More June Activities

    After a busy two more weeks in Seattle, seeing Joan’s mother every day, visiting her father again, and doing various activities and projects with our son’s family (Ron refurbished two chainsaws and put a new water valve in the toilet, Joan worked more with Faith) , we started getting ready to leave and go east again.  Of course, we always like to hear the kids practice their music and Faith is doing well on the French horn now. 
 And did you ever see so many trumpets in a living room?  Natalie has her choice!   She likes Monette trumpets (see her BLOG background: http://www.nataliedungey.com/), and so does Wynton Marsalis.  The family went to Portland June 16th to hear his concert, they invited us to go too, but we said, “No” and it was just as well.  They met the band backstage, hung out at the band’s hotel room with them and Natalie had an hour long lesson with Wynton.

Fathers’ Day To Oak Harbor to See Joan’s Father

We go to Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island to visit Joan’s dad who is in a retirement center. He is doing very well since his wife, Betty, died last November, becoming quite involved in activities. We go up and eat with him there, visit, then go to the Whidbey Naval Air Station temporary housing, if available. So far, it has been. One day a month, Nick Nicholai, a blind piano player, who has played with the Big Bands across the country, comes and plays for an our. He does this at many places around the state. We particularly like to go up then. And one day, we joined the Bingo game, which was a lot of fun.

To go, you can drive for 2 hours north on I-5 or take the 20 minute ferry ride which total time also takes 2 hours but with 1/2 the driving time....(the difference in time is loading ..).....but if you don't have to wait for a ferry.
Our first trip this month was for Fathers’ Day. We went up Saturday and stayed the night and Andy’s family joined us Sunday.

Joan's dad enjoyed his cards.

June 13th Faith’s New Project

Faith’s homeschooling was interrupted some when the family went on trips, so she agreed to do some extra school days in June. Joan asked her what topic she would like to study and she said Animals. And specifically LIONS! So we planned to make a board game. She took notes in her notebook from the Almanac and then we went to the library. She took more notes from many reference books and library books. When we left, it was after 4 p.m. She said, “We’ve been here for hours! It seemed like minutes!” WOW! We went to Goodwill to get a board game that we could cover with contact paper to make a new game board. We looked up pictures of lions on the Web.
On Thursday, she made up questions from the facts she had written and we put them on blank business cards. She decided how the game would proceed around the board and what the rules would be and made the markers and footsteps.

Then she transformed the questions into sentences and made a book about lions, which would give all the answers.
The family played her game and everyone was happy. And learned a lot of facts about lions!

June 11th Playing RISK and PayDay

We arrived back to Seattle from Kauai and after resting some, and seeing Joan’s mother, we headed out to Issaquah. Natalie was in Kentucky, performing at the Great Brass Festival, so we wanted to do something special with Clayton and Faith. We asked Faith what she would like to do. She said, “Play a board game.” WOW!
She wanted to play Pay Day, but Clayton said, “Can I play too?” and he wanted to play RISK. Apparently it is his favorite game, but his father won’t play it, even though it was his favorite game too when younger, since it is so long. Faith agreed and so we played. And we found out why Natalie says it is so much fun when Clayton plays too. He is so funny! It took us two days to finish it.. Clayton took pictures the first night so we would know where to start the next evening, in case the pieces got moved. And , he won!

Guess what color Clayton is and what color Joan is?
Later we played PayDay.

Natalie was in Kentucky with her dad: 

Here’s Natalie playing at the Great American Brass Band Festival in KY:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh5HVjtAKU4

June 8th To the Beautiful Waimea Canyon But FOG!

Everyone has talked about how gorgeous this canyon is and it is not to be missed! So we took the day long trip to see it.
At first the fog was pretty,...

but as we got further up into the canyon, we could see almost nothing! Unfortunately, the fog was coming in, and finally completely covered everything. A disappointment indeed!

June 5th Moving to Kauai Coast at the Beachboy

We moved to the Kauai Coast at the Beachboy resort which we had as an exchange from SFX. Unfortunately, we have to leave on Thursday, due to our airline reservations. However, this place is beautiful and we are enjoying the beach area and swimming pool.

Pono Kai has an excellent Hospitality Room so we can put our groceries in one of the three refrigerators as well our bags in a room for suitcases. It has made it very easy to move from unit to unit and coming over to this resort, we were able to store our things, especially the food items, in the refridgerators there. It really helped, as we have had to use it three times this trip. Our plane leaves at 8:40 p.m., as many do from here, so it is handy that we can stay in our unit at KCB until the evening.

May 19-June 5 Pono Kai Resort

Pono Kai resort is beautiful! We have 2 nights in a 1 BD rented from a TUGGER (and we’ll rent a night after too, as our airline fares were better midweek) before we move into our 2 BD for 2 weeks, exchanged from Platinum Interchange. The pool is great, very comfortable sitting beside it – and waiting for not so many people to be in in order to do laps! Except for children playing, the pool is mostly empty. People like the hot tub the best, of course.
Even though we do not have an oceanfront unit, we can still see the ocean from our balcony!

View from balcony (zoom)

June 5th A Great Church

Each Sunday, we went to church, first to one recommended by a friend, then one we saw in downtown Lihue, but nothing really sparked us. Then, on the way to the lighthouse on the north shore, we saw a sign for the Lighthouse Christian Fellowship, and Joan said, “Oh, I want to go there next Sunday.” It turned out to be wonderful! We would love to go back to Kauai in order to go to church there again!

The neighbors had not wanted a church there (if you can believe that, even with another church next door) so the “city” said they could not put up any walls because the water pressure was not strong enough in case there was a fire. (The people there said that was not true,) but they went ahead and put up large bamboo shades as walls, and it is beautiful! And perfect for Hawaii weather!

Inside they have round tables instead of chairs or pews, and fabulous music and good preaching. There is even a super coffee bar and then homemade treats afterwards!

June 1st Exploring The North Shore

Today we planned to drive to the north shore of the island; everyone said it was the most lush and with nice beaches. There is so much to see, it was difficult to decide exactly what to do, and we wanted to plan around our SIL who has health issues, gets tired easily and can’t walk very far. Walking and climbing on trails and hopping rocks to get to beaches was out! We wanted to see the sunset, too, so didn’t want to leave too early, as that would make for a very long day for her.

The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook helped to decide where to go. And people had also said we needed to go to the St Regis Hotel in Princeville and look at the view.

We stopped first at the Kilauea Lighthouse and loved it. We didn’t pay the $5 each to walk to the lighthouse itself, but just enjoyed the view from the parking lot. We enjoyed looking in the shops in the area.

There was not much traffic going to Princeville, so it was an easy drive. We had hoped to have lunch at the Village Snack and Bakery in Hanalei and have their special apple cobbler, but it was lunch time and we weren’t that far yet! We’d already tried the Lighthouse Bistro back in Kilauea and they were already closed. We saw the write up for the North Shore Grindz, inside the Chevron gas station, right on the highway at the Princeville Center. We checked it out and it looked good, with lots of tables outside to eat on. We had their hamburgers and onion rings – and we think that was the BEST hamburger we have ever had!!!! What a GREAT place!

From there, we went to the St Regis Hotel and thoroughly enjoyed the fabulous lobby and views of Hanalei Bay!

We did not know which beach would be the best to visit that would have an easy access. We stopped at ‘Anini Beach and saw people swimming. We decided to try Lumaha’i Beach (apparently the South Pacific movie beach!) to walk out on. It is HUGE. And except for 3 people way on the other side, we were alone out there. The waves were unbelievable (no swimming there, though!) So many beaches are not crowded…is it because there are so many beaches and not so many people?

It was not after 6 p.m. and it did not look like a good place to see the sunset as there was a ridge to the west. So we drove down to Ke’e Beach, at the end of the road, which everyone had raved about. We were disappointed in the quality of the beach, since, of course, it is so busy, but we got a close parking place and sat on a log and saw a beautiful sunset! It was a wonderful site!

It took ½ hour to drive the 10 miles back to Princeville, and ½ hour to get to Kapa’a when we had a late supper.