Hawaii with Kids: Sightseeing on the Big Island

I know that this is seeming like the vacation that will never end, but since my personal blog is not just my daily journal but also my travel journal, this is the place where I put my memories!

Along with all of the really purposeful things that we did in Hawaii, we also, of course, did a lot of sightseeing of the "this looks interesting--let's go look at it!" nature.

When on the Big Island, you HAVE to go to Ka Lae. It's the southernmost point of the United States (but NOT the southernmost point of the US territories--that distinction belongs to American Samoa), and it's also theorized that this is the original landfall of the Polynesian settlers.

Hard to believe, as there's a fifty-foot cliff here:

Fifty feet straight down! Matt is about fifty feet behind us, having a heart attack. His mother is possibly shouting.

Will had read in the guidebook that people jump off of this cliff and then climb a ladder back up, and she claimed that she wanted to do this, as well. I kept my game face on and told her that we'd check out the quality of the ladder, the height of the surf, etc., when we got there, while inside my head I was pretty much resigning myself to the fact that we were probably all going to die at this cliff.

Fortunately, when we got to Ka Lae, there was a big sign stating that diving off of the cliff isn't allowed.

Phew!

In addition, the ladder was a rickety, rusty old thing, and I spent quite a lot of time explaining to Will what would happen if it broke while one of the divers was climbing up and they fell back into the water, with no way to get back up the cliff, left simply to tread water until rescuers could arrive. I even had a plan for this; we had an inner tube in the car, so I figured I'd toss it to the diver so that he'd have something to rest on.

Because yes, there were nevertheless divers! While not as good as risking one's own life, I'm sure, it was quite the vicarious thrill to watch a couple of guys dive off the cliff a few times. It reminded me of a conversation that Syd had with a Park Ranger at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau. They were discussing the park's rules, including the one that forbids climbing on any of the walls.

The park ranger said, "Can you believe that we catch some people climbing on the walls anyway?"

Syd gasped with horror. The park ranger continued, "But they're never Junior Rangers that we catch. They are ALWAYS grown men."

Will theorized that it was because of testosterone poisoning, and we all laughed. And so, not suffering from testosterone poisoning ourselves, we left the illegal, dangerous stunts to the grown men and simply enjoyed the view:

You're looking due south to Antarctica.

 Driving back to our condo after some adventure or another, my mother-in-law spotted a coffee farm whose sign said that it hosted tours. This was only on my "maybe" list, so I was stoked!

When on a coffee farm, you MUST taste the coffee--

--even if you're very, very, VERY silly and you therefore don't like it:

It's even better, though, if you do:

Greenwell Farms gave us a wonderful tour of their coffee farm--

Coffee beans!

Coffee trees!

Coffee drying!

Random photo of a banana tree!

--but for the kids, the highlight of the tour took place before it even began, when an employee took them around the side of the building and showed them a pair of the resident chameleons:

On another day, we drove north past Waimea--

 --then down the Saddle Road to Mauna Kea. I'd been heartbroken early in our vacation to have my tour to the observatory canceled because of poor weather at the summit. I bet they canceled their tour on this day, as well!

It was very nice, then, that the rest of the family braved the windy mountain road just to let me have a little visit:

I was interested to see that the Thirty-Meter Telescope protesters WERE still in residence, although while we were there, they were simply enjoying a lovely potluck together.

Okay, NOW I've shown you every single thing that we've done on the Big Island.

Relieved?

Don't be! Next I'll show you all the stuff that we did in Oahu!

Halloween 2015: Fluttershy and the Ninja

This Halloween tried to get away from me. Coming just two and a half weeks after our return from our fabulous vacation in Hawaii, we spent at least half that time resting, nesting, and reacclimating to our own time zone.

So not every festive thing happened, and that's okay. We didn't get to the apple orchard, but we did get to the pumpkin patch. We didn't get to the haunted house, but we did spend a family movie night watching Ghostbusters, the children for the very first time, and hallelujah, they love that movie as much as I do!

We didn't make the monster face cookies or the dyed cake (although we still may!), but Syd did make mummy dogs, this pumpkin chocolate chip pie of her own invention--

Prepare your favorite pumpkin pie recipe, but in a chocolate graham cracker pie crust. Just before baking, scatter a VERY generous handful of chocolate chips over the pie; they will settle down into the pie as it bakes. For Halloween flair, Syd recommends that when the pie is out of the oven but still a little warm, you use more chocolate chips to put a Jack-o-lantern face on top.

--and these highly-elaborate trick-or-treat cookies, with my help: 

Cutting out and baking these cookies was kind of a nightmare, as each cookie requires two full circles and one circle with the middle cut out. Even more annoyingly, you must roll the dough out thicker for that circle with the middle cut out. We didn't know how many cookies this batch of dough would make, so we were trying to keep it even, but somehow the math, plus everything else that the recipe required, was more than Syd could keep in her head, and so I kept turning around to find out that she'd cut the middles out of ALL the circles, or rolled the dough paper thin for the cookies that HAD to be thick, etc. Normally, I'm pretty chill about stuff like that, but this recipe simply wouldn't work if these measurements weren't accurate, and so it was a frustrating experience for all of us.

You're supposed to fill some with a "treat" candy and some with a "trick" candy--we decided on mini M&Ms and nerds.

Even though the entire batch only made four of these cookies for us, they were HUGE, and quite decadent with all that icing, the candy inside, and the chocolate chip Jack-o-lantern decoration on top. A single cookie was more than any one of us could eat at one sitting. Also? As soon as you bite into the middle, the candy will start to spill out onto the floor, and since the pieces are small, they scatter EVERYWHERE. I'm still sweeping up Nerds in the kitchen.

Aren't they crazy thick? They were delicious, too, but overall way more work in the kitchen then we tend to enjoy.

 And, of course, no matter what else we did or didn't do to celebrate, we still went to Halloween parties, we still made wonderful costumes, and we still went trick-or-treating!

Our chickens all free-range, and I was charmed to see the kids, before we left for trick-or-treating, putting them back into their yard while in costume.

Here are our babies all grown up! From left to right, we have Smudge, Fuzz, Hedwig, Feather, Featherfeet, Puffball, Cinnamon, and Faith.

Our trick-or-treaters this year consist of Fluttershy from My Little Pony, a ninja, and our friend, the Soul Sucker.

Because we live out in the country now (which, by the way, also completely solves my years-long problem of buying candy for trick-or-treaters, eating it all myself, and then having to buy more candy), we drove back to our old, familiar neighborhood to trick-or-treat:

Many of our former neighbors know and are known by the kids, still, which makes trick-or-treating more fun, I think, and it doesn't hurt that our neighborhood is an EPIC place to trick-or-treat! There were honest-to-god Halloween carolers out this year. There was this car, the smoke from which you could see a block away:

There was the guy who hands out candy in a gorilla suit (which he must own, since he wears it every year), the house that gives out the full-sized candy bars, and I don't even know which house gave the kids THIS particular treat, but we are 100% going there again next year!

There was a dog dressed like a hot dog!

At one point during the evening, we came across two wee little fellows, somewhere in the 3-5 age range, I'd say, dressed as Hogwarts students. The little brown-haired boy wore a Gryffindor tie under his robes, and the little blonde-haired boy had his hair slicked straight back and wore a Slytherin tie. I was absolutely delighted, grabbed Matt's arm in excitement, and stopped in my tracks to gaze in adoration at what was clearly shaping up to be the best thing that I had ever seen in my life.

As I watched--my own children could have been running down the middle of the street at this point, as poorly as I was attending to them--the little Gryffindor waved his little wand (he had a little WAND!!!) and shouted "Expelliarmus!" This startled the little Slytherin, he stepped back, stumbled, and his wand flew out of his hand.

Friends, HIS WAND FLEW OUT OF HIS HAND.

I swear, my consciousness left my body. I have been told that I was jumping up and down, squealing and clapping my hands, until Matt physically restrained me and said something along the lines of "chill out, Creeper. You're scaring all the kids."

I feel like I eventually managed to calm myself (Matt says that my face was also frighteningly beet-red), but for the rest of the evening--and fine, I am still doing it--every now and then I find myself helplessly saying, "Remember the kids? And the wands? And he said, "Expelliarmus?" And the wand FLEW OUT OF HIS HAND?!?" The rest of the family is all, "Yes, yes. Very nice. Super cute. Please stop, now."

But this incident made me realize that my children, although they both went through too-brief Harry Potter phases, have never asked to dress as Hogwarts students for Halloween. And I feel that if they never do, if I never get to spend my October crafting painfully-detailed Hogwarts uniforms for my children--and, fine, while I'm at it I might as well make uniforms for Matt and myself--then I will live the rest of my life with this regret on my soul.

And so that night, the children and I made an Unbreakable Vow that next year, they will dress as Hogwarts students, just for me.

I. Can't. WAIT!

I may start working on their costumes now, actually...

Work Plans for the Week of November 2, 2015: All the Arts!

Last week was a great school week, with a combination of wild-and-woolly hyper-elaborate projects, field trips, and just enough seat work to calm things down every now and then. Frankly, this week looks like much of the same!

Will is gearing up for another spelling bee season, so for memory work this week, Wordly Wise is on hiatus in favor of the Scripps 2015-2016 spelling list. Other memory work includes Mandarin vocabulary for Will, ballet practice for Syd, and cursive. Books of the Day include more books on World War 2, including a couple of living books, a couple of Magic Tree House fact finders, and one more book on volcanoes. I'll be refocusing on having Syd read aloud to me each day from her book, as last week's work on her History Fair project has made it clear to me that she needs my one-on-one attention to encourage correct pronunciation and complete comprehension.

And here's the rest of our week!

MONDAY: Math Mammoth is still fractions for Will and multi-digit multiplication for Syd--restful chapters, since they both feel pretty confident about the material. Our only other assignment for this day is having the kids rehearse their History Fair presentations several times, as today has both our regular volunteer gig and our homeschool History Fair! I'm really looking forward not only to my own children's presentations, but also to seeing the presentations of all the other children in our group. The kids always enjoy this, too, and it's amazing how much history content is covered, and how much children can learn when they're learning from other children.

TUESDAY: One of my favorite things about Girl Scouts is the ownership that the children have of their own fundraising money. Back in the summer, we held a Girl Scout meeting to let the children make proposals about ways to spend their Girl Scout cookie earnings; the children prepared presentations on their proposals, the other children asked thoughtful, supportive questions about each one, and then they all voted on what we should do. One of the winners was this day's field trip to a nearby children's museum, complete with the rock wall experience, and lunch spent at an indoor playground across the street from the museum. It'll be a fabulous time for all of the children, as well as sneaky STEM, creative, and gross motor enrichment. It's great to be a Girl Scout!

WEDNESDAY: The kids have a bunch of extracurriculars on this day--Magic Tree House Club, ballet class, AND LEGO Club!--so although we only have room in our school day for one additional assignment, I've made that assignment more elaborate than usual. Inspired by this hundred grid fraction art lesson, I designed my own for the children. It will incorporate symmetry and equivalent fractions, and, for Will, decimals, percentages, and simplifying fractions. It will also require close reading of the instructions, which is another thing that I want Syd to work on, and creative expression, which Will always needs more outlets for.

THURSDAY: We are in the end-game of our World War 2 unit! By this day, we'll have completed my main goals for the unit--interviewing a World War 2 veteran, visiting Pearl Harbor, and completing History Fair projects--so on this day, we'll review the entire war using Story of the World, and then all that really remains is the atom bomb, the aftermath, and a comprehensive review of the geography of the war.

There's no real academic reason for having the kids do more how-to-draw books on this day, other, of course, than what they clearly provide in terms of fine-motor skills and creative expression. The truth, though, is simply that although the children adore working from these books, they also never seem to choose any from our library shelves to do on their own. Assigning the books, then, is a sure-fire path to a happy morning.

FRIDAY: An organized rock collection is something that neither child has ever come to on her own, but it's something that I think they would both enjoy. Organizing and categorizing the rocks and coral that they collected on our Hawaii vacation, then, will be both useful and a good way for me to gauge their enthusiasm about perhaps continuing that work with the rest of their giant box of rocks. It could be the basis of an entire geology unit!

Although we've already had one Girl Scout activity this week, it also happens that both children have recently finished the badges they've been working on--Detective for Syd, and Comic Artist for Will. This means that it's time to get to work on a new badge! I do have a few more activities that I want the kids to do relating to each badge, but those are beyond the scope of the badges, themselves.

Syd is living and breathing the Nutcracker these days, of course, and has yet another practice on this day, but a few weeks ago I signed Will up for a series of girls-only podcasting workshops, and I'm thrilled at how she's taken to them. From what I can tell, the children involved in the workshop really have ownership of their work, and Will has displayed excellent teamwork, has composed original work to record for the podcast, has read the work of others ("I had to record one poem FOUR times," she told me, "because I had to work on my breathing and enunciation"), and has been learning how to use all the other audio equipment involved in this production.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Saturday has shaped up to be a day of ridiculousness this autumn. Don't tell the children, but it's 100% another school day! Syd has both her regular ballet class AND a Nutcracker rehearsal, and Will has classes in ice skating and Mandarin. Sunday, then, is our only day fully at home this week, and hopefully we'll get to spend it fully AT home. If nothing else, I need to work on some autumn landscaping, and Matt and the kids need to winterize the chicken coop!

As for me, if I want to buy the children Christmas gifts this year (and I do!), I really, really, REALLY need to spend this week adding seasonal items to my etsy shop, futzing with the SEO tags on a few of my listings, and otherwise getting my shop in shape for holiday shopping. I also, of course, have writing assignments to complete, some mending to do, and there is an absolutely massive bunch of overripe bananas on the kitchen counter that must become banana bread today, if not sooner.

It's going to be a wonderful week!

Hawaii with Kids: Luaus and Leis on the Big Island

Luaus are kind of cheezy, true, but they're one of those Hawaii tourist conventions that one simply must experience.

I mean, of course! You HAVE to go to a luau! No matter how you might try not to be just a dumb tourist during the rest of your vacation (Please, Friends--do not eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise), for one night, at least, you simply must own your status as tourist, drink many fruity drinks, eat roasted pig, and let yourself be entertained at a luau.

One evening, after a day of snorkeling at Two Step and earning Junior Ranger badges at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, my in-laws treated us to an evening at the Haleo Luau at the Sheraton in Kona. We were greeted with mai tais and shell leis, seated with a wonderful man from New Zealand and two sourpuss women from I know not where because they were the opposite of interested in communicating with us, and treated to a bevvy of pre-dinner activities such as Sharpie ink tattoos, Hawaiian body stamping, and a hula lesson. During our Hawaii study before the vacation we spent a lesson watching hula on YouTube (I highly recommend that you search for videos from the Merrie Monarch festival held each year in Hilo) and practicing it, ourselves, Will decided that she is a quick study with the hula, and she was SO down with dancing it here!

Seriously, how adorable is this kid?

I don't remember much about the feast, because I was very drunk, having mastered by then the technique of ordering a mai tai for each hand at the open bar, but I did manage to take some photos, so at least I made sure that everyone else was present and accounted for and smiling:

Will is smiling now, but later she experienced the most embarrassing moment in her young life when there was dancing, and her grandfather WANTED TO DANCE WITH HER. The horror on her face! The way that instead of simply refusing, she decided that the optimum defensive technique was to simply go boneless and slump over in her chair towards the ground! Even if I hadn't been super drunk, it would still have been the most hilarious thing ever. And yes, I often find my children's trauma amusing.

This man was pretty dang drunk, too.

This luau was indoors, unfortunately, because of the chance of rain, so the dancing was less picturesque on a conference room stage, although still lovely:

There were several numbers meant to represent the different dancing styles of the Polynesian Islands. I don't remember which one was the New Zealand dance, because I was drunk, but when those dancers came out we all excitedly turned to our table companion from New Zealand, as if this was something special just for him. He was a VERY patient man.

Fortunately, it didn't *actually* rain, so the final dance, the fire dance(!!!), could still take place outside:

It. Was. AWESOME!!!

(As if you can't tell that I thought so by the ridiculous number of photos that I took. I didn't take that many photos of my own children!)

As fun as the luau was, it was the best of luck on another day when we happened upon, on our way to a bookstore that Will had spotted and therefore simply must visit, a cultural event taking place in a nearby shopping center. In a central area, with many tables and a stage set up, a group of aunties were there to dance the hula and teach us how to make leis:

Can you tell that I was pretty excited?

Along with dancing a hula that, while not as showy as that at the luau, was undoubtedly far more authentic--

--the aunties helped us make leis--

--then tied them for us, put them around our necks, kissed our foreheads--

--and told us "aloha:"

Seriously, how adorable is this kid?

So there you have both the most touristy thing and the most authentic thing that you can do in Hawaii. In my opinion, for the best possible vacation?

Do them both!

Hawaii with Kids: Petroglyphs on the Big Island

For much of its history, until Christian missionaries came and transcribed one, the Hawaiian language didn't have a written component. It did, however, have a separate system of picture writing, and these petroglyphs are one of the topics that we studied in preparation for coming to Hawaii. I'm especially fond of the petroglyphs that we made ourselves:

 

The ones that we saw for real, however? Those were AMAZING. Here we are hiking out to the Puako Petroglyphs:

It's a flat area with approximately 3,000 petroglyphs, and is considered one of the best petroglyph sites in Hawaii:

Almost every one that we could see was a repetition of this same human figure:

Even eroded as they are by the centuries, they're still so impressive.

I was even more excited about seeing the petroglyph field at Volcanoes National Park, because I knew it would have these:

The pits are where a newborn's umbilical stump would be placed after it fell off. The circles around the pits might represent more babies, since researchers believe that families would come back to the same site over and over again, or it might represent something else entirely.

Either way, how beautiful, right?

This petroglyph field also contains examples of other iconic symbols, such as this turtle symbol that we saw all over Hawaii--

--and interesting examples of other symbols, such as this super tall human figure, surrounded by umbilical cord pits:

In our Hawaii studies, much of what we learned and experienced was designed to help the children connect with the native culture of Hawaii--Captain Cook and the missionaries and Hawaii's statehood are part of its history, yes, but its people are who I want the children to remember and understand. Facts are facts, but these petroglyphs are more. They're something inspirational, something to wonder about, something that, I hope, helps to bring that culture to life for the children.

It does for me!