Sure, they look sweet and innocent...

...but look what trouble they get into.

It's two steps forward and one (sometimes two) steps back here. I left the house today with Robbie and Jake and ran down into Kapolei to mail our holiday cards and pick up a few groceries (yay!). As I'm driving back up the hill, I have a sinking feeling that I left the gate to the kitchen down and one or both of our dogs have gotten into the trash again (oh nooooo...). My fears were realized. When I came in, the trash bin was knocked down and the contents covered the floor. It wasn't too bad - in previous overturnings, they managed to drag nasty stuff all the way under our dining table. I don't even notice the gaping hold in the gingerbread house until after I'd mopped the floor and put away the groceries. My mother-in-law is not a big fan of our dogs; I'm beginning to come around to her side! They did leave my favorite wall intact. The placement of the Skittles below is 100% Robbie's artistic vision and implementation..

The Ala Moana Candy Cane Train

The Ala Moana Shopping Center has an annual tradition of its own - the daily production of The Christmas Gift of Aloha.* Every night through the holidays they stage a surprisingly long musical show (for a mall gig, 30 minutes) with a large cast, complete with impressive costumes and prop tricks. At the end of the show, they make it "snow" from the top of the outdoor mall by blowing tiny bubbles into the air for 10 minutes. I'd read a lot about it but hadn't seen it. We braved the shopping crowds one night last week and I came away pretty impressed. Folks take their seats around the show early, and some families turn it into a picnic dinner complete with blankets and food. A theme in the show is the "Candy Cane Train" and the mall runs a Candy Cane Train for kids. We had hoped Robbie would love it so we bought him a ticket for a special nightly affair - the train runs through the mall after the show sandwiched between a parade of characters and props from the show. Robbie of course loved looking at the train, but once we plopped him down in a car and then buckled the seat belt, he lost it. He cried and cried, and when stickers didn't work to calm him down (!) the staff began to quietly hint that we could probably get a refund or re-sell one of our tickets to anyone standing by. As he continued to cry, they politely and firmly reminded us that it was an extra long train ride, and we couldn't be in the train nor alongside the train. OK, OK! We pulled him off. Noel found another Dad hanging out who was willing to buy our ticket and we opted to follow the train and the show from a distance. One of the stickers is shown above. Note it says "I rode..." Well, if my photoshop skills were better, I would have some fun with that, for now we'll leave as-is. Here's Robbie in line prior to the big cry, when we were more optimistic! Note he's tagged like a garment in coat check so that the right people pick him up afterward.
* In a strange and news-making event here, the popular playwright of the annual show was killed in a DUI accident two weeks ago. Around 3 in the morning she got on the H1 freeway in the wrong direction. She drove for a few miles going the wrong way, cars swerving madly to miss her, until she hit someone. She was killed and she severely injured a woman in the car she hit. Authorities say her blood alcohol level was 3 times the legal limit.

Snowflake Ornament

Here’s a beaded snowflake ornament I made from a pattern downloaded from http://www.beadingdaily.com/. I like it! The possibilities for color combinations are endless. And it was easy to do once you got the pattern down. Di, faithful reader and fellow beader, what do you think?

Sunday Birthday Brunch at the Royal Hawaiian

On Sunday we went for brunch at the Royal Hawaiian with Noel’s parents to celebrate Al’s birthday. The Royal Hawaiian, or the Pink Palace, has a great brunch with seats right next to the beach. I’m guessing Nati enjoyed the time with Jake more than the endless seafood or the view. ;)

Mele Kalikimaka

Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day
That's the island greeting that we send to you
From the land where palm trees sway
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way
To say "Merry Christmas to you."

Noel and I and the two young ones went out to eat at our favorite local Italian place on Christmas Eve, then headed downtown to view the Honolulu City Lights display. By the time we got there, the kids were crashed in the back of the car, so Noel stayed behind while I went around with my camera and tripod. The results are a bit hurried, but fun. Enjoy!

Santa (with his boots off, toes cooling in the water, giving a shaka) and Mrs. Claus are annual traditions in the lights display, along with the Mele Kalikimaka blocks. I think the blocks get more “Kodak time” than Santa and Mrs. Claus - families lined up in steady streams in front of the blocks to take group pictures. I was really surprised as I headed back to the car to find no one in front of them, so I snapped this in a rush.

This is probably one of my local faves and I loved seeing it represented as garland on the downtown tree. School children make paper leis for visitors, with cut-out construction paper flowers, separated by an inch or two of a plastic straw. I’ve seen many folks on the TV news wearing these. I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve seen Jack Johnson alone donning one! Coincidently, out of the shots this evening, this is one of my favorites, too.

My Favorite Gingerbread Man

I picked up a special holiday sleeper for Jake to attend all the festivities in. I put it on him today, but we ended up cropping most of the cuteness out. Plus the three of us didn't dress with any holiday flare, so he didn't really fit in the end! Oh well. Here's the best crop of the bunch with his gingerbread suit on. Note Robbie's infamous smirk here.

First Kiss

One of my ideas for the doomed photo card shoot was to have Robbie kissing Jake. Well, we just couldn't get the right angle. These are cute, but didn't make the final cut.

Rejoice!

The Tipon family attempted today to take our holiday card photo(s). It wasn't pretty. Above is one of the better shots! We managed to get one that I consider good enough for the annual mailing, but it is only "good enough" to be the secondary, smaller shot in the multi-photo card. In the end, the criteria was, "Which one is best of me?" (No kidding.) Noel looked great throughout, Robbie squirmed or smirked in most, and sadly, Jake was just a blob in all. Please be patient for the final results, our cards will be winging their way to you around New Year's.

Cows in Suburbia

I guess it's not as uncommon as I tend to think...as new homes encroach onto previously undeveloped lands, all kinds of creatures still remain to give those an idea of how things used to be. Our little subdivision of ~4+ years has cows. (And a rooster I've named Lincoln. But I'll save that story for another blog.) The homes in our area push out as far as can be developed. Matter of fact, there's an open space just across the street between two homes merely because it was deemed too unstable to build on. So next to us we have a gulch. Whoever owns the gulch and the land west of it still keeps cows there. When heavy rains hit (and we've had a lot of rain lately) the cows come down closer to us to graze and drink the water running downstream. This afternoon Robbie and I walked up the hill to get the mail and enjoyed looking at the cows along the way. Once home, Robbie ran into the backyard and I grabbed the camera to get a few shots. The shot below was taken directly across the street from our lot (on the "unstable" land), shooting to the right up the hill. The shot above is a tight zoom on the cows closer to where I was standing. I tried unsuccessfully to get the calf and the mom (brown and white, respectively) while their heads were held up. They were very cute!

Rose Report

In a previous post I promised more pictures of the roses in our backyard, specifically the red roses I was excited about. It bloomed about three times and I missed them all. Then Grandma McMahon came to town and she put her green thumbs to work. (Yes, Diana, some has worn off on me, but not a lot! I had a pretty high kill rate with plants up until moving here, and sadly, even here I have probably lost about 5-10% of the things I've tried to grow.) So Mom was determined to help me with my roses and proceeded to do a Sopranos-style whacking in my side yard! She cut two plants nearly to the core, was kind to two and just did a professional "removal of the cross vines" or something, and even pruned the just-planted red bush. Well, as hard as it was to look at for a few weeks, my faith in her never waned, and our roses are looking good. Except for the pink variety, which took a hard fall in the recent rains and winds. It's nearly knocked to the ground and covering the red bush. Looks like more pruning in our future! Here's Robbie this afternoon between the bushes in the side yard. I'm standing just outside our fence in the street, coming back from taking pictures of the cows.

New pics of Jake

Here are a couple tightly-cropped pics of Jake, hot off the camera. A record for me. These were taken in a rush around 6:00 PM tonight as Noel was in a hurry to go pick up a friend at the airport who is just getting back from Iraq. Our quasi-studio setup on the couch wasn't that great (note harsh camera flash!) and we couldn't get Jake to smile. Seems that the best smiles are always in the mornings, so I'll just have to sleep with the camera on the nightstand! His face looks a little roughed up. We have only managed to trim the nails on one hand this weekend, so his right cheek is taking a beating. I've got no time to touch him up!

Hawaii News and Notes

It's been a fun month to be in Hawaii if you are a college football fan. The 10th ranked Hawaii Warriors are heading to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on Jan 1. It's big, big, BIG news here! Quarterback Colt Brennan was a finalist for the Heisman trophy and he jetted off to New York City last week. A pic of him in NYC the night before the ceremony graced the front page of the Honolulu Advertiser. They love Colt here. Had he had this season last year, I think he might have been in the running to be on the state quarter. Sadly, they don't drink the Colt punch in other parts of the country and he's not as beloved. Recognized, just not idolized. He placed third in the Heisman voting. Not too shabby! But he will have to settle for simply having his number retired at Aloha Stadium.

They ran the Honolulu Marathon on Sunday and they screwed up the timing on some runners. Not completely the organizer's fault - they were using a new timing system and tried to give the runners instructions not to bend the timing device tied to their shoes or it wouldn't work. Well, if you're running a marathon, I guess the last thing you want is an annoying timing device bobbing on your shoe for 26.2 miles, so many runners understandably tucked it away and in the process bent it. So organizers are going through video footage to clear up the mess. There's also buzz that the owners of this software co. used this year mislead the organizers of how "accurate" the system is!

In a truly inspiring run, an 80 year old woman set a world record with her time. Wow! All those things are amazing...first running a marathon, second running when you're 80(!), finishing when you're 80 (!), and on top of all those, setting a world record for your age group (!!). If she can do that, I can probably lose that little bit of baby weight left, huh?

Update on Dec 15: OK, so she didn't break a record after all. Turns out that the organizer's checked a website for marathon record times, and the website was wrong! But I still think it's an impressive, motivating run.

And finally, Noel came back yesterday from an extended week on the East coast. He recently bought a video camera and spent the week shooting with that and not his Nikon. So, no still shots but maybe we'll have some video posts for viewing here in the future. We were stuck in traffic (yes, on the H1!) heading home from the airport at 4:00 PM in the afternoon. If you're in Hawaii, at least sometimes you're treated to rainbows while you're going 5 mph in the carpool lane! Note the rain drops on the windshield from the pics shot with my camera phone from the passenger seat. I kind of like them.

Fun with Robbie

For all the cameras (very nice cameras, too!) in the Tipon Family household, we sure don't get many pictures downloaded, let alone posted here. So I feel very silly posting pics from my camera phone, but here they are! Shots of Robbie in the fun cars with Sesame Street and Kermit characters were taken while shopping in Waikele last month. The other shot is here at home - Robbie's lineup of all toys with wheels. One of many lineup configurations! Robbie loves his moving vehicles...and loves to line 'em up!