Summer

 Summer is here. Being a teacher is intense and I don't know if it would be possible to keep it up without a break. I am finally finding time to organize my home and exercise outside and cook.  And sleep--I'm not tired!

 The Santa Barbara Botanical Garden meadow and wildflowers.

 I'm finding time to play around in the kitchen again. Shopping for quality ingredients (and new veggies) makes me happy.

Andrew and I had an indulgent breakfast at Jeannine's. And then walked it off at the beach. I like to go the dog beaches and laugh at all the happy offleach pooches.

 A wedding giftcard to William and Sonoma was burning a whole in my pocket (almost two years later). I spent the last bit on a Zoku Ice Pop maker. I've been a little obsessed with fruit. I also like to put frozen fruit through my juicer on the puree setting and eat it like sorbet.

I'm getting into oatmeal (and fruit!) again. I really appreciate the Steel Cut instant oats from Trader Joe's. The great thing about oatmeal is you can add so many different toppings--it never gets dull.

May Days 2012

 Class musical, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" was a hit. I was a much more relaxed director this year. I avoided being frantic or stage-mom like. It was was for the experience of teamwork. We only practiced about 3 times a week. I expected them to behave like-5 year-olds. Luckily, they did.  Just the delightful well-behaved performance-loving kind.  Gosh, it is hard to let them go after they are molded into such terrific students and we are all so bonded. Eight more days!

 Andrew found a star fish and was really excited about saving it--relocating it to the tide pools. We go the beach every weekend. It's all I know how to do after growing up in Hawaii. What else is there? The mall?

 I found shells and a worn shard of pottery. What should I do with my finds? I tend to drop them in the planters on my porch. I love seashells in a garden. Maybe someday I'll be inspired to make jewelry out them.

 Smell those roses! Oh wait, this is my other hang out. I got to bring my family to the Mission Rose Garden when they were in town. Also, my sisters both came and hung out in my classroom. Holly stayed for the day and boy was she a hit. One student said, "You were MADE to be a teacher," to her. Another said, "Ms. H, your sister is JUST great." She sure is.

Surfer girl Lany gave my long board some action.  Sorry the waves were dinky that day! She handled the numb feet and hands thing well.

Yosemite Wedding

 A couple of weeks ago we took a road trip to Yosemite. My sister flew in from Hawaii and had the backseat to herself.

 My cousin, one of my dearest friends, was getting married in the area. One highlight was exploring the Valley the day before the wedding. The weather was lovely. We all took a nap in the field (can you tell my dad is an island boy?).  It was so peaceful and still.

We all stayed at the Yosemite Bug...a rustic resort.  My cousin put so much thought into her decor--the place looked amazing. My aunt did the flowers---they were perfect. $100 in flowers from Trader Joe's, reused jars, and homemade burlap runners (made by the groom).

 Janna painted chalkboard paint on old wine bottles....

 And made personalized coloring books for the kids! I think she is meant to be a teacher.

 The sight of the ceremony--a scenic hilltop at the Bug that guests could walk up to.

 After a gorgeous brunch at the Wawona Hotel the next day, I got a chance to see a few more waterfalls. AMAZING. My little cousins from Hawaii asked their parents if they could move to Yosemite. That says a lot.

 It isn't so far after all. After years in California I am thrilled I finally got to see this unforgettable place.

 It was also just so awesome being with family. My sisters, dad, cousins, aunts, uncles, and my Grandma were all together in the same place. Also unforgettable.

It was a hit.  People liked the wedding so much they were getting commemorative tattoos.

Rainbow Eggs

Clockwise from top: Hot water mixed with blueberries, green tea, parsley, cranberries, turmeric, and espresso.

 Yesterday, I was trying to come up with a way to attractively display the deviled eggs I usually bring to my dear friend and neighbor's annual Easter gathering. I found this website on pinterest. The pastel-colored-eggs are gorgeous but foreign colors for foods can be alarming (purple ketchup?). And food dye's have a bad rap in general. For years I've been meaning to experiment with dyeing eggs from sources from nature. From the research I did (Martha Stewart) they produce more subtle, elegant colors. 

After getting some ideas off the interwebs and checking my kitchen, I ended up using: coffee, frozen cranberries, frozen blueberries/blackberries, green tea, turmeric, and parsley, which I ran through our beloved juicer.

 Pretty and pastel-y, like I hoped!

I wanted to mix in the dill and parsley but in the end allowed people the option by serving on the side.

 I was worried the coffee one would taste too strong--it wasn't. 

 We were lucky to form a quality group of friend our first year living here. Our friends are grad students and spouses, who moved here from other parts of the country. We live in the same complex, so borrowing stuff and watching TV shows in pajamas is our normal.  Without family accessible, we're forced to rely on each other for community in ways you might not have to when living in a familiar place. Recently, we've seen dear friends move on to bigger and better things and leave us. Our time in this humble community has an end in sight. Year five is drawing to a close and I know that someday we wont be carving pumpkins together, crowding around for Thanksgiving, or celebrating Easter together in style. In the meanwhile, I try to live in the moment (and take lots of pictures) so I'll remember these good ole days.

Island Child

Emily, Lantana, Holly, Forrest

Hanamanu, Maui. Camping in 1989.
Things about this picture.
I really really really liked having a lot of kids in my family. I was proud of it. It was fun and never boring. We were evenly spaced, by two years. I thought four was a lot, but I married a man who came from nine, so maybe it's not so extreme

I have my hair in a braid, as I did most of my childhood. After a bad incident, my mom was very afraid of another uku, or headlice, epidemic. I'm wearing muddy high tops. I grew up as country mouse in a wet, muddy tropical town. I always thought you could tell a tourist by their clean shoes. How could shoes people WEAR be clean?  (Now, my dad says Oahu people never have dirt on their shoes and to check your feet over there in the city.) At the time, I was always secretly envious of girls dressed in frilly lacy socks with patent leather shoes. I admired those hideous 80s styles, trendy at the time, on TV, and on tourists from the mainland. In retrospect, I should be grateful my parents were hippies stuck on 70s fashions.

My sister Lantana, a.k.a. Lany, is copying my foot movement. She copied everything I did. She tried to write in cursive when she was supposed to be learning to print, I taught her the times tables when she was 5, and she read all my high school novels when she was in 6th grade. She pretty much stalked me.  I only minded when my friends came over and I wanted to feel cool. But then we grew up a little more and it was more mutual stalking. The fact that she copied WHATEVER I did was a lot of responsibility. I avoided drugs or anything bad cause I wanted her to have a happy life. No carefree youth for me...See note below:

Oldest Children, (from random birth order website)
Oldest children often bear the brunt of responsibility for their younger siblings. They are placed in a care providing and protective role for the younger siblings and therefore may tend to be more responsible in their lives in general. This can result in a desire to control the people and situations around them. Oldest children are usually the “good” children of the family who follow the rules and set the examples for younger children. Positive traits that are typically associated with oldest children include their leadership abilities and ambition.

I am the typical oldest child.  I didn't really like having to fake being brave when I also thought there were monsters or at least Night Marchers in the bushes. In Hawaii, we had Hawaiian studies from K-6, where an elder, or kupuna, would visit our class and teach us Hawaiian language, games, and legends. They would tell us about the night marchers, ghosts of ancient Hawaiian warriors, as would many adults in my life. I grew up on three acres surrounded by pasture. It was DARK, the sky sparkled with stars. It was beautiful, but very rural. So, I half-heard the night marcher drums each night as I fell asleep.

I like Holly, the baby. I was so happy she was a girl because I LOVED the name Holly. She was born with a happy-go-lucky personality, on July 12. She told every stranger she met her name, and that her birthday was July 12. Holly ended up getting random piles of birthday cards. She liked to make us laugh. She never said hibiscus but hibis-followed-by-kiss-sound. And she was our living doll, letting us carry her around and dress her up. I also appreciate that my parents were cool and hip enough to take four little kids/babies camping. Andrew and I can barely get it together to take two people camping--are our future kids doomed? 

And my brother Forrest. He's two years younger than me and was my main pal for years. He was very sensitive but also charming. Note: he is the only one looking at the camera. He liked to please and engage adults and bigger kids, always. He was more drawn to the bad boy types and always established himself as a dude. Probably to compensate for having three sisters, he was obsessed with dirt bikes and all boy stuff. But he was also good for late night heart-to-hearts. Also, check out that bomber jacket.

One funny thing about this picture is you can tell our birth order.  At some point my brother and I were the same size, then he grew bigger than me, and I stopped physically fighting with him. He hated that I got to (or as I viewed it, had to) learn to drive before him. And then Lany, third-born, and now nearly 6 feet tall, started her growth spurt and they were the same size. Like him, she was competitive, and hates to be discounted, especially on the count of being a girl. She would wrestle with him and do scary bike jumps in the yard and prove herself daily. Meanwhile, I reminded everyone to be safe.  

I wrote this in past tense but many of these things are still true about my siblings. I feel like we are all going to return to the state of being together all the time (which is what we do whenever we are on the same island) and whatever else we're doing now is just a phase.

Bonus pic: Childhood friends, then my brother (with red cords), and me. 

 In a fort in an ironwood tree.

Something in Flight

 I spent a long time watching the birds at the beach yesterday. I was keeping an eye out for things that fell into the latest April photo challenge theme "flight." Today, I realized there are lots of different photo-of-the-month challenges streaming through facebook/twitter/instagram and probably other social media sights I don't have yet. I guess I'll go with whichever one suits my mood.

Laying in the warm sand on my blanket, I was prepared to delve into "A Storm of Swords" the third book in the George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series. It is really good. HBO has a Game of Thrones series that is based on these books.  And I do adore those quality HBO shows.  I became so entertained by bird watching, I never cracked the book. Pelicans and gulls were carrying big strands of kelp and nest-building materials. They are funny creatures.

 The tide was low so I walked as far the beach would let me. I came to this lava rock at the end, which reminded me a lot of what you'd find at the cove-like beaches on Maui. There is no "coast" in Hawaii, just darling coves and daring cliffs strung together to make islands.

 Behind me were rambling staircases, with chains, blocking them off from public access. I bet the houses at the top of this cliff are pretty rad. I'd be game to house-sit, if you know who lives up there.

 I liked this one, because I was so focused on the seagulls above the pier, I didn't see the frolicking kid until afterwards. Children and dogs are immune to the chilly West Coast water.

 The fluffy, frosty, foamy sea reflects the bright sky. I miss my family in Hawaii a lot, these days. But it is true that I get way less homesick here than I did when I lived in Oregon. Sunshine and beaches really do provide comfort and happiness. Andrew knew what he was doing when he moved me here.

Reasons to Celebrate Springtime

View from my front door: Rain makes the mountains green--and golden. I do love this Golden State.

 ..winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to the youngest and merriest.    --Anne of Green Gables

 It's poppy season again!  They grow so effortlessly, with their blue-green carrot-top foliage. I love to pluck them and arrange them in bouquets.  It isn't illegal to pick them--I looked into it.

 The sky is bigger. The roads are wider. And clouds add great dimension. 

 Branches you'd want to lay under, if the ground weren't so soggy.

Urchin

 

 Another benefit:  Rain showers and overcast skies keep the regulars away from the beach. No crowds.

Whelk.

And the tumble-y stormy sea spits up cool treasures: yours for the taking.

Today I returned to work after Spring Break. I have had amazing Spring Breaks in my life: backpacking in the Utah dessert, San Fran, Sicily (junior year of college), National parks. This year I intended to leave town but ended up sleeping in instead...about 13 hours a night. And wandering about and exploring. I am feeling restored!

I kept thinking this was my first stay-at-home Spring Break. A blog post from three years ago entitled Wildflower Drive and Rainbow Dance (hippie, hehe) proved this was not true. We were the same people, pretty much living the same life. Only back then I took pictures with a camera rather than phone. We were also way poorer, not engaged yet, and maybe not quite as beaten down by the man. Enjoy!

I will end this post with a question like I did back then.

For what reasons do you celebrate Springtime?