Weekend of Tyler

Been busy for the past couple of weeks so I haven't had time to post anything. I need to catch up so sorry for the flood of rushed posts.

First up. We got to have Blake's friend Tyler over for a couple of nights over the past two weekends. He's basically part of our family so we ended up doing a lot of what we usually do. We played a bunch of board games, watched a lot of TV, played video games, and did some exploring of the island.

One Sunday we drove out towards Sandy Beach to see what we could see.

View from a Tourist Scenic View Stop

Tyler and Blake Exploring






The shorebreak...it's dangerous



Beware Man-of-War....we got sticks

So we had a great time doing a whole lot of nothing. It was awesome.

On the DL

It's been a quiet couple of weeks for us. Blake injured his knee.
It turned out to not be anything serious. It just hurt a bit and swelled up one night. We took him to his doctor and he did go to an Orthopedic to get an MRI, but it turned out to be a bit of bursitis ... probably from over use.
So anyway, we got a 2 week break from football. Because we were practicing almost everyday, the break felt like about a month to me....probably felt even better for Blake. But on the plus side, we had a bye this week, so he only missed one game. We are now 5-0 with 3 more games to go. The coaches are already looking ahead to the playoffs that will be held at Aloha Stadium.

Birthday Jam

We got Blake a guitar for his birthday. He's been talking about it for quite some time now so we decided to get him one. I'm not sure if it was due to Guitar Hero, which he's really really good at, or the fact that the neighbor kid has a guitar....or at least we think he has a guitar, but he really really seemed to want one. Of course, those reasons alone would not prompt me to get him a guitar....the reason I thought a guitar might be good for him is this... I secretly believe that he has some sort of hidden musical talent.

I remember when we used to go to Costco or any store that had musical instruments lying around for the kids to touch. Blake couldn't resist playing with the piano, or the keyboard, or the drums, or the ukulele. Which I think is normal behavior for a kid. But the difference, at least for me, is that his random playing, sounded good. It was music. At first I thought it was a fluke, so of course I would try...and sure enough, I sounded like .... crap. So over the years, I've been watching him and taking notice and it's been pretty consistent.

This past summer, he found his school recorder. He carried it around all summer long and played songs with it. He started out just playing random notes. After I couldn't take it any longer, I showed him some notes and how to play a real song. After that, he started figuring them out himself. He taught himself Hawaii 5-0 and Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple).

So anyway....Music savant....maybe.

He's going to take an informal music lesson from our friend Dan, who we bought the guitar and amp from. He's got a cool store..Dan's Guitars. Check it out if you are interested in getting a guitar...Dan's a really good guy.

Kalani Falcons

Blake's team is 3-0 so far. I was going to post pictures of the games and whatnot, but I got stuck video taping the games for the coaching staff. Yes, I'm the nerdy Audio-Visual guy. But what that means for me is that (1) I can't take pictures during the game and (2) I can't really watch Blake too much since the camera is focused mainly in the "box".

Anyway, I was sort of nervous for Blake before the first game. He was still a bit raw with his tackling and football knowledge during practices. But he's pretty quick and was getting better reading the plays. By the end of pre-season practices, he made it on the starting team defense as a Corner Back.

The first game was against Aiea. They were supposed to be an average team. I don't remember too much about the game other than it was fairly close until the end. I do remember that Blake had a great game. I think he had 5-6 tackles. He started off the game with a nice tackle on the kick off and a big hit during Aiea's opening drive. He also defended a pass on 4th and goal and had what I considered to be a touchdown saving tackle. The Aiea Running Back ran around the right side and had an open field to the end zone. Blake was being blocked by a Wide Receiver on that side. He got around the block and made a great solo tackle.

The second game was against Ewa and was pretty uneventful. I think we won 18-6. The Ewa score came on a Kalani fumble that was recovered and ran back for a touch down. No plays came to Blake, in fact, I don't recall many plays that got past the line of scrimmage.

The third game was against Kahaluu at Kahaluu (the field right past the Heigenic store). It was really humid that day and it started to pour right after the game started and didn't really stop until the game ended. Blake's classmates, Tyler and Austin are the starting Running Back and Quarter Back. And they both had a great game. They mixed up the running and passing game pretty well. Tyler scored once (probably his 5th of the season so far) and I think Austin scored as well. But the play of the game, at least for me, was when Kahaluu was just past mid-field, only down by 12 at that point. Kahaluu lined up with split receivers on the right. When the ball was snapped, the QB rolled out to the right and threw the ball to the short receiver. Through the video camera screen, I saw Blake leap up and snag the ball out of the air. I followed him as best as I could with the camera. I think he was finally tackled somewhere inside the 15 yard line. How cool is that...his first interception. And on his birthday on top of that.

Man O' War Hunt

During one of the last weekends of the summer, we decide to go to the beach. It was kind of windy that day so we thought we'd check out the shore for some Portuguese Man O' War on the beach. We found one immediately and as you all know, they hunt in packs.

So we decided to not swim and just hunt for Man O' War. We first equipped ourselves with some official Man O' War pokers (see collage below) and headed off. I believe we found close to 50 before we packed it up and headed to another beach.

Busy Week

This week has been really busy. Blake started school on Tuesday and football is in full swing. His first game is this Saturday. I'll post more this coming week. I have a bunch of pictures from some of the miscellaneous stuff we did this past summer and hopefully some pictures from the football game as well.

Honolulu Zoo

This past weekend we decided to go to the beach. Michelle suggested going to the Honolulu Zoo before we hit the beach so that we could work up a sweat and check out the animals. I sort of don't care too much for the zoo. I always remember being disappointed with going there. Exhibits that are not maintained very well and look messy and run down. And you don't really get to see a lot of the animals, like the lions and tigers, because the pens were large and had a lot of places for them to hide. Which I guess is good for the animals but not so much for zoo-goers. And sure enough, as we walked around the zoo....lots of empty pens. Although I did notice that the zoo looked a lot cleaner and the pens, although empty, were really nicely designed.



So I mentioned this to Michelle and Blake and I guess one of the animals must have overheard and passed the word around because right after that, the animals seemed to pop out all over the place. We would walk up to an empty pen and all of a sudden, a couple of cheetahs would trot by right past us. We were also less than a foot away from this really huge and hungry looking tiger. It was really really cool. It seemed like at every exhibit the animals came as close as they possibly could to us. Michelle thinks it was due to her animal calling skills, but I'm not too sure that all the animals would know the clickity, dolphin-like language that she was using. In any case, the zoo turned out to be great. They've done a great job renovating it and it was totally worth it to stop by for a visit.