was there anyone greater?

always together

this weekend marks the 65th wedding anniversary of my grandparents - SIXTY FIVE YEARS, people!

i remember their 50th anniversary party at their church in saginaw (the fall after i graduated from high school). then came the 55th, where the family surprised them with dinner at the ember's restaurant (now closed) in mt. pleasant (jason was with me for this one).

for their 60th, the family gathered again at a church camp for the weekend. everyone in the family was there for the whole weekend, and we didn't have to cook or clean, just bond. (i had two kids by then). we surprised the old folks with matching t-shirts with their 'slogan' on it, if you will - always together - for all of us.

well, here it is, another five years have passed, and we're getting together again at the church camp. a couple more kids have been born, a couple shirts have gone missing (after all, i've lived in three houses in that time!). so i was charged with the task of making sure everyone had a shirt for this year.

given that i needed 11, which is a large number, but not large enough for any production company to create one for me at a reasonable price, i made them myself.

i present to you, an 'original' from 2003:


and a 'cara original' from 2008:


how about THAT! 11 shirts packed and ready to distribute tomorrow...

look for a future blog post where i will share my tshirts secrets, and you can all start ordering your own custom shirts by cara ;)

under the surface

i took our little disposable underwater camera to meijers today for 1 hour photo...there is no way to capture underwater life with a camera like this. you can only glimpse the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the magnificence and glory and color that can be found under the surface.

here's some of the fish - represented with about 10% of their color. i do have to say that the coral we saw in hawaii was not nearly as impressive as the coral i saw when i snorkeled in the bahamas. in fact, it wasn't impressive at all, it was depressing. the reefs in hawaii are struggling to survive. hopefully, as we continue to learn about the reef we will be able to better protect it, while still being able to enjoy it - as it's hard to protect something when you haven't experienced the wonder that it holds.

these are sea urchins growing in every little crack and crevice of the coral at shark cove...i bet we saw THOUSANDS of them. they are literally everywhere.


and here they are - the pictures that i hoped would be good enough to provide me with just a fraction of the feeling i had when we took them. i really cannot describe the awesomeness of this creature. i realize i am someone who has loved animals since birth and whose two college degrees are based on it - but i cannot imagine that anyone else in our position wouldn't also be as taken in by this experience.

surfacing to take a breath

munching on some coral

more munching - those are my feet with the pink reef shoes in the background

swimming, which is really more like gliding...

everyone has those moments in their lives where they have this feeling. i remember several in my life - my wedding day, the birth of each of our children - are givens of course. but also when i marched with hundreds of guatemalans during a religious procession. and swimming with this sea turtle. i believe it is a time when you are feeling the grace and face of god. it is being so at peace and in such a state of wonder that there is nothing but that moment. it's a moment that while fleeting, the memory of it stays with you forever.

home again, home again, jiggity jig

no pictures here - just chaos.

four children with one million and one things to tell us all at once, but still being mostly concerned about what we brought home for them. like i wrote earlier, we really were quite disappointed with the souvenir 'selection', and brought very little of it home...but we did, of course, have a few things for each of the kids, and lilly said about three times that it was the best day of her life. all the girls are wearing flowers in their hair today.

molly clung to me, sometimes just putting both her hands on either side of my face and just softly saying 'momma' and kind of laughing and then giving me BIG hugs. she wanted me sitting, with her on my lap. it was clear that she really had no understanding where we were and why we were gone, but was glad that we had returned.

the house, kids and pets were well taken care of by both sets of our parents. we heard many a tale while we were traveling that we were so lucky that we had parents who were willing to care for our children so that we could get away. there is no doubt that we know this, but not because other people had to say it. it is no small task to care for four children for a week. i know, because i do it every day. and even though it goes without saying that we are grateful beyond words to our parents, it should be said - and i'm saying it here. i am a better mom today because i have been renewed, revived, rested, and relieved of reality for a week. we have a better marriage today because we could be together, just the two of us, to reconnect as husband and wife and best friends, and not just as parents. we have been touched by the places we visited, the people we met, and the culture we witnessed. we have been reminded of the great fortune of our lives, to have the means to travel so far, stay in a resort so nice, spend money without worrying about any bills going unpaid.

and in the end, none of that would have been possible had there not been people who were willing and able to lovingly care for our children in our absence.

so moms and dads - thank you.

linger longer

while we had to check out of our room by 10am on saturday, our flight didn't leave until nearly 11pm...fortunately for us, our resort offered a 'linger longer' program, where we had access keys to the parking garage, building, locker rooms (which had gorgeous shower, steam room, sauna facilities, etc) and they held our luggage.

so we rented a cabana again for the morning (where we were treated to cold water and a cool cloth delivered by the little cabana boy - boy, i miss him...) i started my third book, which i'm now almost done with after the flight home.

when our cabana time was up, we got cleaned up and headed up to the north shore in search of the famous giovanni's shrimp truck again. after much driving, only about 2 miles farther down the road from where we turned around on our last search - we found it...we have been emitting garlic ever since. i don't think i've ever eaten so much garlic in one meal, and we eat a lot of garlic. it was shrimp scampi like no other, and i was glad we got to try it before we had to leave.


we headed back to our resort after one final drive through the north shore and prepared to head home. we made an attempt at sunset again, but the clouds interfered a bit, though not as much as the night before, so this is about the best shot i could get. we sat on beach chairs, watching the sun go down on our vacation...literally and figuratively.


we retrieved our luggage and headed out of the resort. we stopped to get some 'sushi to go' for the plane ride home and tracked down a 7-11 to get a hawaii-famous musubi. what is musubi you ask? remember that earlier discussion about the popularity of spam here - well, musubi is essentially spam sushi. we were standing in an abc store in waikiki, in their 'food section' (and i use this term loosely) when i looked over and saw a 'warming case' like you find in a gas station here with this weird wrapped thingy in it...and i think to myself...that looks like spam sushi. i read the sign "musubi" - good grief. i call jason over and cover the sign and ask him if knows what that is (the spam looks the farthest thing from appetizing in this particular warmer -though if you were to ever ask my grandfather, spam would never look appetizing...) his answer was no, what the heck is that? i uncover the sign and we have a bit of a laugh at the spam sushi. later, as we're cruising in our convertible, a commercial for 7-11's two new musubi flavors comes on, and thanks hawaii for voting 7-11 the best musubi on the island (is this an oxymoron?) our new mission - find a 7-11 with musubi before we leave...so we order our sushi and head for a little trek through the town in search of 7-11...low and behold, we find one and here's what's hanging in the window...score!


yes, jason ate it. i could barely handle the smell in the car. and that's one hefty chunk of rice, so jason didn't end up eating his sushi until we were already more than half way through our plane trip home.

and now on to the plane trip home. one unique thing about the honolulu airport is that a majority of it is open-air. at one point when we arrived, we were walking past a gate that a plane was pulling up to, on the other side of the wall with no windows, literally FEET away from us. it was LOUD, but also really cool. it was hard to capture in a photo, but here's my attempt. i'm standing at the 1/2 wall, with no window, looking out at the airport. to my left in this picture, is another plane, much closer, that but picture didn't look as nice.

we grabbed a box of fresh pineapples (one for our airport taxi driver tara, one for my parents and one for us...and it's making my kitchen smell AWESOME right now!) there is really no way to compare fresh from hawaii pineapples versus those that are in meijers here...it's like they are a totally different fruit.

and here's our 'compare and contrast' photo on the plane ride home. we were taking a red-eye, and at this point in the vacation, we had not been up past 10pm on any night, most of the time going to bed around 8pm! so to have a flight that didn't leave until 11pm was taking it's toll on us. the great thing was that we really did sleep on that first leg from honolulu to phoenix. here's hoping it helps with the jet lag...

one thing to note about the age of us airways' fleet of planes, each plane we took (four in total) had ashtrays in the arm rests...

the last 30 minutes or so of our flight into detroit was enough to make me never want to fly again. the storms brewing overhead created huge amounts of turbulance that left the entire cabin motion sick. we were hot, faint, adjusting our air vents and trying to keep whatever food we had left in us in our bodies for what seemed like an eternity when we were making our descent into detroit. and we land safe and sound, with just some lingering nausea, to the rain coming down. that's when i knew, my vacation was over.

pearl harbor

we had a leisurely morning before heading out to pearl harbor to take in the uss arizona memorial. once arriving, we had about an hour and half before our movie/boat trip time, so we opted to take the audio tour through the small museum and grounds that really did an amazing job of giving an overview of the us military presence in hawaii, it's history, and the entire morning of dec. 7, 1941 that led to the bombing of oahu by japanese planes and the devastating loss that occurred there, not just to the one battleship, the arizona.


it was a good experience to go, and i have a much better understanding of the 'bombing at pearl harbor' event. we were there the day after the 9/11 anniversary, with that memory still very fresh in my mind, it was, i think, that much more moving to be in a place that honored those that we have lost through war.

after the visit to the memorial, we had a few hours before we were supposed to meet diane to retrieve our pictures (which i already posted...see below!), so we drove around the pearl city area and then decided to eat lunch in the oahu version of a denny's - breakfast 24 hours a day and really nothing hawaiian on the menu other than spam (more on that later - did you know spam was super popular in hawaii???)

jason took this opportunity to FINALLY have his spam and egg breakfast (if you've seen 50 first dates, you'll understand why this was a necessity for him). the restaurant also had like 20+ flavors of pie - so i tried the coconut custard (and by 'tried', i mean i ordered a slice and was brought a 1/4 of a pie....um, all of which, i'm sad to say, i ate).

it was back to our resort to try to catch the sunset, but for the first time since we'd been here, it was cloudy and had rained heavily, and alas, there were no good sunsets to be found. ironically, the one that was the best was the one our first night there, when we weren't really taking pictures.

pictures

we met the kind woman, diane, from aloha forever weddings, to retrieve our vow renewal pictures today.

here's some of my favorites

bay and brewery

we got up early this morning, following many a tour book advice section, to drive down to hanauma bay for some snorkeling. we were stuck in rush hour traffic around honolulu and waikiki, so we didn't arrive quite when we wanted to, but still well before the crowds, which was great.

we parked, paid our little entrance fee, watched the movie about caring for the reef, and headed down the big slope to pick our spot to 'camp out' to snorkel the HUGE bay, which is now a nature preserve.

while there are few times in my life where i am speechless, one such moment came this day. i was beside myself. practically speechless, completely in awe and unbelievably moved. two words:

sea turtle

we had been snorkeling for nearly an hour. i resigned myself to the fact that we were probably not going to see one, though we'd heard at both our own lagoon and at shark cove that there were sightings while we were there. we headed to the 'rear' of the bay, thinking that turtles would not be as far inland as we had been snorkeling. the waves were pretty high and we were getting uncomfortable with the current and our swimming. we were getting pushed around quite a bit, both into water and into the reef, so we decided to start heading in a bit. we passed the large center area of the bay that has little to no coral in it and were just about to head in. we had separated by about 5 yards, with jason behind me. and then i saw the piece of reef move, and suddenly it became clear that what i was seeing was the shell of the sea turtle. i could barely catch my breath to get jason's attention (and he had the underwater camera!)

jason and i swam with that turtle for a good ten minutes, doing our best to keep clear of him and let him do his thing (after all, he is an endangered species!) all the while trying to get as many pictures of him as we could...we won't know how those turn out until we have our film developed (boy, that's weird to type, as i don't think i've taken pictures with film since we got our first digital camera in the summer of 2003!)

he swam up and down. he munched on coral. chewing and everything. and he looked right at us and didn't give a hoot that we were there. he was awesome.

it made my day, to say the least. i followed the turtle out into deeper and rougher water, while jason gave up after getting bashed into some coral. i said good-bye and we both headed into the shore, content and knowing that whatever snorkeling we opted to do now wasn't going to get any better than that.

we showered and got dressed and then headed into the nearby town that also has a brew pub (we'd already tried a couple of their brews since being on the island, but we knew we'd be able to get a good sampler here!) we were there right when they opened and got a marina side table. the first question our waitress asked us is if we are beer drinkers - i said "we have a son named Porter..." and that led into picking 12 of their 13 on-tap beers for 'sampling'.

the beer was great, the food was fantastic and we spent a good time hanging out in the pub on at the marina.

the rest of the afternoon we had designated as souvenir shopping, since waikiki and honolulu were between us and our resort. we tracked down the hilo hattie store, and then loaded up at the local ABC store in waikiki (which was still busy as ever - SO glad we weren't staying in a hotel there!) we have been somewhat disappointed by the souvenir options here - many made out of hawaii. we're guessing it's because this is the hub, with over 80% of hawaii's population living on this island. we have gotten a few neat things, but a vast majority of what we've seen is not authentic neat knick-knacks, but rather tourist crap. ah well. another trip to another island. :)

north shore

we spent wednesday on a trek up the north shore - on the way we stopped at the dole plantation, mostly because it was on the way...

we took the walking garden tour, which we have to say, was very well done - they had some incredible specimens of native plants and trees, and i took lots of pictures - here's one of my favs - the bird of paradise.


we took the train ride, which we have to say, was not very well done. it was impressive to see the massive pineapple fields, but other than that...silly. we passed on the world's largest maze, due primarly to the heat, and opted to partake of some of the pineapple flavored ice cream. it was good to try, and good to hear of the history of pineapple's role in hawaii's agriculture, but don't need to stop there again.

then we headed up the coast farther in search of giovanni's famous shrimp truck. my visual memory of it's location on the map failed us, so we stopped at one of several other trucks/restaurants in the north shore area - shark cove grill - right across from shark cove, where we were planning on doing some snorkeling.

here's the truck - scary, and dirty, with a small 'parking lot' and eating area.

here, however, is the food that came out of said truck - shrimp pesto skewer and ahi (tuna) skewer, brown rice, and fresh mixed greens salad. it was awesome, and one of our best, and cheapest meals on the island so far.

then we went snorkeling in shark cove (don't let the name fool you, we didn't see any sharks). there were portions of this cove that were very shallow and easy to navigate. we saw hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of sea urchins and many varieties of smaller fish. we made our way into the deeper portions of the cove for just a bit, as it was much rougher water. here we saw some much larger and bigger varieties of fish, and had a great afternoon in the water.


on our way back towards our condo, we stopped in the historic north shore town of haleiwa, to do some shopping and endulge in the world famous matsumoto's shave ice. you can get shave ice pretty much anywhere on the island, but matsumoto's is the most famous (we even saw it on the travel channel in preparation for our trip!) jason got lime flavored and i got guava, coconut and pineapple. they are amazingly flavored and are basically enormous sno cones, except the ice is MUCH smaller particles, so it can be almost as smooth as ice cream.

our drive back to the resort was under a complete rainbow, we were so close and it was so large i couldn't get the whole thing in one picture, but was amazing.

we enjoyed a relaxing, quiet dinner at our resort at chuck's seafood and steak restaurant that overlooked the koi pond, with the ocean in the background. hard to get a good picture because it was dark, but this gives you some idea of what we enjoyed while dining...

rest and relaxation

while our 'pre-planned' schedule called for a trip to the north shore today, we just couldn't do it. our legs are sore and we were ready for a day of rest and relaxation.

so that's what we did - we got some coffee and scones from the little market here for breakfast and then put on our bathing suits for the first time on this trip!

we rented a cabana for the whole day, enjoyed lunch at the ocean-side bar and grill, and i read an entire book as we enjoyed just being here. swimming in the ocean was great, and we have heard tale that we'll be able to see some sea turtles if we snorkel near the edge of our lagoon. looking forward to strapping on the mask and snorkel this week to check that out...

here's the view from our cabana...

also, in a bit of irony...the honolulu paper gets delivered to us everyday. low and behold, on the front page, a huge picture of my brother's soon-to-be-ex-wife's aunt... we know she lives here, but here she is, on the front page counseling diabetes patients.