Open casting call: Amazing Race partner needed

A new season of Amazing Race started last night and I’m excited! There was a tiny Tivo snafu, so I didn’t get it taped, but that has been resolved and I’m ready for next week.

I’ve loved the show since it premiered years ago. I’ve watched all the seasons and have wanted to do it about as long as it has been on air. I threw out the idea to Noel shortly after we got married: Why don’t we try out? We’re an interracial couple; he’s military (and now Iraq veteran to boot). Me? I’m not even photogenic. I think all I bring to the table is that I’m white and well-endowed, but the producers might bite and give us a try anyway.

To my surprise, he said no to the idea and explained that we might kill each other. Darn it if he isn’t right. I’ve got to admit my husband is on point this time. We would need a Dr. Phil intervention immediately after the first Road Block. But that has not snuffed the flame of desire to be a racer! So I ask you, my good friends and faithful readers, do you want to go on the show with me? I might whine a bit during a few hair-raising, high-flying stunts and will throw in the towel completely if I had to do a meat eating challenge, but other than that, I’d be a good partner and we’d have a lot of fun. So, who’s with me?

Lightroom makes a comeback

OK, maybe not a comeback, but it's restored. For a few months now, my Lightroom installation was down. Wouldn't launch, couldn't access it at all. So I was going to throw in the towel and just install the new 2.0. But tonight I was running through some pictures (I finally joined Facebook and need a head shot...) and was able to launch it. Here's a shot from last June that looked kind of pretty. Have a good weekend, all! Oh, and if you're on Facebook, throw me an "Add as friend"!

Wedding preview – what a snooze!

I tease. The wedding was not a bore, as the picture above would suggest. The gathering in Riverside, CA, this past Sunday was a beautiful tribute to love, family, friends, community, and free spirits. Stories and pictures to follow in the coming week!

California eats

Cub and I returned mid-day Tuesday from another quick trip to California. This time we flew to San Diego to visit friends for a few days, and then drove up to Riverside for the wedding of a long-time family friend on Sunday afternoon. (It’s been a long wedding season for the Tipon Family but it’s finally over. Hallelujah. Five weddings since late March: one in Maryland, the other four in California.)

But back to our trip. Ahhh, California - what other superlatives can I throw on you, my birthplace! Friends, family, fun, and good food – you have them all. I grew up in CA and have traveled a fair bit, and I just don’t get the food in Hawaii sometimes. It doesn’t hold a candle to some of what the Golden State has to offer. And I’m not even speaking of restaurants. All of these dishes pictured here were whipped up in an impressive evening of culinary mastery by my beloved friend Di in her home kitchen. Yum! She wasn’t done Friday, either. I crashed at her home upon my return from Riverside on Monday night (displacing her sister-in-law from her own bedroom), and she continued to whip up the treats. She made cookies, but I was in such awe I forgot to snap a picture.

I love this picture! It looks like she's daring me to tackle this one at home. You bet I will! I want the recipe.

I have photogenic friends and family!

The highlight of my Sunday morning perusal of the paper (or late afternoon or evening, whatever time I can grab that day) usually consists of finding a $2.00 off coupon for diapers. Sadly, this is true. Imagine my delight when I find not one, but two people that I know pictured within the various sections!

First we have Johnny, my nephew, who sat atop a large pumpkin this time last year, had his picture taken, and created a media storm. OK, well at least a media storm in our family as the picture was distributed around the world to various news outlets! I was out in Riverside, CA, this weekend with my sister, her daughter Sarah, my Mom, and Cub to attend a wedding. Late Sunday night after getting Cub to sleep, Mom and I were reading in our hotel room and winding down from the day’s events. I’m flipping through the Travel section of the Riverside paper and there’s Johnny, once again atop that pumpkin! The photo ran with an AP article advertising the upcoming pumpkin festival in Half Moon Bay. I gasp, show my Mom, we crack up, and I head over to my sister’s room (via adjoining doors) and literally wake her up to show her. (It sounds pretty cold of me as she has a 5-week old and her sleep is frequently disrupted, but I don’t think she minded.) If you spotted it in your local paper, please let me know.

Then just yesterday, after arriving back in Honolulu, I was looking for Johnny in what remained of Sunday’s paper back home. I’m casually looking at some food items in the USA Weekend supplement when my friend Elsa’s picture pops up at me from page 4. She has modeled for stock photography, and here she is above with a pseudo family ordering a meal. The picture above is a bit grainy because I scanned the paper as I couldn’t find it online.

Return of the fish hat

…and the return of shirtless children!*

I received a knit fish hat as a shower gift from great friends when I was pregnant with Robbie. I have tried to get a few good shots of Cub wearing it, but I haven’t had much luck yet. It was next to the camera a few weeks ago and Robbie decided to put it on and run around the house. Except that it’s a bit small for him now, so he sported it yarmulke-style and tilted a bit (fish tail on the side). Here he is above, mouth full of graham crackers and a big smile for the fish hat.

Here’s another of the two below. It’s not a great shot – the boys are tugging at a toy and about to knock each other over, but I love the dogs in the background, patiently waiting for graham crackers to fall to the ground in the scuffle. When Robbie first started crawling, we were really worried about Brady. She would growl and look scared whenever he neared her. But then the “miracle of the Cheerios” happened and we haven’t been worried since. One day Robbie got restless and bored in his highchair and started flinging Cheerios at the dogs resting on the floor. Once a baby becomes a Cheerios dispenser, all is right in the Beagle-Basset Hound world.

* Ahh, yes, the kids are shirtless again. I really do dress them, you know. I think this particular morning Cub had just pooped through a onesie and Robbie had spilled juice down the front of his shirt within minutes of each other, so I stripped them both. I guess I took these pictures between that and getting them dressed again. But don’t worry, they’re not cold. It’s still hot here and very humid in the house at times.

Sweet treats

I came home after a trek to the grocery store a few months back with an unwanted item – someone had inadvertently placed a box of Trix cereal in my bags. Maybe they were inadvertently placed on my side of the grocery divider and I paid for them, I can’t remember. Anyway, I tried a small bowl with milk they way you’re supposed to eat them and they’re awful. Noel’s not much of a cereal eater and there’s no way I’d ever give them to Robbie, so I tried something I’ve wanted to do for a while: make Rice Krispie treats. I cook and bake from scratch a lot, yet somehow never made them before. I made them with Trix, so I guess they’d be Trix treats.
Following the surprisingly easy directions on the back of the marshmallow bag (I always thought they were ultra messy being sticky and all. Not so with the microwave instructions!) I came up with what you see above. I must admit, the first day they were bad. I thought, wow, I just ruined a perfectly good bag of marshmallows I could have made s’mores with! But after a day in the fridge (not sure if this is what you do with them…the marshmallow bag failed me on storage tips) they taste better. Like a fine wine, this junk food gets better with age. Straight out of the fridge it’s a bit tricky to pry them out of the pan, but once in your hands you feel like a kid again eating carnival food. I might make them again because they look fun and festive, but only for big kids. I do enough laundry and furniture stain spotting already!

A late afternoon at the beach

It’s a sad time here on Oahu for the Coast Guard and their families. Late Thursday evening one of their helicopters went down in waters 6 miles from the Honolulu Airport during a routine training exercise with four crew members onboard. Three bodies were recovered immediately, while the pilot remains missing. They called off the official search at sunset last night. All were stationed at Barber’s Point Air Station - minutes from our home and a stone’s throw from one of our favorite local beaches. Flags in the area were lowered in the area throughout the weekend.

Robbie, Cub, and I went down to the beach late yesterday afternoon for a little activity before the end of the weekend. We saw one orange Coast Guard helicopter tracing the coastline from the Leeward side to Diamond Head and back. It was reported today that crash wreckage had washed ashore near Ewa early Sunday, and they were undoubtedly looking for more. Together we watched the helicopter, but I didn’t tell Robbie why it was in the sky. Not sure if there is an appropriate gesture from the ground to say, “Our hearts are with you,” without looking like you’re in distress and need assistance yourself, so I remained motionless.

Pre-school breakthrough

Robbie’s class has a pretty good curriculum for a three year old. Each day his teacher prepares a “Today at school” pictorial review of his activities. Robbie then can practice writing his name, use the date stamp (we’re old now…but stuff like this does entertain the wee ones - he even got to do it twice yesterday as the first stamp was upside-down), circle the pictures of what they did, and record his favorite activity of the day. Every day since he started school in March his favorite activity has been recess. The boy loves his playgrounds. Being here in Hawai’i, there are few days where they are banned from the outside because of poor weather, and even on those days, three doors down from their room is the “PE room” which looks to be a lot of fun, too. So imagine my surprise when I receive this report yesterday, and his favorite activity was math AND recess. I don’t know if he noticed, but he was given extra fish crackers to mark the occasion. I know, he'll catch on to this soon. I've got to be pretty careful with the treats.

New stamp with Hawai’i flag is released

On Tuesday, the Postal Service issued a Hawai’i flag stamp within the three-year, multistamp series Flags of our Nation. The stamps include the flag and “a snapshot view” of the area represented by the flag. The Hawai’i stamp shows an outline of what I think is Maui and of Oahu’s Diamond Head, as well as local flora.
Here in Honolulu, officials dedicated the stamp midday Tuesday at the Honolulu airport post office, where you could get your new stamps hand-canceled with a special commemorative first-day-of-sale postmark. When I first read about the ceremony, I thought I would go. Good thing I didn’t – I had the wrong post office. I would have headed downtown and would have been really mad at myself for misreading the news article and wasting time and gas.

Weekend wrap-up

I spent a good part of the holiday weekend in the doghouse, one which I probably won’t dig myself out of until I produce another son for Noel. After spending a few days with my Mom, I came home and thought I had washed everything thoroughly for stray cat hair. Well, I missed a few things. The boys got into an infected bag and a blanket late last week and they threw the blanket around the living room and Noel’s allergies blew up on him. I also didn’t wash Jacob’s car seat cover - things got worse when the four of us got in the car together.

Noel was forced into the garage on Monday, the only place he could breathe, and ended up spending most of the day cleaning it. I worked on loads and loads of laundry, and still have a lot of cleaning to do today. I did manage to make it to a public appearance by Bryan Clay, gold-medal winning Decathlete, who spoke on the Marine Corps Base at Kaneohe. He inspired the crowd with his story of growing up a troubled kid in Kaneohe and provided inside stories to his Olympic career. I think he did anyway. I showed up just as the crowd was beginning to leave the building and missed everything. He was still signing autographs, so I took a free trading card and had him sign it. In other sports news, a team from Hawaii won the Little League World Series just over a week ago, and the island celebrated by having a parade run through Waikiki last night. We usually opt out of those things as traffic is a nightmare when they close Kalakaua, but it was fun to see it on the news.

Other highlights were having an early breakfast with friends who were honeymooning here, and then switching gears and spending a relaxing Sunday evening at the beach in Waianae with folks who were renting cabins. Back to normal today as Robbie headed off to school and Noel headed downtown to work.