Christmas and Other Adventures

Day 5

I'm still at the office, being screamed at by deaf seniors, so I have no idea what when on. Enjoy the photos.

However, I DO know where they went - they are at Ko Olina, where David and I used to live. Perfect for sunbathing.

A view from underneath one of the thatched umbrellas on the beach. I thought this was a cool shot. Apparently all Dyer children have mad photography skills. Not only can they hit a pose in under 2 seconds, they have a good eye for composition.



Sting Rays at the hotel

GIANT Banyan tree. You can see the other normal trees to the left to give you an idea of it's size. This was my favorite tree to climb up into and read a book.

The beach below the tree

Aww, cute couple

Ok, I obviously WAS here for this. Ruthie and Josh were awesome and took me out for a late birthday dinner at a place that was a lot nicer than I thought it was. I mean, it's called Nick's Fishmarket, for cripes sake. Doesn't exactly have me thinking black tie.

Anyway, it was awesome, and I got to check off a restaurant on my 'want to go to' list. Thank so much guys, this was a wonderful treat for me. So glad we could share it with you!

Day 6

On this day, we counseled them to go out on their own - some of our favorite memories were when we would visit Court and take off and explore for a day by ourselves. So, we handed over the car keys, and off they went!

They stopped by Pearl Harbor like good little Americans and took some cool pics:

Although, personally, this one is my favorite from the day.

Manly.

Speaking of macho, I got my macho on in the kitchen, by making what is becoming my signature 'visitor's' dish, Macadamia nut-crusted mahi mahi with sesame potato cake, wilted spinach, and chili-coconut sauce. Whew, that is long. It's also a pain in the butt, so I only make it for visitors. David says 'please more people come out.'

But the macho came in when I FINALLY got to use my torch on some unsuspecting macadamia nut creme brulee. (I apparently like theme cooking) I gleefully charred those puppies. In a good way.

Intense concentration

Day 7 - Christmas!

I am not sure if I mentioned this, or if it's in blogs I've written and never posted, but I have visitor's OCD. It was definitely going on in full force today.

If you are ever at Christmas at my house, Santa will come to visit you. I don't know why this is, but I have to have something in my stocking. Still, David has yet to remember this year to year, and so each Christmas morning he sheepishly opens his stocking while mine is forlornly empty. I have hope for next year though! I think it made an impression this year.

Stockings hung by the..um, window? with care

and a lot of tape

Of course, Ruthie and Josh couldn't pack out there presents all the way out here, so they had to watch us open all of ours. I kind of felt like a chump.

These are the presents from my mom, Queen of Wraptopia. You can't tell, but they are adorable.

Ok, Close ups!

Look, David as Santa. He looks mischievous - he is probably about to give someone some coal.

And Winter Tiffy. I look like a Barbie Doll. Mainly bc my actual wardrobe was not involved.

Mom sends us checks each year, and each year she outdoes herself in packaging. This year, David opened his present, and saw mom sent him.. a book? What? He was perplexed. And probably somewhat frightened. So we opened it up and read some of it to see what the heck it was about, when SURPRISE! it is one of those books with a secret compartment inside! I thought that it was excellent, and so did David. We are totally keeping that bizness.

Of course, I SAID everyone gets stockings! At least they had something to open.

AWESOME frame from my sis. Love it.

Lily got a present from mom too - even hers was wrapped nicer than anything I sent out.

There were cookies in there. They didn't last long. I think she ate them while they were still inside the bag.

Have you ever seen this t-shirt? I thought it was freaking hilarious, so I got it for David. Princess Bride fans will laugh.

Then came the new Christmas tradition of trying to hook up via webcam, where we all sit around for an hour while the techie Dyer brothers futz with computers/tvs/speakers and try to get us to all talk and see each other in real time. I don't know if you can tell, but John's face of frustration on the TV makes me laugh.

Of course, it eventually worked. They are geniuses, after all.

Here is us attempting to take a Christmas picture. My freaking dog is the worst poser ever. It's like she suddenly has doggie ADD and cannot sit still, and will go into freak out panic mode if you try to make her. Gack. As you can tell, she is in the process of ripping off her antlers.


Another new tradition is the Christmas lunch cookout on the beach. It is fun! Idyllic!

At least in my head.

David wanted to bring Lily, and there really aren't that many beaches that allow dogs. I suppose we should have done more research, but we pulled up to several that got rejected before we finally gave the law a little Christmas cheer and totally ignored it, taking Lily wherever the heck we wanted.

This actually marked the beginning of my time off to be with them, and the weather turning against me and all my well-laid plans. I make graphs, people! Graphs that cross-refernce weather forecasts and activities! Graphs! Of course, I make them and keep them in secret, lest I reval my true level of crazy.

Josh chases some crabs on the beach.

It ended up being really windy. I mean, REALLY windy. Like 40 miles an hour non-stop. It was like when you stick your head out the window on the highway wind, but there was no escaping it. It kind of made things... uncomfortable. And less than warm. Which turned out to be fine, because.....

Right. So getting in the water was kind of out. Apparently the high winds were blowing in some things from deeper water. Or it was a full moon. I can't remember.

W also had some issues keeping our portable grill lit. I mean, just look at Lily's ears!

Ruthie and Josh are too nice to say anything mean, but I was the host, so I can complain all I want. This was NOT what I had in mind. Where was the lounging on the beach with hot dogs and playing some frisbee while Lily splashed in the surf? Instead we got ghetto-rigged grilling while using all extra appendages to hold down our stuff to keep it from blowing away, while at the same time holding on the the dog and trying to get her to quit eating all those mystery chunks of who knows what that were under the table.

I dunno, I freaking love this picture.

Anyway, after the we ate the obligatory hot dogs, we got into the nice wind-free car and went home. Freaking nuts.

On our side, the wind was mostly blocked by the mountain range, so it wasn't quite as bad. We went for a walk on Waikiki to take in the sights.

A Sunset-flavored shave ice at sunset. Nice.

Look! A decent picture that was acutally taken by me! The Kesteds with Duke

I just liked this pic

After sunset, we went home and cooked the real Christmas dinner, which I pawned all the hard bits off on Ruthie, because I had been cooking a lot and was kind of over it. I totally wimped out and did the glazed ham thing for dinner. We didn't have enough chairs for the dining table, so we ate at the coffee table. My mother is shaking her head in shame right now.

Our nice Christmas dinner at the coffee table, with me, David, Josh and the vaccum cleaner. What the!? Why is the vaccum cleaner out!?

We ended the night by going to see Four Christmases at the theater, and it was hilarious. David was planning on being bored, but he laughed a lot. I think I can go ahead and recommend it.

Weather Mishaps

Day 8

Time for some more hiking!

River crossings

Quality time with the pup

David had never actually jumped off the falls before, so we decided to rectify that. I am pretty sure I once again pulled the wimp card and didn't jump in, because I've done it a bunch of times, and that water is freaking glacial.

Lily had never seen us jump off the falls either, so she proceeded to freak the heck out. She swam out to David and climbed the freaking waterfall! You can see David trying to tell her to get down. What's funny is you could tell that she was freaked out and WANTED to get down, but she was not deserting David, by god! David wanted her to jump in with him, and I was scared that she would actually do it. Thankfully, her head isn't totally empty, and we got her down. After that I had to hold her back, and she would make these yelping, moaning noises whenever any of us would jump, causing the surrounding hikers look at me, specualting if they needed to call the ASPCA. It was kind of funny.

Ruthie braved the jump!

Here's Josh going off the high one - he is more courageous than I am . I stick to the small jump.

David, not to be outdone.

Here are some videos of both Ruthie and Josh jumping! Multimedia fun!

These videos aren't the greatest, because I was planning on editing them, but in reality, was way too lazy to do so. Meh.

Mainly I was having issues because I was trying to restrain the crazed dog while everyone was jumping, and whenever anyone actually jumped, she started lurching around trying to 'save' them, which results in lots of camera jiggling, and trying not to fall off the rock I was perched on, and long run-on sentences, apparently.

I'm not sure why anyone ever lets me film things. At least I didn't turn the camera sideways, like I usually do.

So, now for the trek back. Josh was going turban-style.

Aw, my dog is so cute

Here the boys show off their casualties. It had been kind of rainy, so the stream trail was one giant mud slick. Josh was the first to go down, hard on his side. Then David totally biffed it in front of a big crowd of people while trying to be cool, and ended up falling on his rear. It was possibly the highlight of my day. Sorry honey.

Vine Swing!

I'm not sure what I'm doing in this picture, or why I have 2 jackets and a towel tied around my waist. I blame it on decreased brain cells. About 2 minutes before this picture was taken, I became the third casualty, tripping over the vine David is now standing on, and falling face-first into those rocks. Nice. Naturally, I had just taken my camera out, so I had to sacrifice my face to try to save the camera. I figured my face will heal for free (hopefully) whereas the camera would cost me. I'm nothing if not frugal.

Remember how I said it was muddy? Yeah. This was the trail. Josh finally just gave up trying to stay clean.

After that, the plan was beach and then a nice walk for sunset, but the weather decided to bring the smack down on our plans.

Our previously gorgeous beach had been ransacked by a storm, and it looked like another was moving in. We had just enough time for some naps on the beach and frisbee before the skies opened up.

We decided to drown our sorrows in some more malsadas.

Backseat Buddies!

The final blow came the last night, when I had actually planned some night-time activities. There really is practically nothing to do here after dark that doesn't include copious amounts of alcohol, so I had booked us for some bowling, which had to be made 2 weeks in advance. For bowling. Crazy.

So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised when this happened:

Goodbye electricity! A big storm rolled in, and whenever that happens, there are power outages. Like crazy ones. The whole island was without power for 12 hours. What crazy person designed the power grid so that whenever there is a storm the whole things goes out to lunch?! Probably the same guy who designed the terrible highway system. Arg.

Anyway, so no power anywhere. Stuck at home. Goodbye deposit! I was kind of mad at nature. I am finding that happens often over here, especially in the winter.

We were hungry, and I didn't want to open the fridge, so I was all for venturing out to see if there was any food to be had. David was sure we were all going to get robbed. But, we went anyway, and I'm kind of glad we did, just for the kookiness factor.

Naturally, everything is closed, but there is a grocery store a few blocks down, and they were having a sidewalk sale. You couldn't believe. There were the requisite eggs, a shopping cart of meat, and all the ready-made food they had. And there was some weird stuff. I have kind of gotten used to the nastiness that the locals here consider cuisine, but I was still not hungry enough to eat this stuff. Boxes of fried who knows what, deviled eggs, Spam prepared in everyway you can think of, scary-looking sushi, random floaties in soup (why are they always hot pintk!?) and mystery sandwiches. And it was insanity. People were just grabbing whatever they could get their hands on, like they were famine victims or something. We gave up and went home. I can't remember, but we probably ate something like corn chips for dinner.

Day 9 - Last Day

Basically the only thing they really wanted to do while they were here was to go on a whale-watching tour. Unbeknownst to us, you are supposed to book like 3 weeks in advance. What? So, the only charter we could get on was on Sat, the last day of our trip.

And, as it turned out, the day after the giant storm and blackout. Perfect. The weather wasn't too bad on our side, but the closer we got to the North Shore, the worse the weather got. When we finally made it to the harbor, the rain was pounding, and there was actual thunder and lightning, which would turn the ship mast into a giant lightning rod, frying everyone.

Not a good way to end your vacation.

So, we ended up driving around for a bit, but finally called it a wash as it started raining again, and generally looking dreary.

I still made them stop at the Dole Plantation, where I forced Ruthie to take this picture.

Josh was still mourning the death of his whale watching trip.

Mmm, Pineapple Ice cream

Josh loved the word 'Mahalo' and he even made up his own version and used it at every opportunity while he was here. I kind of wonder if he kept it up once he got home.

Sushi boat!

So that was it - they were off, back to Dallas. We really had a wonderful time with them while they were here. It was great to see you!