I Love You, California!

Today was our last day together with Anne before she had to go back to Minneapolis. She and Will went on a hike on the ridge behind our house. We spent the afternoon at Kaimana, and enjoyed dinner at Uncle's Fish Market. We dropped her off at the airport and then came home to watch the fireworks from our living room. I even stayed awake until midnight! Thanks for coming to visit, Anne! Here's to new adventures in 2018!

What trip to Oahu is complete without a trip to the North Shore? We started our day at the Green Mountain Coffee Company, sampled peanut butter at North Shore Goodies, toured Will's field and had lunch at Beat Box Cafe, which took entirely too long but was delicious. We bypassed much of Haleiwa this time to make our way to the beautiful Waimea Valley, and then continued up the way to Turtle Bay for sunset, drinks, and tacos.

December 31st is Queen Kapi`olani's birthday, so to celebrate the occasion the Palace had special nighttime tours and allowed you to walk up the Koa wood staircase, which is usually off limits! We were excited to get tickets to tour the palace since in three and a half years we had still never been. Will and Anne started the morning with a walk to the UH campus and check out an art exhibit. Of course they checked on the pongamia tree. A little later in the day we headed downtown. Anne and I walked around Chinatown while Will got our tickets for the tour. We enjoyed a beverage at Murphy's before an amazing dinner at Bethel Union. Then we were off for our tour! The Honolulu City Lights were still lit up after our tour, so we stopped by to say Aloha to drunk Santa. Another fun day in the books!

Today we went kayaking off Kailua. Sadly we don't have any pictures, but we had a great time! We even saw a couple of turtles! Our goal was to make a landing at the Mokes (the two little islands of Lanikai) but the surf was pretty big and Anne and I were too afraid of getting dumped! So we paddled back to Lanikai and ate our lunch there before venturing back to Kailua Beach. We spent the afternoon exploring the Byodo-In Temple. We ate dinner at home, but afterward Anne and Will went to a few local establishments in the neighborhood before coming back home to enjoy our beautiful view from the deck.

Today was one of my favorite days filled with Diamond Head, Koko Head (Cafe), and Kaimana! It had been quite some time since we've had a guest on island to take on the hike to Diamond Head. We got up nice and early to enjoy the early morning sunshine. After the hike it was off to Koko Head Cafe of course! Such a yummy brunch! Later, we stopped back at home to get ready for the beach. We had a nice relaxing afternoon at Kaimana. There were some threatening clouds for a while which brought rain for a few minutes, but once it passed it was like a brand new sunny day so I'm glad we stuck it out! Will and I floating

Today was a crazy rainy day with record rainfall. We took today as an opportunity to show Anne around to the various breweries around town. We started out east with a quick trip to Costco and lunch at Kona Brew Pub. Then we came back into town and stopped at most of the breweries! Most of them are in Kaka`ako, which happens to have some of the worst flooding around, so it made it quite interesting! We stopped first at the Waikiki Brewery which has a new location in Kaka`ako. Then we ventured down the street to Honolulu Beerworks. Then it was the Brewseum. We finished off the rainy day at BeerLab. It was so nice to come home and cozy up in our warm and dry house. Fortunately the weather outlook was much better for the rest of the week!

Will's cousin Anne came to spend the holidays with us this year! She arrived late Christmas Eve and we had a nice time catching up before heading to bed. On Christmas morning Will and Anne got up to go hike up Koko Head! I stayed back and started cooking. On our dinner menu was: Vegetarian meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffed mushrooms, goat cheese crostinis, and carrot cake and cookies for dessert!

There is a sweet jazz club that opened in the last few years in Waikiki that Will and I had still never been to! There are big names passing through all the time and shows almost every day. Why hadn't we been there?! So when I heard that ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro was passing through before the holidays I thought this was our chance to go to a great show! We went a little before the show started to share some appetizers of cheese and crackers and a delicious salad. Then we were in for a treat with an amazing show featuring Jake, a cellist, drummer, and guitarist. It was an hour and a half jam session! A little Mariah Carey Christmas!

This weekend is our last full weekend together until the weekend of Christmas (how do we get so busy?!) so we had to go out and get our tree ASAP! Also, they're predicting a Christmas Tree shortage on the island, so we didn't want to miss out. We went down the hill to our neighborhood City Mill and loved the first one we saw! We strapped it on to the Jetta and brought it back home. It rained all day long so I just pretended that it was snow : ) Now it really does feel like Christmas! Rory has been loving the Christmas decorations!

You can probably infer from the lack of posts lately, with the exception of work related events, that October and November has been a lot of work and not so much play. We did get to Lanikai one day, but it was chilly and rained so we didn't stay too long. So we were so excited to have our good friends Joe and Paola and their adorable kids come visit for Thanksgiving! They spent the last week on Maui before coming to O`ahu today. They stopped off at their hotel then headed over for Thanksgiving dinner. We enjoyed a wonderful feast together. On Friday we took them to the North Shore to see Will's orchard and visit Waimea Valley and swim in the waterfall. We had a nice dinner at the Moana Surfrider and enjoyed watching the sunset. We even caught the tail end of the Waikiki Holiday parade!

This morning Will filmed another T.V. show! This time it was "O`ahu County News with Senator Gil Riviere." He spoke about TerViva's role in alternative energy here in Hawai`i. We'll get the link to the show in about a month! Way to go Will!

It was Demo week for the Elemental Excelerator, which is the company that provided TerViva with a large grant for their work in Hawai`i. Will is always invited to be a part of the week and during one of the sessions he spoke a bit about his work. Crushin' it like usual.

Most people do the drive to Hana in one day, which is about six hours of driving depending on how often you stop along the way to enjoy the beauty. We were so pleased with our decision to do it in two days so we didn't have to rush. (It also meant we were one of the only cars going in our direction most of the day so we didn't have to get stuck behind anyone.) When we woke up in the morning we got to enjoy sunrise from our cottage and have a relaxing cup of coffee on the lanai. Our cottage was across the street from the access point to Venus Pool which even though it is Kapu (private/forbidden) the owner of our cottage told us was ok for us to visit. We thought a dip in the waterfall pool would be a great start to the day so we went on our first adventure of the day. Unfortunately after cutting our way through the brush and fighting off mosquitoes, we found that the pool was all dried up. So back we went to the cottage to shower up and continue our advent...