KC the Cleaner Upper

KC would have you believe that we put her to work cleaning up the house. However, the story behind this photo is that she loves to punch the floor with her water bottle to see water pool around her. She's noticed what we've had to do and mimicked us. She got a cloth she saw lying around and proceeded to wipe up her mess. We clapped our hands and praised her. A little later, there she was up to her old tricks again.... making more messes...

Unfortunately, all we can do is laugh. Which makes her want to do it again!

Valuable Artwork?

After paying $60.00 or more to frame a place mat that Art brought back from Peru we resolved to try to at least buy artwork that cost more than the frame.

So much for that resolution!
We brought back this poster that we bought for 10 Euros in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh Museum with the idea that we would just put it in a poster frame. We brought it to Picture Plus which is a framing shop here. They were having a custom frame sale. Well.... after getting the spacer so the poster wouldn't touch the glass (Hawaiian humidity) and the custom frame (the poster was in metrics and non standard) and UV glass (Hawaiian sun) we ended up paying over $160.00 for it.

The salesperson said, "Your memories are valuable... and it would have cost $303.00 if you didn't get it on sale..."

On the plus side, the Egyptian papyrus that we bought did cost us more that $12.00 and the frame was smaller and cost more like $70.00.

AND now we've still got Art's tile set that we bought in Turkey and STILL haven't framed. Sigh...

I think we'll wait on that one.

(I've been wanting to visit you all and do some blogging but KC sleeps in my office and between her bedtimes and naptimes and playtimes and us running around on errands I haven't been able to do much blogging. My gracious! I can't even get my Sky Watch up on time. Sigh...)

Sky Watch Friday: Water Cress Farm

For more great Sky Watch Friday photos, join us at Sky Watch Friday and meet our very wonderful and most cordial host, Tom Wigley and his wife, Jane. The concept for Sky Watch came from Dot and has grown into a dedicated site for this growing meme, kindly hosted by Tom at Welcome to Wigger's World, Sandy Carlson from Writing in Faith and imac from imac's photos from the mind's eye.



This water cress farm has been there since I was a little girl. It always seemed like such a peaceful haven amidst all the traffic and shopping center next to it.

The tree in front is a koa bush which is always full of seeds. Those seeds are often used to make leis.

Waipahu "Open Market"

I grew up in Waipahu quite a few years ago... before I went away to college, before I married and before I left for Illinois some 34 years ago. We returned to go to the Farmers Market. In Hawaii, they call it the Open Market.
We passed by this mynah bird who was in an awful hurry.

Tif wanted to buy some Filipino mochi (rice cake) that she really loves. KC was quite patient and was rewarded with some delicious buns.

The Open Market begins at 8:15. This is taken quite seriously. Money does NOT exchange hands until the 8:15 horn is blown.

It's fun to see all the local island veggies and fruits.



On the way back to the car, we noticed all the flowers on trees and bushes. This is a crown flower plant. Monarch butterflies begin their lives on it. The flowers are used to string leis.













The pikake (Jasmine) is so fragrant, it actually smells delicious. Jasmine tea? The Filipinos tell me it's their national flower. My friend complains that the scent is so strong that pikake leis give her a headache. Not me!






I have no idea what this is but I thought it was beautiful.










My mom always called this the bozubana flower. I don't know what the English word is. Bozu means priest or monk (who are bald) in Japanese, bana means flower.








And here's another mystery flower. My mom tells me many Filipinos have this flower in their yard and that they eat the beans from it. (Later: My brother says this tree is called Malungguy.

Jet Lagged in Hawaii

Tif and KC are here! They arrived safely yesterday but the 5 hour time difference and 9 hour flight time took its toll on all three. Ed continued on his connecting flight to Kauai. Tif and KC were exhausted. KC had a hard time falling asleep and was up this morning at 3:00 AM. We brought her into our bedroom so that her mommy could get some rest.

We took a trip to visit my aunt in Pauoa Valley at the foothills of Punchbowl crater. The crater holds a National cemetery. My aunt is a true gardener and shared a lot of her fabulous lettuce and swiss chard with us. Hawaii is an expensive place to live but with everybody sharing what they have, we can be comfortable.


This is my aunt's dog. His name is Poochie and he's not liking the hot Hawaiian sun here.


KC slept through the entire visit. She is thoroughly jet lagged and is a teeny bit on the crabby side. When she first saw us she reached out with a little frown on her face as if to say, "Where have you two been?"


This evening Art planted a papaya tree at the side of the house. KC had fun helping to water it. We hope it will yield some delicious fruit that we can share also.

Getting Ready For Our Granddaughter

We're so excited! Our daughter and granddaughter will be visiting us for a couple of months. Tif's husband has a computer job on the island of Kauai so they're coming in together tomorrow and then he'll go on to Kauai. He'll join us next week when his job is complete there. I think there's a possibility that he's got another job on three islands and if that's so he can come back again. Tif and KC will stay with us for two months because her husband has so many out of town jobs anyway. We're thrilled that we'll get to have them for so long though we feel badly that her husband has to be gone so much. It's very hard on a marriage.

In preparation for KC to be here, we've had to baby proof this house. It's been a little tricky since so much of the house is still not completed. We've got another 4-5 years worth of work to finish it off. One thing we absolutely had to do was to put in a child gate. We looked everywhere for a pressure type gate so we wouldn't have to put screws into the walls but couldn't find one. Ah well, we've settled on this one and figure that we'll have a grandchild and maybe someday, grandchildren come to visit so this will protect them from a fall down 21 steps.

Shadow Box of Memories

My kids are grown up and following their own dreams but I remember holding them and being embraced by the scent of their baby sweetness. Before we moved, I decided to save a couple of their outfits that I loved. I sewed my daughter's dress myself and had her preschool photo taken with her wearing it. My son wore his outfit when he was just 3 months old and full of sunshine and laughter. When I look at the shadow boxes I can almost feel myself carrying them again, hugging them and feeling them close by.

Sky Watch Friday: It's a Palm Tree, It's a Coconut Tree, It's a Cellphone Tower!

For more great Sky Watch Friday photos, join us at Sky Watch Friday and meet our very wonderful and most cordial host, Tom Wigley and his wife, Jane. The concept for Sky Watch came from Dot and has grown into a dedicated site for this growing meme, kindly hosted by Tom at Welcome to Wigger's World, Sandy Carlson from Writing in Faith and imac from imac's photos from the mind's eye.

We were commenting at what a tall coconut tree that was when my brother laughed and said, "Look closely. It's a cell tower!" I wish all cell towers could be camouflaged so nicely with the environment.

I'm posting this a little early. I still don't know the time difference between England and Hawaii. I'll add my link to Tom's site later in the (my)day.

Windows and Van and DSL, Oh My!

OK… we’ve had our easy days. Now it’s getting complicated and expensive. It’s the cost of living in Paradise, I guess.

I was wanting to take a photo and asked Art to take the screens down from our sliding windows so I could get a clearer shot. When he did, he was surprised to find that the screen springs that lock it in place had corroded. When he called Certainteed which was supposed to have all that good warranty (granted it was limited because you couldn’t mistreat the windows), they said the screens were warranted for only 6 months. When Art mentioned the corroded springs, she said, “You live in Hawaii. What do you expect?” Well, if they’re selling it to folks in Hawaii, I expect them to last longer than 2 years. Siiiiighhhh… Well, that’s the last time we buy Certainteed. We liked our window in Chicago but I guess Hawaii is too difficult for those windows and doors.

Now it’s the Hawaiiantel DSL line. We just signed up for high speed Internet service but it was quite slow and in the evening, nonexistent. Our Hawaiiantel fixer upper guy came and he said the problem is something in the house (therefore our cost.) However, he was able to magically fix it with a few extra parts. I'm so excited! We're connected again!


And then there was good news! Our van arrived on the Matson ship. It was in good shape. Art chuckled at the notation on the shipping manifest. It said the inside was dirty. Well! I didn't think it was THAT dirty. Granted it came cross country but gosh! Not to worry... We cleaned it up in a jiffy. It just amazes me that this van has come all the way from Chicago to Hawaii in just two weeks in great shape for just a little over $1,000.00. Now we've got to shop around for a smaller, gas efficient car for our real driving. We just need the van for our construction. Gas prices here are as bad as Chicago which is NOT a good thing.

Happy Birthday, Art!

I'm actually writing this on Sunday, July 13th. Is it because I'm in Hawaii that the post date reads Monday? Hmmmm...

It's Art's birthday and mom went all out to make him a special dinner. She cooked stir fried pak choy, mahi mahi with a crab stuffing on top and seaweed with fish cakes. I added the green salad. It was really quite delicious. I asked her where she got the recipe for the mahi mahi. She told me she'd heard it on the radio. She said she never used to like to cook before and considered it a chore but now she enjoys cooking for others. She especially likes the compliments she gets from us. We're really loving having her cook for us. We're feeling quite pampered indeed.

And speaking of birthdays, it's weird that Art and his sister and some of his cousins, my nephew and son are all born on the 13th. Strange. I thought Jon was going to be born on the 12th but he was born a few minutes past midnight on the 13th in that elevator I spoke of a while back. It may seem like a bad luck number but it's been excellent for me!

Arte Y Pico Award

Thank You, Lisa (Ramblings of a Villas Girl)
Lisa has given me the Arte Y Pico Award. This award is given for creativity, design, interesting material and contribution to the blogging community.
The rules for this award are:

1. Choose five blogs that you consider deserve this award for creativity, design, interesting material and for contributing to the blogging community, no matter the language.

2. Each award must have the name of the author and a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3. Each award winner must show the award and put the name and link to the blog of the one who has given the award.

4. The award winner and the one giving the award must show a link to the "Arte Y Pico" blog, so that everyone knows its origin.

There are so many blogs out there that are deserving of this award, but I have choose the following:

1. Amanda's Musings Amanda is from England. She's a super talented quilter who gives wonderful blog tours of her country. I feel like I'm there whenever I "visit" her.

2. Brit' Gal in the USA Sarah is also a Brit but she's now living in Oklahoma. I love seeing her perspective of life in the "colonies."

3. Fun Facts and Tips Michele is from Canada and her Fun Facts and Tips are fabulous! I have learned so much from her and I know you will too.

4. Zoaring With Glinda I just love Mare who is from New York. She is a retired teacher, too. She writes with warmth and humor. Whenever I "visit" her I feel like I'm checking in with a friend.

5. Linda Letters Linda is from Washington state and gives us such a warm and wonderful look at her beautiful area. She is also a retired teacher, a traveler, a terrific gardener and a proud Democrat who is kind and interesting to read.

Heirloom China?

When I was a little girl I remember my mother collecting supermarket Gold Bond stamps so she could redeem them for little items like metal book shelves, a globe, etc. Another thing she started doing was to build a trousseau for me. She decided that although we couldn't afford much, she would send me off with beautiful china. I find this humorous now because as a child we ate with chopsticks and a little rice bowl. She didn't really know what a china set should comprise of. Since we were a family of four, she decided that was what I would need. There's four of everything. It was all very nice and elegant, and I had it packed and shipped to Illinois when we left 34 years ago. It stayed in their boxes all this time. I ended up buying another set that was more to my taste and had enough place settings for guests. I didn't want to use "fine" china for my rather rough and tumble family. I've now had this same set, still in boxes packed and shipped back to Hawaii. What to do? What to do? Should I stick them in the attic again? I dithered and bothered and huffed and puffed and decided to just take them all out and put them in my china cabinet. I believe I'll use them. What the heck!

Sky Watch Friday: Rainbow Delight!

I've been so busy that I just wasn't able to get a good shot of the sky for this week. However, my mom just asked, "Did you see the pretty rainbow?" Art and I looked at each other and he ran upstairs to get me my camera. So here it is! I guess I didn't miss Sky Watch Friday after all.

For more great Sky Watch Friday photos, join us at Welcome to Wiggers World and meet our very wonderful and most cordial host, Tom Wigley and his wife, Jane.

Unpacking!

What a crazy day it was yesterday!
First of all we got the awesome news that our daughter and her family will be coming to visit in a week. We were just missing them all and suddenly we get the call from Tif that her husband has a short job on the island of Kauai so they'll come out together, he'll do the job and return home and Tif and KC will stay on for a lengthy stay.
Now we've got to prepare this house for a curious toddler.


Then we were told by the moving company that they could come and pick up all these boxes and packing today if we wanted. Terrific! However, that meant we'd have to work double time to unpack, which we did. We've got the boxes and wrapping paper ready to go. Now it's just a matter of finding a place for everything. This chili pepper hanging is from our son. This reminds me of something that happened yesterday. I just have to tell you.

Art always prepares the hot oatmeal in the morning and adds whatever dried fruit we have around. Yesterday, he proudly said he had found super healthy goji berries to add to the oatmeal. He had it ready for me when I came down. I sat down and started to eat. All of a sudden, my mouth began to burn! Awful! I spit out what was in my mouth to find little chili peppers! Arrrrghhhh! Art had mistaken my mother's bag of chili peppers for goji berries from the Himalayas. It took a good 15minutes for my mouth to stop burning. Poor Art... He kept saying, "I'm sorry, oh my gosh, I'm sorry." I can't complain. It's nice having a husband who cooks!

Woohoo! Our Container of Stuff Arrived!

Here is Sefu breaking the "Seal" to our container. It's nice to know that it made the ocean voyage safely.


The next task was to remove the braces that held our things tightly together.


The guys were just wonderful about carrying our very heavy furniture up the 21 steps to the second floor. They very carefully put together our china cabinet. I am totally amazed that none of the glass on the furniture broke.


It pained us to see all the packing paper and foam that was used to pad our furniture and things. Our moving fellows here in Hawaii was amazed at the care that was given to our things. They said our Glen Ellyn Movers did a fabulous job in Illinois. Sefu said they would come and pick up our other boxes and packing in a few days after we unpacked our other things. He reassured us that some of it would be recycled or reused.


Here's the guys. D.J., Tony and Sefu. They were just wonderful. Now comes the monumental job of unpacking and finding a place for everything.

My Granddaughter's First Word!

My daughter just called to say that our little KC has finally, FINALLY spoken her first word. It's not "Mommy" or "Daddy."
Our daughter was pointing outside and asked, "What's that, KC?"
Her answer was, "Dat chree."

Incredible! She is her grandfather's favorite baby after all. Art beamed on hearing this seeing as he worked industriously for the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency for many, many years. Grandpa's reply was, "Nice to know she's an environmentalist."

Po Akahi (Monday)

Well, it's Monday and the to-do list on our white board was long.
1. Make appointments with the optometrist.
2. Change the names on the electric and water bill. The electric rates in Hawaii are totally ridiculous! It was front page news today... but that's fodder for another blog posting.
3. Call our contractor and cabinet salesman. Hmmm... and that's more fodder for another posting.
4. Buy a wireless router, black & white laser printer, office chair and order doors for our house (11 of them).
5. Drop off gifts at my aunt and uncle's house.
6. ETC.

Happy to say we finished our list. HOWEVER!
Here's the BAD part...
We ordered the same 9 doors as 2 years ago when we were building the 2nd floor and they cost a little over $700.00. Today, (granted we added two more bi fold doors and changed some to louvers) it cost us $2,400.00 minus a $200.00 discount at Home Depot. The reason we had to reorder them was the container our doors came in 2 years ago had a fire and our doors were burned and smoke damaged. There was no time to order new doors then because we were leaving. Excuse me... don't you think that's a bit excessive???



Anyway, we also stopped at Lowes to check out their inventory and saw these lovely shower trees. In Hawaii, you always look for trees to park your car under. This must be the season for shower tree flowers because they were gorgeous.


Art just put my office chair together from Office Depot and although it felt comfortable when I sat on the display model, I'm now feeling a bit of a lump on the seam of the seat. Arrrghhhhh... ah well. Mom is letting me use her cushion. I'll be OK. Anyway, after the busy day Mom had a great meal. It's different from what we normally eat in the Midwest but delicious. That's a Cambodian squash called kabocha, fried saba (mackerel) and hijiki (seaweed) & mushrooms. Mom says it'll keep us healthy. I just love having her cook for us.

Wedding Reception on the Windward Side

We actually planned our move to Hawaii so that we could attend the wedding reception for the son of our very good friends. Having this deadline was a good thing because if we didn't have a goal, we may have dithered for months and who know? Years longer?


We had to travel to Kaneohe on the Windward side of the island for this which meant driving on H3 through a long tunnel that is drilled through the Koolau mountain range. That was quite a feat of engineering but cut the commute between the two sides of the island dramatically. When I was a child we almost NEVER went to the windward side because it was too far away. In the islands "too far away" means more than 30 minutes. H3 is the Interstate highway which is hilarious since.... uh... we are on an island.


The windward side is the wetter side of the island and is more lush and green.


Unfortunately, it was extremely HOT and MUGGY! I don't remember how many glasses of water and ice tea we drank but it was considerable. We saw this poor dove outside in the parking lot and it just seemed too hot and bothered to fly. It just lay there and wouldn't fly away even when I approached it. As I snapped my photos, it finally just got up, fluffed its feathers and walked away.

Fauna and Flora

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July. The island was really popping away last night but it was fun to watch the kids outside playing with their sparklers. I remember doing that when I was a kid.



I took some photos yesterday around the house. This first one is of Art building a barrier for the mynah birds that keep trying to build a nest in the rafters. Mom feels they make fun of her because they seem to tease her whenever she comes by and tries to shoo them away.


Mom calls this the Mickey Mouse plant. I thought the flowers were unusual but I don't see anything Mickey Mouse-like about it.


A lot of the neighbors have this vine growing over their fences. I think it's called Stephanosis or something like that. It has the most beautiful fragrance.


I'm going to have to ask my neighbor what this is called. I'll edit this post when I find out.

I'm going to a wedding today on the other side of the island. I hope to get some prettier shots. I'm afraid it's not thaaat great where I'm living because it's more populated. Good gosh! You should see the traffic!!! Yikes!!!

A Neighborly Hawaiian Welcoming

We were totally blown away by our neighbors who came bearing gifts. One neighbor came over bringing a bag of huge Hayden mangoes. Hayden mangoes are my absolute favorite. Another neighbor then dropped off some gorgeous cards made with real dried seaweed art and a delicious chocolate haupia (coconut pudding) pie. Yikes! Then, if that wasn’t enough to complete our delight, our neighbors across the street came over with a welcome gift basket full of papayas, mangoes, apple bananas, a lemon and loaf of bread. Good gosh!

Our original intent had been to come back to Hawaii, buy a home and have my mother move in with us. Then mom said she really did not want to leave her neighborhood. Thus, we’ve built a second floor onto her house which may have sounded crazy at times but we’re thinking it’s really worked out quite well. Art will now have a retirement project to keep him busy for the next several years. We had contractors build the outside of the house but Art will be doing a lot of the interior work himself just because...well... it was too darn expensive to get the whole thing done for us.

There’s a list a mile long of things we have to get done. However, one of the most important things has been accomplished. We selected a high speed Internet hook up. I’m using dial up now that is slow as molasses and it ties up the phone line. I’ll be up to speed, hopefully, by the end of next week. Then I can get back to checking in more easily with all of you.

Sky Watch Friday

I haven't been able to take many photos in Hawaii yet. We've just had too much to do. However, for Sky Watch Friday I just stuck my camera out of our second floor window early this morning to take a photo up the mountain and down toward Pearl Harbor. We're now living on the island of Oahu in a town called Pearl City.


For more great Sky Watch Friday photos, join us at Welcome to Wiggers World and meet our very wonderful and most cordial host, Tom Wigley.

July 1st, Tuesday! Hawaii!!!

We had a very lovely complimentary breakfast at the Marriott and then were out the door to catch the free shuttle to the LAX (Los Angeles) airport.


Things continued to go smoothly. The Hawaiian Airlines plane left 9 minutes early and arrived on time in Hawaii. They did not lose our baggage.

And then it hit me. We were given agriculture declaration forms on which we had to write our names, addresses and phone numbers as well as the length of our visit. I realized that in the blank asking for our home address, I could no longer write my Illinois address. The home that I would be staying at would now be my permanent address. I don’t know why but that somehow overwhelmed me finally. I realized keenly that we had a one way ticket. I know we’ll be going back to visit but now my home would be in Hawaii. I had not allowed myself to feel the emotional trauma of our move because there was so much to do but now…the floodgates opened up.

When we got to my mom’s place she had a long list of things that went wrong with the house in the last week. We’re going to be mighty busy doing repair work.

My mom had a terrific dinner of our favorite foods and we got to sit with my brother, Dennis and catch up with our lives. Seeing him at the airport had perked me up immensely. We spoke to our daughter and son on the cellphone and suddenly, we were all together in spirit again.

Tomorrow, we’ll be busy.