Kaneohe house

My uncle Alan has a lovely house with a beautiful Japanese garden. The koi pond is very popular with the kids - Al gives them each a cup of fish food and the fish jump all around.

There might have been some other feeding going on as well...

Aloha girl

We rented a house with a pool right next to Kailua beach, and we're making excellent use of it! Note to self: summer 2014 - Charli learns to swim.

Arthur's Rock

The responsible thing for me to do today now that World Cup Soccer is no longer a distraction would have been to get back to work on my two jobs. But, feeling distracted and restless, and needing to vacate the house so that it could get cleaned, I decided instead to go to Lory State Park (20 minutes drive from Ray and Shirley's) and take a hike. I didn't really intend to climb to the top of Arthur's Rock, but here I sit!

Random Bernal moment...

Maybe it was the perfect day we had today, maybe it was the euphoria of dropping off my taxes to a certified professional and not having to worry about it, but whatever the reason I saw this scene on my walk to the tax guy today and had to snap a photo. I love that this shot is in the middle of a major American city...

Lunch Box!

Chocolate croissant!

Part of the Sunday morning ritual is the savage devouring of chocolate croissants from the Farmers Market. This week, we are mixing that in with a first attempt at pottie training. The croissant went well... The pottie training, not so much...

Piñata, and other winter wonders...

We drove up to Lake Tahoe this weekend to celebrate a 6th birthday. Pictured here are a very well behaved group of youngsters about to go medieval on a sturdy but ultimately doomed piñata. We got precipitation almost constantly while we were there, but it was mostly rain and not snow. Of course, there was snow at the higher elevations as we found out when driving the pass on US50 to get back to San Francisco. Before we even got 1000 miles in our new car, we have now driven it through a winter snow storm complete with mandatory chains!