Passover and Presents Pretty Pictures

I've been trying to get a good bubble picture forever	Max and Woody at Kalakaua Park during the Merrie Monarch (that's King Kalakaua, actually) parade and street fair (we didn't make it to the hula events, sorry)

Passover 2006

	Yes, of course I made matzoballs to go with the soup. We did first night seder with our friends the Mleyneks, and their household; low-key and short, just right for Max. The week+1 went pretty quickly this year, actually. Woody and I did a little Seder presentation for the third-grade kids at Max's school, which was pretty lively.
	Many thanks to my parents, whose care package was almost entirely filled with candies and other fun -- and entirely unavailable on this island -- Passover foods.
	The Cake. It's a long story.... with a happy ending! Short version: While quadrupling the chocolate in the recipe sounds good....

It was December in April this month: Max seemed to get a flurry of "just because" presents. Here's Max on the first day he got this Cinderella doll from Gram (that's Marge), a doll that used to belong to Woody. Gram made some new outfits (including shoes) and Max is having a blast with the dolls and story.
From Grandma Marcia, aside from the food, came a box that included, among other things, the musical tubes (which Max loves to mix up) and Venetian shirt shown here

  ¶ Saturday, April 29, 2006 0 comments

  Spring Break Day Five: Trains and Kites Another of the perennial favorite activities is to drive up to Laupahoehoe for the Train Museum and the 50s Diner.

I didn't get a lot of good pictures of Max up there, but I did get a decent shot of the diorama. Apparently there's some repair work available for a modeller with some spare time...

After the Diner (where we tried the Blueberry Malt!), we came back to Liliuokalani Gardens to try out the new kite! We'd had a kite before, but it was a heavy tube, very hard to fly without really good wind. This time I picked out a light delta flyer, much easier to launch...

Max's mode for flying a kite is to run away for a while, then, once the kite is flying, to run towards it. This tends to cut the flight a bit short. After running around in the sun with the kite (also some frisbee experiments), we were all pretty hot.

  ¶ Saturday, April 01, 2006 0 comments

  Spring Break Day Four: Science The main item on the agenda for Day Four was watching the garbage truck come. Seriously, before he did preschool, one of the highlights of the week was the Thursday morning visit of our rubbish collectors, and Max really has missed it. So one of the parameters of Spring Break was that we needed to stay home Thursday morning until after the truck. Once that was out of the way, we went to our town's latest attraction, The `Imiloa Astronomy Center.

	Max and Woody had visited before, with the Keiki Fun play group, so he knew some of what he wanted to do right off the bat. The Planetarium Show was the first thing, and this planet puzzle -- with the ejector lever for starting over -- was the second.
	One of the better science exhibits was this camera. Max didn't really get it until I suggested rubbing our hands together to warm them up.

After the Science Center and Max's nap, it was time to mow. While I was doing that, Max and Woody were enjoying our new swing and the lovely dry weather.
  ¶ Saturday, April 01, 2006 0 comments

  I fought the lawn and the lawn won... Mowing the lawn after a hiatus, like the one caused by our weeks of rainshowers, is like destroying an ecosystem. But we do it anyway. Here's some of the fauna I encountered while decimating flora:

	This bee is on the flower of a Ti plant. Ti plants are mostly ornamental, but the leaves can be used for wrapping food and steaming it. LauLau!
	We're running out of the lemon juice from last year's crop, but there's hope! Here's a bee busily working on our next lime crop.
	Not all flying insects are welcome. I'm going to have to get rid of these, but I'm going to need to get up on the roof to get to them.
	Apparently this is the descendant of a fighting cock released to the wild by some former neighbors some years ago. The crowing starts around four in the morning...
	This is either a variety of walking stick or of praying mantis. It's got wings (I got a little video, too) but mostly seems to use them for short hops.

  ¶ Saturday, April 01, 2006 0 comments