Hawaii with my mom and dad

We had a great week with my parents in Kauai last month. Here's me sitting on a rock on Hanakapiai Beach, feeling good about having made it there, and eating my rambutans...
It's only a 2-mile hike to that spot on the Kalalau Trail, but it was rocky and steep and muddy, so it took a couple hours. (We also stopped a lot to take pictures, so maybe it would've taken us an hour and a half if we hadn't.) My mom and dad watched the boys so Terry and I could do this on our own, and when we got back, they had sorted out all the shells and bits of coral they had collected from the various beaches, and had given them all names, like "giraffe" and "spaceship." Yeah, Grandma rocks...

But back to the funny looking fruit. Rambutans are the size of nectarines, and they have soft red hairy rinds that you can pull apart with your fingers (though it wasn't quite as easy as tearing a clementine open, and sometimes I had to use my teeth to get it started). The flesh inside tastes like a white grape. OK, more shots from the trail:


view of the Na Pali Coast
On most days we would go to one beach or another. I loved them all but the best one, I think, was in Poipu, on the south shore, the warm and sunny side of Kauai.

My camera is pointed east in the shot below; in the background is Brennecke beach, where it was safe enough to body surf.

These are my parents. Aren't they cute?
That's the Kilauea lighthouse behind them. The bird preserve was closed when we stopped by (for President's Day, of all the nerve) but there were whales.


My Dad checking out Waimea Canyon.


There's a free hula show every Wednesday at 5pm at the Coconut Marketplace in Kapa'a, on the east side of the island.


While waiting for the big luau show to begin -- on Friday night we went to the Smith Family Garden Luau, in Wailea -- the kids took turns jumping off the stage while I experimented with the no-flash setting on my camera.

It was a great show, the highlight being the guy in a grass skirt twirling a flaming baton...