Gavin’s last two days of 1st grade were spent on a field trip to the Iao Valley Nature Center and The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. It was an overnight trip. A first for us.

I knew the trip was going to be good because just on the way up to the Nature Center (2 hour drive), we found a bird trainer on the side of Hana Hwy letting tourists take pictures with his 5 highly trained parrots. They were beautiful birds and I just couldn’t resist stopping and letting Gavin oogle the birds and even take a picture or two with them. We were off to a good start.

We arrived at Iao Valley about 1 1/2 hours early, but it didn’t take long before other kids and parents and teachers all arrived. All the kids ran around free to play and cause trouble for an hour before they brought out some pizza, chips and cake for lunch.

After lunch they took us to our rooms to let everyone dump their stuff and settle in. The two buildings with rooms were kind of set up in such a way that made me feel like I was staying at a Motel 8.

With our stuff in our rooms and the kids all in good moods and full of food, the program started. We had an indoor lesson on habitats, discussing the many different kinds we can find right there on the grounds as well as what kind of animals and creatures live in those habitats. This included a box of examples such as spiders, butterflies, lobsters, toads and lizards. The kids were all impressed and listened quite well.

That was the first stop in a loop of activities that the kids were involved with; all dealing with habitats. The rest of the activities included a trip to a 1st grade tree house for a discussion on the 5 things needed to live (space, food, water, shelter, and air), an outdoor puzzle activity on what the food chain is, a hunt for bugs (Gavin found some ants and rollie pollies), and a “create your own habitat” activity that involved filling containers with water, rocks, leaves and algea, and then fishing for little fish and crawfish with little nets in a small pond to put in the created habitats. They finished up with a walk across the “big, big bridge” over the Iao Valley river and back again to the room where they started to hold a recap session. After that, the kids were set loose.

While the kids all ran around, the adults all lounged around the patio and the grill got set up and prepared to make hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner. During this time, the staff opened up their Interactive Nature Museum. This became a popular place for kids as well as adults, with things like fish tanks, microscopes, videos, nature displays, and other various neat things.

For dinner, hamburgers and hot dogs were served with sides of potato salad and chips. At this point everyone was starving and if there was any doubt of having leftover food, it was squashed. Even Gavin ate an entire costco-sized hamburger with chips and Caprisun.

What is an overnight camping trip without a camp fire? As soon as the sun started going down, the kids all got whiff of a rumor that there were going to be smores. It didn’t take long before all the kids had sticks in hand and were swarming around the fire. There were many flaming marshmallows and many burnt sticks and many consumed smores. I myself had two or three. We spent a good hour around the campfire before the kids started to realize how tired they had become. Gavin approached me and said, “Dad. I’m tired. Can we go to bed now?” Kids are so cute when they get this tired. We headed to our rooms, set up our bed, changed and laid down in bed. We talked story for a short bit. It didn’t take Gavin long to fall asleep. It also didn’t take long for the parent in the bunk next to us to fall asleep. I wish I had fallen asleep before him. He is the worst snorer I have ever heard. He even beats out my good friends Sal and Shaun. He made them sound like cats purring. I didn’t get much sleep that night.

The following day started off with a Costco muffin breakfast before setting off on our short hike back across the “big, big bridge” to the “needle” (a large mountain that juts up towards the sky like a needle”. It was apparent that the kids were still exhausted by the previous nights activities. Everyone moved just a bit slower than normal. But we finally reached our destination, which seemed to perk everyone up a bit. The view was beautiful. You can see the mountains in every direction above, and the river in front of us below. It was a sight we all appreciated. Everyone snapped a few pictures and that was that. Time to head back.

On the way back, the kids all got a second wind. This resulted at stopping at the river along the way to let the kids all go swimming. Apparently they all knew about this because suddenly they were all wearing bathing suits. I was able to convince Gavin that he could go swimming in his shorts, so that is what he did. It was nice seeing them all happy and swimming around and jumping off rocks and having a good time. You almost wouldn’t have known that the water was freezing.

That pretty much concluded the Iao Valley Nature Center part of the trip. And it seems that the kids (and parents) counted this as 99% of the trip. And they allocated their energy accordingly.

For the last part of the trip, we all drove down to the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary in Kihei. Here the kids learned about whales. They made their own paper cutout whale and did some coloring and stamping to create a reef of their very own. It was fun, but 1 or 2 of the kids kind of passed out while coloring.

It took longer than expected to get home (we took the unpaved, un-maintained, back way around the island), but we finally made it. Holly and Leif were happy to see us. We ate a quick dinner and plopped down to relax for a short bit before having to put the kids to bed. When that time came, it was easy. Gavin was out in minutes. The sign of a good trip.

See all photos from the trip.

I’ve been feeling pretty relaxed lately. I’ve been happy with my beer production and the reviews on its results. Work is going well. The weather has been good. Leif has been cute and easy on me. He’s really been playing without the need to have me right next to him at all times. On Monday, he let me play guitar for more than 1 minute for the first time in maybe a year. I played many of the songs I already know, but decided I wanted to learn some new songs. I just haven’t had time to do that for a while. So here, for your listening pleasure (hopefully) is one of those songs.

“Shankill Butchers” by the Decemberists (as perfomed by me)

[audio:http://www.deathlylost.com/404/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Shankill-Butchers.mp3]

Yes, I know, you’d think with the words right in front of me that I wouldn’t have said “Shanghai Butchers” in the first line, but, hey, just ignore that.

And remember, this is more about the guitar than my tone-deaf voice.

After a conversation with my dad about all the cool things we have here in Hawaii, and even on our property, I was inspired to go cut down a bunch of bananas that we have seen just up the road. Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones keeping our eye on that bunch. That’s ok though. With all the changes around the property, we were inspired to roam around and see exactly what kind of yummy goodies we have on property and where they are. We found a pretty good size banana grove a ways back. There were banana trees everywhere along with an unfinished house. It’s like they didn’t want to take anymore trips to Home Depot and just stopped building. On the outside, it was an unpainted cabin with a shingled roof. On the inside it was all frame. It looked pretty new too. Such a shame. It would have been cool to live in a house completely surrounded by banana trees.

We found a few trees that had bunches that were ready to be cut. So I pulled out the mormon lady knife and with a few swipes had me two large bunches of bananas and two banana trees ready to re-grow. Just had to rinse them, hang them to dry, and put them in a bucket for a day and we have large quantities of ripe bananas. I think we’ll be making banana bread in the near future.

But since the bananas weren’t quite ready yet, I made cinnamon raisin bread instead. And because I was in the baking mood, I also made cookie-topped brownies. They both came out awesome. I like to bake.

Meanwhile, the rest of the weekend was spent just relaxing and having a good time. We spend a bit with some friends chatting and letting the kids run amuck. We had some beautiful weather so we also spent some time on the porch with drinks and bubbles. Even the cats were enjoying the fun. Overall it was a nice weekend. I think we even went to the beach. Yeah. We went to the beach. Gavin’s friend came along with us too. I guess this is the start of summer. Sweet.

Failing to brew my new batch of beer on Saturday, I wasn’t about to let Sunday slip by without doing so. Sunday was also the day that Gavin had a play date with a friend over at our house. As it turns out, her dad is interested in the beer brewing process, so we invited the whole crew over and had a beer brewing bbq evening. That brought the adult count to 4 and the kid count to 4.

Holly made a run to the store to get some extra meat and some chips. She returned with 5 or so steaks and a bag of potato chips. But before I could heat up the grill, I had to get started on the beer. I set up all my supplies and went to work. With someone watching all my steps and movements, I was little nervous, but then again, it seemed to keep me focused on the task at hand. Don’t want to miss anything.

Once the beer was on it’s way and I had some waiting time, I fired up the grill and slapped on some beefs and hot dogs. Add some beers, a deck of cards and entertained kids and you have yourself a great night. I finished my batch of beer and set it in a corner to  do it’s thing for a while. We played Gin Rummy while the kids played hide and seek. Eventually they settled on the couch to watch a dragon movie.

It was nice to be able to sit around with friends and have grown up talk and just plain relax. With our new lounge chairs on the porch and the sun going down, it had an almost Lake George moment feel to it. Summer time is here and I’m hoping to have more of these moments.

This weekend = Taro Festival here in Hana.

For a year, Holly has been thinking about the orchid earrings she didn’t buy from last year’s Taro Festival. We found and searched the vendor that was selling them last year. We didn’t have any luck in that area. The jewelry is custom made and they didn’t have any more of the orchid earrings. They did, however, give Holly their card if she wanted them to custom make her a pair of the orchid earrings. Might make a good mother’s day gift from me.

After walking around all the booths, Gavin decided that of all the things there, he wanted to buy books from the Scholastic book tent. He’s a true librarian’s son. Of course the kid in him also asked for the ever popular water balloon yoyo. We got one for Leif and one for Gavin. Whoever invented those is a genius. Hours of entertainment. So Gavin walked away with his yoyo, a multi colored cat pen, and a Missile Mouse comic book. He’s a happy boy.

I received an overpayment reimbursement check from my CC, so I was able to spend a few buck myself. I spent half of it on food, and the other half on a mother’s day gift. I just have to remember to mail it now.

For lunch, we ate a pumpkin curry (totally delicious), panang beef curry (yum), a bacon burger and fries, and taro chips. To drink, we had the ever popular passion-orange drink. Mmmmm. We sat and watch the hula dancers while eating. They were lovely. There were even hula groups from out of town. I think one of the introducers said something about coming out here for the Hawaiians and not the haoles. It was hard to understand. But whatever. We still get to watch.

Somewhere in the afternoon, we headed for home with two exhausted kids. Leif took a good nap and Gavin spent some time with his DS. Holly and I spent some time relaxing as well. Something about a beer and a couch. Before the day was up, Holly made sure to model the new mug and earrings she bought for herself.

And that was just Saturday…