hawaii happenings from sunday

i planned a trip to poipu, a rather luxurious resort town for sunday. the intention was to rent bikes (hence the dew rag) and do a ten mile trail that has plaques with points of interest in the area, as well as go to a rumored-to-be desolate beach. hopefully i'll have some beach pictures up soon, but we didn't want to take brian's mom's camera onto the beach with us most of the time, so we ususally used our disposable. that still needs to be developed.



once there, the rain was coming and going and we found no hourly bike rentals, only daily. as it was already 4 o'clock by the time we got there, we opted to skip the bikes rather than fork out 40 bucks for a few hours. so, no bike pictures, however now is as good a time as any to let everyone know that kauai is over run with chickens. if they scare you, don't go there. i thought they were cute. they weren't very photogenic, though, so this is about the best i got.



spouting horn. it's a lava tube on the beach. when the waves hit the shore, it spouts into the air, sometimes looking like a geyser. for those such as my sister-in-law who crave knowledge, go here to read about it.



as we were headed out of town, we stopped for a snack at genki sushi for a snack. it's a chain with fast, mass-produced sushi, but it seemed great to us. and very inexpensive for hawaii, only 20 bucks for a very substantial snack.



on the way back home, we went to see some falls. i forget their name at the moment, but they were pretty. more to come tomorrow!

greetings from the land where avocados grow on trees

we may move here to just get one of our own.


we started out the day here with a belgain waffle topped off with papaya, banana, coconut, macadamias, and whipped cream. don't worry jenny, we forgot to take a picture this time but we're going back because brian really wants another one.


we went to a produce market. we had been waiting to get our fruit there, but it wasn't all that cheap as we had hoped. we spent thirteen bucks on one pineapple, one avocado, one papaya, and a medium zip-lock of lychees.


they did have some pretty flowers.


including this chocolate orchid that really smelled like chocolate!



the day was really beautiful. most of our pictures we took with an underwater disposable, so y'all will have to wait, but here are a few more for you! kel, here is your confirmation, brian did shave the rest of his moustache off!


we enjoyed shaved ice, brian more than me because i got sugar free. it was still good.


these things are growing all over the place on massive trees.


we've been having a great time in our sweet ride. :)

guess where we are??!?!?!

this isn't just any meal outside a wal-mart, no way, this was the first meal we ate yesterday upon arrival to kauai!!!


unfortuneately, we missed what we really wanted, lots of great grilled fish options, by about 5 minutes, but we had a lovely shredded pig, rice, tomato salad, and raw salmon salad, quite interesting.


my husband, brian the man not only got us first class upgrades for the way from seattle to hawaii, but also this lovely convertible!!


this made me quite happy.


we spent most of the day today snorkeling. we saw lots of fish, urchins, sea turtles, sea cucumbers and other stuff.


brian started off the day looking like this.


then his facial hair started getting in the way of his snorkel mask so he shaved.



i didn't like that look, so he tried again, but i didn't really like this one either so now he is clean shaven...

tomorrow i'll try to get some more pics up, but for now it is way past my bedtime. goodnight!!

a busy couple weeks

so it's been a fun week or so. brian went to alaska for a week and while he was gone the grubes left for a week so i got to take care of pender (the cat) and the garden all on my own for a while.

for my birthday, brian and i went out to the red house, which is my favorite restaurant in our little neighborhood. he gave me two lovely neclaces and three gorgeous flower arrangements for the house. i would put pictures of them up, but it's been really hot here and they're getting all wilty.



our cucumbers are doing quite well, in fact, too well. i've been taking them to work to give them away and we still have about 15 in the fridge.




here's an example of one day's harvest. we get about this many in a week lately.





the tomatoes got a trim from brian when he got home because they were so heavy that they were collapsing their cages and spilling out over the sidewalk.



here's a shot of the whole garden as of yesterday. it's gotten quite lush! we've already harvested all the radishes, lettuce, broccoli, and many herbs.



in other news, the time has come to say good bye to the altima. it needs more repairs than we are prepared to make, so we're looking into other options. we're trying to figure out what we can afford, financing, and other things to make a good choice, but at this point we are looking at possibly a used subaru forester. very seattle, don't you think??

sorry kel, i'm a liar

i didn't get the pics up as promised, my internet was broken. here's what's been going on in the van houten household.

we've been learning to cook over open fires on our many camping trips. these were particularly delicious. we enjoyed them in a particularly private creekside location a few weeks. it was just the two of us.

we set up the shelter and enjoyed peaceful book time in our side-by-side camp recliners.

except when the posessed dear came into our campsite.

the true seattlites forgot their percolator. note the tube sock. we really don't recommend it, especially if you use fabric softener.

brian is really proud of how we've mastered camp bacon. this fire was at the bumping lake campground when we camped with rudy and anne and their two dogs.


we really need to start taking pictures of us together. here's brian looking cute, but we don't have any together ones.


for our anniversary weekend we stayed at the woodland cabin again, which brought back many great honeymoon memories and reminders of how exciting it was to be finally married. we had a great time hiking and relaxing and enjoying each other's company.

we went on a hike at mt. rainier, which turned out to be much shorter than planned because there was much more snow than we anticipated. brian got in a high altitude run, though. that's him in the white shirt on the patch of non-snow.

he returned from the run invigorated and we slid back down the mountain on our butts with glee. actually, it was really cold and that icy snow is kind of sharp and grainy. it was still fun.

on the ecening of the 4th we went up to the penthouse in brian's old apartment because they were putting on a huge fireworks show for our anniversary.

i'd consider going back to renting for this view.