Reggie!! Reggie!!

July 31, 2010

Need to take short detour from the West Coast trip for this little update. This past weekend, we went out to play darts with Mike and Kat. We used to do this all the time, back in the day. But not so much after we all had kids. Anyway, we had a free night out and decided to dust off the darts.

Since we haven't been out too much, we really didn't know where to go. A quick search on Yelp took us to Martini Zoo. Looked promising, menu seemed ok, and they had dart boards. We got there early, and setup near the dart boards and started playing a few games.

Later on in the evening a couple of guys came by the dart boards and asked how to play. I was explaining how to play cricket and couldn't stop thinking that this guy looked a lot like Reggie Miller. He was leaning over a counter so I couldn't really tell how tall he was.

Well....long story short. It turned out that it really was Reggie Miller. I thought it was pretty cool that I even got to talk to him a little, but Michelle decided to take it up a notch. A little later on she went over to talk to them and somehow got him to come over to play some darts with us. Part of that conversation went something like this.

M: "Hey, my husband said you have a sweet three-point shot"

R: "Naw, naw"

M: [slapping him on the arm] "Yeah you do."

Kat, Reggie, and Michelle

So Mike and I ended up playing 8 games with them. We managed to win 6 despite being a little nervous. Mike played awesomely. He had a 7 mark round and also brought us back from being behind in a couple of games. Reggie and Nate were pretty good and we only barely won a couple of those games due to a little better dart strategy.

Mike, Kat, Nate, Ryan, Reggie

Needless to say, it was a very memorable evening. Reggie, Nate, and the rest of his friends were really cool and we all had a great time.

2010 West Coast Road Trip - Part 1

June 2 - June 11 2010

This year we decided to take a trip to the West Coast, driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and then to the Grand Canyon and back again. It took us a long time to figure out where we were going to go since we all agreed that we wouldn't be going to Disneyland again. Don't get me wrong, we really liked Disneyland, but there are just too many other things to do and see. So this time.......its gonna be a Road Trip!!!

We love driving around.....some of our best family bonding times have been during our driving excursions around the Island. This will be our longest drive to date, so hopefully there will be a whole lotta bonding going on.

The Planning

We initially wanted to do this during spring break so that we could catch some MLB spring training games in Arizona, but the timing on that didn't work out to well. So we swapped spring training for the Grand Canyon. The way we wanted to plan our trip was to figure out several "big" things to do and find a bunch of other interesting, smaller things that each of us wanted to do at each destination. We also spend a lot of time researching interesting/good places to eat.

The Big Things

Since this was the first time we visited Las Vegas as a family, we decided to see some of the more established type shows. We picked Cirque Du Soleil and a Lance Burton magic show.

We also wanted to see a baseball game during this trip and decided to go see the Dodgers since we had already seen the Angels on a previous trip.

The Smaller Things

Blake wanted to check out M&M World and the Coca Cola store in Vegas, I wanted to see the Hoover Dam, and Michelle wanted to see the Natural History Museum in Las Vegas, the Shark Pool at the Golden Nugget, the Pinball Hall of Fame, and I think she secretly wanted to go to Disneyland...I tried to ignore that one.

So thats going to be our family trip this summer. I'll follow this post up with some of the various things that we did. It was a great trip and we managed to do a whole lotta fun and interesting things. Stay tuned for more...

Mahi Time

May 16, 2010

One of our regular trips around the Island, but this time we went along with the Mahi clan.

We stopped off at turtle beach. There were 2 or 3 on the beach and a whole slew (bale ?) of them in the water. Mike had cool sun glasses that literally made the water disappear. The swimming turtles just popped out of the water and could be seen as clear as day.



We grabbed some lunch at Ted's Bakery and took it to eat at Turtle Bay. We spent most of the day swimming there. On the way home, things eventually turned to the red cups.



And then later, a friendly game of Horseshoes.



As always, a fun day with the Mahis.

A Bask of Crocs

June 18, 2010

I've been waiting for a sale on Crocs for the longest of time now. I really like Crocs, they are more comfortable and keep your feet cleaner and more protected than slippers and quicker to put on and off than shoes. My only gripe is that they are so expensive. I just bought a new pair for $30 after I wore a hole through the soles of my first pair and I had them for at least 3 years, so I really shouldn't complain. But still...

Then I heard about a Crocs warehouse sale. I ended up buying 3 pairs of black Crocs for $5 a piece and a couple of "fancy" ones for $10. The black ones do have this ugly yellow strap that says Maui Lifeguard on them, but I'll probably remove or replace those. So now I have Crocs that will probably last me for the next 20 years. Very cool and slightly disturbing at the same time....but I'm all happy now.

Mom's Birthday

June 16, 2010

We went to 3660 On The Rise to celebrate my mom's birthday. It's been at least 5 years since we've been to 3660 for dinner. The food was great...much better than I remember it. The waiter mentioned that they change up the menu items and the sauces for their dishes a little bit every month or so. I had the Ahi Katsu and the New York steak...both of these were awesome.

This was also the first time we got to see baby Shaun. He's only 2 weeks old and already into fine dining.

Window Tinting

May 15, 2010

The upstairs of our house gets really hot during the summers, so I decided to try to cool it down a little by tinting the windows. I also want to install one of those attic fans. I heard that helps a lot too...but that's for another day.
I decided to test out my tinting skills on one of our 3 pane windows that gets hit really hard by the afternoon sun. I figured that I'd do one just to see what it looks like and to see how hard it would be.

The installation didn't go too bad....but it didn't turn out as nicely as I wanted. It also took me about 3 hours to do 3 1.5 x 3 foot panes. Kind of long, but I think I can cut down on the time a lot since I learn a couple of things during the test run.

1. You need to leave a small border at the edge. The smaller the border the nicer it looks, but if you put the tint right up to the edge and it goes slightly over, the tint will pop up. Took me a long time to figure out that this was the reason it was popping up. I kept going back to smooth it over and a minute later it would pop up again.

2. Once you have the tint cut to the size of your window and placed nicely, you need to squeegee as much of the water out as you can. If you don't, the tint won't stick well and it starts to peel off at the top and you need to start all over again.

3. Use a sharp razor and take your time when cutting the edge. The edging on my tints have large gaps here and there, is crooked in places, and have jagged edges on some spots. I really hate that. But that's what happens when you try to stretch a razor.



Here's a look at the finished window. FYI, It just looks clearer because the un-tinted windows are really dirty. I did a quick test of the heat blocking at around 2 in the afternoon and it really does block almost all of the heat. Hopefully I can finish up the rest of the windows before the end of the month.

Making of the Cake Walk Cake

April 15 2010

The 7th grade class hosted a new game this year for the Iolani Fair. They call it the Cake Walk. I still have no idea what that is, but apparently every 7th grade family needed to provide a cake as prizes for this game.

So if you know Michelle, you know that this could go only one of two ways. And this is the extreme road we took...

Before we get to the cake, let's meet the baking crew.

Assistant Pastry Chef

Head Baker

We decided to go with a farm animal theme for the cake. So that called for a bunch of ...

Bunnies

and Piggies

Next we prepped and decorated the cake, a la Duff Goldman

First, Fondant all over

Then, Piggies in the mud

And The Cow and his Bunny friends

Bottom tier is home to a mouse, a brace of ducks, and a rickety fence

Finally, we wrapped up the cake and headed off to the Fair. We named the cake, Roman Farm, since the theme of the fair was "When in Rome..."

I thought the cake came out great. It was probably one of the best cakes at the fair, if I do say so myself.
I won't go into the other way this could have gone, suffice to say that I'm glad we took this road.