Home for a little while

Tammy and I loved visiting family in Tacoma and Tucson, but now we are thrilled to be back home in Hawaii until the end of August.  We have been here a little over a week, mostly enjoying the weather and relaxing with my dad.  Here are a few highlights from our holiday so far:

Here is a photo of my dad on the beach in Kaneohe playing with a new friend.  

We did a tour of I'olani Palace last week and it was really fun.  I hadn't been there since 2002, so most of the tour felt brand new.  We managed to catch a free Kama'aina day, so the price was just about right.  This was the King's bed.  A bit smaller than you would imagine for a royal bed, but it looked comfortable enough.  

We also headed up to Puu Ualakaa Park on Tantalus for some awesome views of town.  

Tammy and I headed up to the Hale'iwa Art Festival last Saturday to see what was new in the local art scene and to hear some live music.  The Hawaii Celtic Drums and Pipes group opened with some great Celtic music, but mostly I enjoyed this woman's bagpipe set-up.  She had taxidermic goat's head bling on her pipes.  Very cool.  After getting over the goat head, we checked out some art and my favorite artist of the day was Colin Redican.

http://www.colinredicanart.com/

He does really dramatic scenes with ahi and other local marine life.  If I had a big wall and a way to travel with a large masterpiece, I would be $1200 poorer right now.  

Supporting a new brewery on island, not my scene, but drinkable.  

We headed down to Waikiki on Sunday for the Honolulu Ukulele festival and some people watching.  We saw ukulele groups from Korea, Australia, Japan, and Hawaii.  An Australian group did a really eerie cover of "Under the Milky Way" which I can't find online, but I would love to listen to again.  The beach was packed and the surf was 1-2 feet, so plenty of surfers were out vying for waves.  I miss walking around and hearing all of the different languages being spoken around Waikiki and seeing all of the people having a blast on their holidays.  

No trip to town would be complete without my favorite local grinds, South Shore Grill's caprese sandwich.  Macadamia nut pesto, fresh mozz, and grilled ciabatta.  This is certainly not on the menu in Iraq.  Trying my hardest to indulge in all of the food that doesn't get imported to the Middle East.  Loving every bite.

RT