Obon

Obon, pronouced Oh-Bone, is a buddhist tradition/event that is held to honor their ancestors. Different places celebrate this different ways. Here, they had a dancing festival for the celebration. THen they all went out and on the beach and wrote the names of their ancestors(or anyone that has passed on) on lantern. THey light the lanterns and let them go one the ocean....its beautiful.... Its dark at night and all you see are hundreds and hundreds of little lanterns floating out on the waves... it was great. Gabrielle has some great friends that live right on the beach at north shore. We had dinner next to the ocean and then walked down the beach to watch the festival...i cant wait for next year when JR can seen it (he was in austrailia...so dont feel too bad for him)....here are a few websites that talk about Obon followed by some pictures.... enjoy

The links:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/legacies/HI/200002880.html

http://www.champuru.com/08-2002/obon.html

Come on Catch Up...

So I noticed it's been about almost two months but this has been a very quick summer, however, it feels like summer year round for us. I finished most of my travels to San Diego and Australia now I leave for Tampa in September then Heather and I will take vacation back to Memphis in October. Well, San Diego was beautiful and Australia was COLD and rainy (its their winter of course). Also, in Australia, on the last night ate both animals on their country's seal.... the kangaroo and the emu, and they were GOOD. When I returned home we were able to have Heather's brothers stay with us for a week and we did Pearl Harbor, ATV ride through Kualoa Ranch, luau, Waeimae Bay where we saw about 30 dolphins and sea turtles,jumped of the rock, had Fumi's Shrimp which was awesome, off roadin and MORE!! So that's it in a nutshell, I know you just want the pictures...

San Diego

san_diego

Australia

australia

Off roadin

off_road

Sharks Cove....

Well we finally got out and did something and of course it's the day Hawaii gets the freakishly high wind warnings. Usually this time of year the Northshore gets calm and one of the worlds greatest snorkeling place is calm enough to enjoy, Sharks Cove. However, all this day we got there and the current was awful, we were pushed around like rag dolls. I got pushed back into the rocks, cringing at the thought of me getting pushed back into some coral that has sea urchins. After about 45 min. We decided to call it a day and come back when it would be more enjoyable. We found our disposable underwater camera that we bought when we first arrived and used the remaining pictures on it. The other pictures were from our first surf lesson and Kasey and Matt's kayak extravaganza.

The weather is now getting nice for us to enjoy the water activities (yes it does get chilly enough here to where you don't want to get in the water). So of course the more activities the events the more blogging we can do.

Life update: Heather is still at the Athena Clinic doing recovery and consultations for plastic surgery patients and I am getting more responsibilities at work since my partner is deploying to Afghanistan for 6 months. I don't mind because it makes the day go by faster and everyday there's something new. I just came back from a 10 day conference in D.C. and in two weeks I will be headed to the ESRI Conference in San Diego which I hear is always a good one to go to. about two weeks after that I head to Australia for a week to meet and greet some counterparts and then in September, off to Tampa for 2 weeks for training. Yes, Heather could go to any and all of these but she can't because her work doesn't give her vacation time until her first year, so maybe next time. So in between time we can try to relax....


Getting ready for our surf lesson.......

Our 3 mile kayak trip to Coconut Island (Where the filmed parts of Gilligan's Island) with Kasey and Matt...

Our surf instructor, guaranteed we would ride a way... we did on our first attempt.

Finally an update......

To those that are still following us THANK YOU. Sony no longer sells the cord for our camera so now we have to resort to a media card reader, it's a little more effort but where willing to do it if your willing to look at our blog....

Not much has happened in the 2 months. Heater had all 4 wisdom teeth taken out and I had one and a broken tooth extracted. That kept us on the couches for about a month. The biggest adventure since our last post has been the Manoa Falls Trail... it's a easy and pretty amazing hike thru the huge bamboo forest and other gigantic trees only to end at a couple 100 foot waterfall. We got to share this hike with our friends we made it more memorable. So whose going to join us next time????

We also took a last minute trip up to the Pali lookout which we will go back to take some clearer pictures...

So enjoy and check back with us....