Hawaii Day 5: Hilo: Part 2

To see the rest of our Hawaii trip to this point, click here.

After the park, we headed down into downtown Hilo. And I do mean down.
Note the ship, that white blob on the water... it's about 3 miles by line of flight...

We'd seen the ice cream place on our walk up, and thought we'd earned it by now. Eamon got his first cone...

Hawaii Day 5: Hilo: Part 1

To see the rest of our Hawaii trip to this point, click here.

I haven't really mentioned this, but Eamon had insane jet lag. He woke up about 5 AM for most of the trip. Ray is better at mornings than I am, so he generally got up with the kid and went and made nice in the still-closed buffet to get coffee and food. In return, I generally took the morning nap shift in the cabin so he got to hang out with his family. This arrangement, however, means that there are pictures like this, for which I have no explanation:

Anyway...

Steve had a fantastic photo tour in Maui, and now I was really interested in seeing some waterfalls, so after Eamon's nap, Ray let me plan a brutalizing 8-mile day to walk from the boat, into Hilo, and up to Rainbow Falls park. He does love me. Fortunately, I'm not really that crazy, and before we left the dock I spent some time negotiating with the various bus drivers. Unfortunately, none of them could get us there (as with much on this trip, we'd missed our bus, literally, due to Eamon's nap).

Fortunately, the taxi driver I had started off with saw us start walking away and apparently realized that nobody else was coming off the boat anytime soon, so he negotiated with me for a cheap ride to town - we figured we could handle the short walk up from there and 4 miles DOWN, no problem. (For the record, I think Ray still considers himself to have incredibly bad luck with taxis- I negotiated, therefore it's my good luck/persistence?). Anyway, we got a ride to downtown and then hiked up to this place:

Hawaii, Day 4

To see the rest of our Hawaii trip to this point, click here.

Everyone had a pretty full day on Day 3 (the rest of the group checked out a lavender farm), so we all stayed pretty near the boat on Day 4 and skipped seeing much more of Maui.

Eamon hung out with his great-grandfather and his father. Aunt Laura got a lot of great pictures.

Hello, peasants!

Here is the pose I use as an Abercrombie model.

Laura also got this shot of her husband, Brad, which invariably causes Ray or I to start into "I don't smoke often, but when I do..." or some variation of the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man..." ads.

After our relative failure convincing Eamon that beaches were fun, we spent some time dialing it back a bit- all the way back to the kiddie pool on the boat, which was kept at about 70 degrees, but at least stayed put. Ray's Minnesota blood came in handy here, as did his patience. Eventually, he got Eamon to splash about a bit.

After that and a nap, Eamon was pretty much content to work on his walking skills on the windy upper decks. Ray and the boys did run down to check out the beach that we could see from dock. Apparently, they got to see sea turtles, but no one got a picture for me to share (this would happen again!). They did get to play around a bit, though.

If you want to see the whole Picasa album to this point, click the picture below:

hawaii2010

Hawaii, Day 3

Day 3 of our Hawaii trip was spent on Maui. I've already posted a good overview of Eamon's view of our trip to Kam 3. Whomever wasn't babysitting was (attempting to) bodysurf. I think Steve had the best luck.

Steve did also succeed in getting a picture of the three of us (which has been the blog pic for a bit).

We came home to find a classic cruise ship item:

The nice woman cleaning our room really didn't understand Eamon's cave, and it took us a couple of days to locate our bathmat (turns out it was part of the elephant). But the elephant was fun!

There are a lot more pictures, particularly of us bodysurfing Kam 3. Some of them are even uploaded (yes, I edited and pruned a lot). If you want to see the whole Picasa album to this point, this link should do it:

hawaii2010

Happy Father's Day 2010!

Happy Father's Day to our parents and to all the fathers out there!

And to my own partner in parenting crime. Thank you for being a great Dad.

Ohh, FIRE!



You've really earned your wings.

In case anyone was wondering what to get Eamon.....here's a suggestion. He's still got the love for the drums.

(okay, kidding on the present suggestion, particularly since I'd rather we stick with the neighbors', actually...)

Isaac did try to help with the fact that Eamon wanted to do the kick pedal (watch his feet, he is trying).

Thanks to Alli (I think?) for filming this!

Pile O' Cute

I'm still digging my way out of the pile o' pics, so I bring you a collection of random cuteness for Friday.
Eamon likes wind. Okay. Eamon loves wind. The upper decks of very large boat are WINDY. Eamon is happy.
Leaving Kauai.
The murphy bed tent that kept Eamon in his required darkness. And the way that we were greeted after naps.

Hang Ten

Are you going to be the one to tell him that this isn't what it's for?

Cold... Wet.. Loud..

That pretty much sums up Eamon's view of the ocean. He like pools, so I was optimistic but forewarned that kids this age take a bit to warm up to waves. He did not warm up.

We built a seawall, which was acceptable.

We're back!

Yes, we're back, we're safe, and yes, I left you a bunch of posts while we were gone because I'm sneaky like that. I hope you enjoyed.

I have a ton of photos to go through even though I FAILED at trading pics with everyone else despite my resolve - so some of the best shots will be a while in coming, but I know there's a new sidebar pic for the blog out there in the ether...

In the meantime, I offer a small teaser. As it was taken on an outbound flight, this picture has nagged at me for the whole trip....

Why, you ask? Because it looks so much like another one... and I had to FIND the other one. But now I have, and I'll let you judge for yourselves.

(Well, they may judge you...)

Happy Mother's Day!

In honor of Mother's Day, I offer a video to our mothers. I realize now that motherhood has a lot to do with loving, caring, and all of those beautiful things. But it also has a lot to do with revenge. So, Mom, Laura, enjoy:

I'm going to hope this translates into vacuuming/mowing skills.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there!

Happy anniversary!

We got to spend our anniversary in Portland this year. Poor Eamon got carried on a tour o' breweries.

He is so surprised by this choice.

Deschutes for lunch.. The Bachelor, Mirror Pond, and Blackweiss were favorites. Eamon preferred the sundried tomatoes in my tortellini and the onions from Ray's elk stew. There were also some cool wood carvings, although they were not as tasty (I love the clouds around the mountaintops!).



Possibly working towards signing the bill?

A looong walk, and Lucky Lab was next. The Brown Brown was the best of the day. Eamon napped on the walk, woke up here in time to run all over the (mostly empty) pub.


Last but not least, our honeymoon brewery: Rogue. The chocolate stout and Dead Guy remain favorites, and we got to drink a bit of each later in the trip. We had a sampler of other beers at dinner.... although Eamon prefers the empty growlers they keep on the table.

None for me?

Portland itself was also very pretty... Lots of flowers! And a strong recycling campaign...

All in all, a great way to celebrate four years!

15 months

The handsome little boy has survived fifteen months, perhaps despite his best efforts.

He's walking, sort of... a few steps, more when he doesn't notice because he's busy with something in his hands. He still only has two words we're sure of ("uh-oh" and "no"), but there are hints of several others - he tends to repeat words in his own way ("sah" for socks). He'll try most any food, as long as it's not meat. He'll eat it, if it's dairy, fruit, vegetable, or carbohydrate. We (I) stole his milk bottles last Friday and he's still not happy about that. We'll see how that goes. Oh, and he's got 10 teeth- Fang just joined the world. There's another molar, but Ray says that doesn't count until all five points are out....

Eamon is all about figuring out his world - putting balls into his stacker, his cup into his bowl, the cat bowls into each other, anything into the cat tree. He is climbing everything he can. I'll post the picture soon, but I was surprised the other day to see his little head in the window (via his chair, the subwoofer, the window sill....).

It's fun. Chaotic, but fun.

(If you want to see what all goes into getting these pics, click on one and go through all the pics on picasa).