Purplicious

I had the pleasure of attending the annual Waialua Elementary School story telling contest this morning, where Eve Hart was a contestant. She was contestant #10 and she ROCKED it with her rendition of Purplicious. There were 16 contestants picked from her school to perform and she took FIRST PLACE. I'm further pleased to announce that all three of the winners came from her classroom!

Birthday Fabulousness

Turning 35 was pretty freaking awesome and it resulted in a 4 day celebration! It started on April 7th, when I came home from school early to a lovely steak dinner prepared by CRH that I enjoyed with Eve Hart and CRH. They gave me my birthday gifts and it was a great kickoff!
Friday, April 8th (my actual birthday), I woke up and got a sweet song from my Baby Pooh Bear. I had to go to practicum that day, but they were kind enough to let me out at 1:30pm. I picked Eve up and took her to see Soul Surfer. If this is playing in a theater near you, you MUST go see it. It's amazing and totally inspired my kid. She got the message and I was super proud of her. After the movie, we caught the end of sunset and Eve insisted we have dinner at Luibueno's.

Saturday, the day after my birthday, I celebrated with a FULL day on the beach. I went out around 9:30am and I came home for meals (which I then took out on the beach to eat). Eve and I returned from sunset that night around 7pm. It was totally like being on vacation, but at home.

The festivities finale was Sunday at the Kokua for Japan concert. We saw Willie Nelson, Mick Fleetwood, and Jack Johnson all perform along with some other great artists on the lawn of the Hilton in town. There were maybe 4,000 people there and we had pretty great seats. I came home to another fabulous dinner and some great wine.
Fantastic weekend!!

Perfection

There are days in life where things just go the way you hoped, all the way. Yesterday was one of those days. I leisurely woke up, had coffee, played on FB, etc. and then I took Eve and 2 of our neighbor children to the beach.

We went to Papailoa, my favorite spot, and had lunch, laid out, watched turtles, and swam and played for four hours. Yes, 4 hours of awesome. I've been really stressed lately with school and my practicum, so it was amazing to have such a gorgeous, cloud free day where the kids all got along nicely and the universe smiled on us (yep, I said it).

Another Tsunami Warning

I'm really hoping this does NOT become an annual event. Last night I was sitting on my couch having a beer after class when my Mama sends me a text about the earthquake in Japan. I've decided that she really must not sleep anymore at all and we texted some back and forth but at that time it didn't seem like we were in danger. I kept the news on and then a little before 10pm they issued a warning for us in Hawaii and started sounding the sirens.

The sirens scare the crap out of me. I hate them. I get anxious on monthly test days. I woke CRH up and frantically told him that we were under warning and I was freaking! I packed the essentials like last year; makeup, jewelry, food, and the kid. We debated about where to go and finally I just followed him up the hill to the Dole Plantation. We stopped along the way for gas and beer and more non-perishable food items.

We parked at the Dole Plantation before midnight in the rain and sat and waited. I could not sleep because of my anxiety level, despite having been up since 6:30am Thursday. As it got closer to 3am our time, my mom and I stayed on the phone so I could hear the news. The local radio stations just weren't doing it for me. I needed more info and I was so happy she was home and watching it! Waves "hit", water receded...but it didn't seem like the water was pouring back in. All in all, it ended up doing some very minor damage. A few houses got washed out on the Big Island (where there was also a small earthquake last night), some boats were damaged but all in all we were unharmed!

I heard on the radio about 6:40am that they were planning to give the "all clear" around 7am so I woke CRH up from his slumber and told him we needed to head that way to get in line. We sat there waiting and heard that they were extending the warning until 12pm. I almost lost it. I was sooooo tired after only about an hour of sleep in my car (not fun by the way!). The view was beautiful though to include this huge, brilliant, full rainbow over Haleiwa. The guy across the street from us pulled out his cooler, his camp chair, and an umbrella. He propped his feet up on his truck and popped himself open a Heineken. It was hilarious! Finally, they downgraded it to an advisory and gave the all clear about 8am. We were home, safe and sound, and in our beds by 8:30am. When I looked out my bedroom window before falling into my bed, I saw another gorgeous rainbow over Waialua. Thanks so much for all the calls, texts, FB messages, etc. We're fine here and managed to dodge another bullet.

Eve's Sunrise Shell

Today we have a guest blogger, Eve Hart. Yesterday she found her very first sunrise shell in Haleiwa. Here's her story.

Yesterday when I was practicing my swimming, I dug up some sand and found a sunrise shell. At first when a wave came, it was gone but when I looked for it I found a shell that looked nothing like a sunrise shell. After I looked for a while, I found my sunrise shell again. I came running and screaming up to my Mommy telling her I found a sunrise shell. She thought I'd been stung by a jellyfish. In the end, she took a picture and put it on Facebook.
Sunrise shells are the rarest type of shells in Hawaii. We found out about these cool shells at the farmer's market. There are blue and green ones and there are ones that are pink, yellow, and white. Mine is pink, yellow, and white. It's great because my favorite color is pink. On the back, it has a really dark color pink. This one looks like it was connected to another one before I found it. Well, that's all for today's story.



PS My Mom's birthday is in a month, if you need ideas. (Shameless plug by the author's mom!)
http://www.monicabytheshore.com/

Yet Another Reason to Love Hawaii...

As if I needed another reason to love this place, Hawaii is the only state that grows cacao. Cacao makes what? Chocolate. What do I love more than anything (except Eve and a very few select other people on the planet)? Yep, chocolate.

Eve and I heard about the 1st annual Chocolate Festival earlier in the month at the Cacao Festival at our local farmer's market (see the post below). It was expensive by my standards for a festival admission, but she really wanted to go and well there was chocolate and the proceeds went to benefit a local hula halau...so we went.

My boss and friend, Ferna, who loves chocolate like I do had mentioned earlier this week that she wanted to go with her granddaughter and we ended up meeting up for lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory and heading over to the festival together. We LOVED it. Eve was in heaven. I pretty much let her eat all the chocolate she could ingest. We had lavender chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, spicy chocolate, fruity chocolate, hot chocolate...you get the picture. We'll definitely be going back next year. I'm 99% sure I gave myself Diabetes today, but it was totally worth it.

It's a Good Thing

It's a good thing I didn't try to do my undergrad here because I would have flunked out hard core. I'm so distracted by Hawaii. This morning I took Eve to the Farmer's Market, which is awesome. It was the Cacao Festival and we sampled lots of yummy goodness. We ate tons of chocolate recipe concoctions to include chocolate raviolis. One of them was super yummy with pineapple in the middle and one was pink and tart, not my favorite but very interesting to try. Hawaii is the only state that has successful cacoa crops. Several places around us grow it and we could have taken a farm tour but I wasn't feeling that today. I'm not quite that granola yet. Next month is Cacao Month here with promises for more yummy goodness. Fortunately for me, it's rainy today so I can study this afternoon. Although there are still countless other things I'd rather be doing than reading about research.

I'd also like to say it's a good thing CRH agreed to still live with us while I do this degree. I appreciate it immensely especially after a week of trying it as a single mom. I have no worries about my ability to be a single mom after I finish this program, but it would be completely impossible in the process. I'm lucky to have friends here that are amazing and do awesome things with Eve so I can attend classes and study when he's off island. There's something to that whole 'it takes a village' thing. I'm happy for his return tonight though. We're getting along really well right now and things are peaceful and pleasant at the homestead. It's a shame we had to get divorced to become friends again, but I think we're both so much happier and in the end that's what's most important for all three of us. Last week was Divorce Day and ironically he was in San Francisco where we started our epic honeymoon adventure. We've come a long way this year. I feel good about where we're headed. I hope he does too.

As Promised, Pics Before I Go...

Hopefully this semester won't be as bad as I think, but we'll see. I'm very apprehensive about adding practicum into the class-work mix. It's part of it though and unless I want to go for 3 years (and I don't), it's a necessary element.
My friend, Becky, and my new friend, Bronwen, came to visit HI this past week. We had an amazing trip! We were nervous at first that it was going to rain the entire time, but they seemed to bring the sunshine.
They arrived Wednesday afternoon and we had a fun, laughter filled (alcohol infused) evening at the homestead. Thursday, I took them around the island on the way to school. It rained some, but mostly we were in and out of it. We drove the entire windward side of the coast and they were able to bask in the beauty.
Friday was sunny and perfect! Friday morning, I had to go to school but after my return we went to the beach for a few hours and watched the hottie surfers at Pipeline. That evening, we trekked to Waikiki and went on a sunset booze cruise. I decided I wanted to sit on the net, not anticipating the choppy waters and within 5 minutes of heading out I was SOAKED. I mean soaked, like you could have squeezed me out. We did some bar hopping and eating that evening and stayed in town at a hotel in preparation for our early morning whale watch Saturday.

The whales were out, but sadly not breaching this day. We watched 2 mamas and babies for most of the time we were out. It is amazing to see and hear this massive creatures. They came pretty close to the boat at one point and the captain had to stop the boat and keep us in place as to not hurt them. After our cruise, we spent a blissful 2 hours at the Verizon store replacing (at full cost) my cell phone that was a causality of the drenching I received on the booze cruise.

Sunday was a weird weather day, but HUGE North Shore waves. We started our morning at the Farmer's Market and then went to Waimea Falls for a lovely morning stroll. After the falls, we went to watch the bay and see the 18-20ft waves. Lunch was at Ted's (one of my faves) and we ate it at Shark's Cove watching the waves crash over the rocks in massive sprays. It's truly a spectacular show to watch when you come in the winter.

Monday was their last full day, so we did it big. We hiked to Ka'ena Point in the morning and saw whales along our hike. There were a bunch of them in the water along the coast and we did get to see some breaching that day! At the end of the world, there were sadly no monk seals as I had virtually promised them...but we did get to see albatross and fortunately Bronwen is a bird person, so she seemed content with this. After hiking back, we had a lovely lunch at Haleiwa Joe's and hit the shops for the last of their souvenir shopping and then the beach for a few hours before coming in for dinner and wine!
Today, I drove 2 very sad women up Pupukea to look out over the North Shore before grabbing Dole Whips on the way to the airport. I thought they were going to cry, but luckily they managed and are planning their next trip in August! What a fun week before school kicks in!

School Is In Session

Well it's back into the black hole I go for a few months...I'll try to be a little better blogger this semester, but it promises to be super busy. I'll toot my own horn (because it's my blog and all) and tell you guys that I ended last semester with a 4.0. I hope I haven't gotten too big for my britches (I love that Southern-ism), as I've signed up for 18 hours this semester! Three of those hours are practicum and 3 hours are an online course that only meets for 1.5 hours a week and totally relates to my job, so I'm pretty psyched. I'm sure by the time I have assembled all of my syllabi Thursday night though, I'll be singing a different tune.
On a lighter note, I'll be drowning whatever emotion related to this semester that I have on Thursday night with my girls that are coming to visit this week! Becky and Bronwen are set to leave snowy, freezing NC for warm, sunny Hawaii this Wednesday. It's my final fun before descending into my hole. I'll post pictures before I go.

Happy New Year!

We have had a fantastic start to the new year thus far! Last night, the Hart family rang in the new year with friends in Punalu'u. There was much eating, drinking, and fireworks. As of today, fireworks are now illegal in Hawaii...even sparklers!

This morning, we rolled out of bed around 10:30am, took the tree down, and headed out for a hike. We hiked a mountain near Dillingham that we later found out is named Peacock Flats. It was a gorgeous hike that afforded views of the entire North Shore coast. I did not see a single peacock though and the hike up this mountain reminded me that I really should start jogging again. At one point, I thought I was going to pass out from going up yet another hill. The views really were worth it though.

After our hike, we headed into town. We took Eve to Buca di Beppo for some pre-theater dinner and then we went to see Cats. It was fabulous! We had seats 4 rows back and she could see the cats really closely, especially when they came to the end of the stage. During the finale, Skimbleshanks came down into the audience and she got to pet him and play with him a little bit.

If New Year's Day is any indication of how the year is going to go, I think we're in for a good one! Happy 2011 everyone!