almost finished with Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, the DaVinci Code guy. We watched the move on pay-per-view last night. The book is better. I finished The Lost Symbol, by the same author, which I liked. On our trip home I'm reading a book by a neuroscientist who had a stroke, and actually knew what was happening to her and after a long recovery wrote a book about it from a scientist/patient perspective. It's really interesting. I also have Carter Beats the Devil, recommended by Becah. It fits into the Victorian/Rennaissance Science/Magic phase I'm into now (turns out, Becah is also in a Victorian Magic reading phase so I recommended she read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.) I'll probably finish the stroke book before we get home.

Anyhoo, it was a fabulous trip, we had a great time, we definitely want to come back and bring the kids and hope it won't be too long before we get to do that. And a special thank you to John for working so hard to make this trip possible. Mahalo John!

Right Back Where We Started

Well, we're back in Waikiki. This time, however, we're right on the beach. We have a fabulous room with a fabulous view. Here's a picture I took from our balcony last night when we got in:

And this is what it looks like in the morning.

Today was not a beach day, though, today was our Hawaiian History Day. First, we returned out rental car (we tried to do it last night, but the place was closed when we got there, so we had to do it this morning and pay to park the car, and parking in Waikiki is NOT cheap!)

We got some information and some breakfast, and took the bus into downtown Honolulu to the 'Iolani Palace. The 'Iolani Palace is the last residence of the Hawaiian royal family. We learned a lot about the Hawaiian monarchy, and how Hawaii ended up as a part of the U.S.

This is the royal coat of arms on the front gate.

Here's John in front of the palace.

After our self-guided audio tour, we went across the street to the King Kamehameha statue in front of the State Supreme Courthouse. That's us. It was raining, I was glad I had my hat.

We had planned on visiting the Maritime Museum, but when we got there, it was closed. So we took a picture of the Aloha Tower, which was built to greet visitors arriving on cruise ships in Honolulu Harbor. This is how it greets visitors arriving from the closed Maritime Museum.

We took the bus back to Waikiki and walked around and bought junk for the kids that they do not need and then headed back to our room to enjoy the sunset. We got some really great pictures of us on the balcony during the sunset. Here's one of them. You should have seen my "tripod"--two books, on top of an upturned trash can, on top of a patio side table, on top of a lounge chair. Hey, it worked.

Well, that's pretty much the end of our trip to Hawaii. Tomorrow we're leaving in the morning for the airport and we'll get home sometime in the middle of the night and we'll get to see the kids in the morning on Monday.

Mahalo to you for reading my blog, I hope you enjoyed it, we sure enjoyed our time here.

Aloha to you all!!!

Ko Olina Cat Trip

Well, the first thing I have to say for this post, is that Dramamine is my new best friend. I heartily apologize to anyone who may have filled that position previously, but you've been replaced.

See, the thing is, that I'm rather prone to motion sickness (see the post on surfing) and we had this boat trip scheduled, and I did not want to spend the whole trip being sick. So we bought a little vial of Dramamine pills and I took one before we left.

And I was not sick the entire trip. It was awesome.

Anyway, before all that, we got up Friday morning, and as it was John's birthday, I sent him out to snorkel in the lagoon while I packed up our stuff. Sadly, it was check out day. BUT, the Marriott Ko Olina Beach

Club has a "linger longer" policy, where your key card still works for everything but your room for the whole day after you check out. You can get in the parking garage, use the pools, the locker rooms, and even charge things to your account! It's just like getting to stay an extra day. We took advantage of this. We put the big suitcases in the car and put our computers in the hotel safe deposit box and they stored the other bags for us. We stored some clothes in the lockers (wicked nice locker room, with private showers, sauna and steam room) so we could change after we were done swimming. Then we hopped on the shuttle to the marina and got on the boat.

This is the catamaran boat.

This is what it looks like from the front. Right below those windows is a little platform where you can sit, and you can sit down the sides along the rails, and inbetween the rails running in front of the platform, there is a net that you can sit on and get splashed on while the boat is moving.

First, we motored out to see dolphins, and dolphins we did see! Here are a some swimming next to the boat. The two on the right are a mommy and baby pair. Someone on the crew said that the babies swim with their moms for three years.

Here's a nice picture with a whole bunch. These are Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins, which are about half the size of Bottlenose Dolphins. They were rolling over and slapping their tails, and every once in a while one would jump up out of the water.

We were very fortunate that the whale migration season is just starting, and we got to see some Alaskan Humpback Whales! At first they were kind of far away and hard to see, but they drove the boat out a little closer, and one popped up right next to the boat! This is the tip of his dorsal fin, and this picture is not zoomed in. It really was that close to the boat! The crew said we were very lucky to see both dolphins and whales on the same trip. We didn't see any turtles.

This particular company has a guaranteed dolphin or whale sighting policy. If you don't see dolphins or whales on your trip, they give you a ticket to come back for free and try again. There was a couple on our trip who were on a "try again" trip and had saved their tickets for two years. Here's a view of the resort from the ocean. Ours is the one on the right. You can barely see the electrical plant on the left, it's the one with the tall smokestack. That's where we went for snorkeling. The plant uses sea water to cool the machines, and dumps the warm water into the ocean, which encourages algae growth, which attracts lots of fish. There's a reef right in front of the plant that's teeming with beautiful fish.

This is me snorkeling. They gave everyone brand new snorkels and they clean and re-use their masks and flippers. We forgot our own equipment, so we had to use theirs. They also have these vests that everyone has to wear, but you don't have to blow them up if you want to dive down. I blew mine up about half way. Just a little added security. I'm a bit timid in deep water. Please note that this time snorkeling, I'm wearing a rash guard shirt with SPF 50 in the fabric and shorts over my suit, plus I have three layers of SPF 30 sunscreen on. There was no sunburning happening this day! (that's John's knee in the corner, sporting his brand new swim trunks after he lost his somewhere)

Here are three Angelfish and a Convict Tang. Those Convict Tangs were all over the place. I'd say I've seen more of them than any other fish on this trip. The Tang is below the others and kind of under the rock a little.

Here's John with his deflated vest.

I took this picture of a guy fishing out in the water as we were heading back to the marina. Almost immediately after I put the camera down, a huge giant wave came in and knocked that guy right over. He was okay. But he was sure wet.

And, because it was John's birthday, he got a perfect ending to his perfect day and a nice way to end our stay at Ko Olina. A perfect sunset. We sat on the beach at the lagoon and watched the sun set, then we left and headed back to Waikiki.

Hau`oli la hanau to John!

Today was John's birthday. It's past midnight here, so this will probably post as the next day. Anyway, it's very late and I'm tired, so I'm not going to write much. We're back in Waikiki, after a fantastic week at the Marriott Ko Olina Beach Club.

For John's birthday, we went on the Ko Olina Cat Trip, for some dolphin and whale watching and snorkeling. We had a great time. Here's a picture of me on the boat with some dolphins. I'll post more tomorrow and some great pictures.