Dinner at our house this Saturday, 6 pm!

Mom and Dad:  Lomi lomi salmon, laulau (made from scratch!), roll your own sushi, potato salad

Jr and Catherine: Asian Manoa noodles

Crystal: Poi

Me and Jonathan:  pulehu beef, green beans, drinks

Aunty Helen:  Mochiko chicken, chips and dip

China’s:  Dessert

Julie and Grant:  Activity, Gingerbread house decorations

Dad’s also bringing his shave ice maker to make bao bing.   Delicious!

It’s been really hot and muggy in Hawaii this year, but to beat the heat, we use our ice cream maker much more frequently.

My personal favorites are lime-lychee and vanilla mint chip, but the kids prefer the make-your-own-sunday dessert bar with plain vanilla ice cream.

A selection of my favorite pictures of the boys over the last month…

King Rafa on his pillow thrown.  He’s such a cute puppy.

I’m not sure why we took this picture, or why Jonathan was carrying both kids at the same time, but I thought it was pretty funny.  I especially love Elton’s wary expression!

Elton and Rafa enjoying a fine day at the park.

A video from our dinner last weekend.  Happy Birthday to Janell and me!

I’m getting old!   Aunty Helen told me: “Wow, you’re getting almost as old as me!”

First with the not so great news:  Dad’s cancer has spread to his brain, and he started radiation treatment and high dose steroids last week Friday.   Dad has been getting a little more clumsy, so his oncologist did an MRI on Thursday.   According to the radiologist, Dad’s tumor was “sizeable” with a lot of swelling, and the swelling was pushing his brain.    Dad can’t drive because the tumor is compressing his visual axis, so Aunty is picking up the kids from school, and Julie, Grant, Jonathan and I make sure that dad and mom get to their appointments.    Overall, I’m sad that the tumor grew so quickly (he just had a clean MRI 6 months ago), but happy that dad is already feeling better with his radiation treatments.

Next, some very sad news:  Cousin Thor went to basset hound heaven this morning.  He was Rafa’s BFF/ partner in crime and we’ll miss him.

I apologize for the paucity of posts recently-  I had issues with my photo downloader/ card reader, but the problem is now solved, and I’ll be updating the blog more regularly.  Keep a lookout for a ton of backlogged posts– I just downloaded 200 pictures, so I’m sure that there will be a mini-flood of blog posts in the near future.

Tonight, we went over to Julie and Grants for our annual family pumpkin carving. Here’s a picture of Jarrin with his pumpkin.  Pumpkin carving is always messy and the seeds and pumpkin guts end up everywhere.  Check out the seed on Jarrin’s eyebrow.

For Halloween, I decided to dress the kids up in costume.  Elton didn’t like his t-shirt, but Rafa totally dug his lady bug outfit.

I think Rafi and Elton love family dinners because of all of the extra food they get, especially from Grandma and Grandpa.  Here’s a picture of Rafi and Elton munching on the rest of mom’s dessert.  I literally caught the munchkins licking off of mom’s plate!

Pictures of the family at our carving table …

And pictures of our family posing with our finished products…

I love how Aunty always makes perfect circles and such dainty pumpkins!

Jonathan sky diving in 2003 after graduating with his masters in Engineering from Berkeley.  At the time,  I did not think this was a smart thing to do.    I still don’t.   But he had a good time, and had no significant injuries  (AKA he did not hit the ground without a chute, so I am thankful).

Jonathan entered the Play for the Cure, Charity Tennis match this weekend.  It was a benefit for the Susan G. Komen for the cure fund.   Jonathan’s team  played excllently and he won their division and got a nifty trophy!

Of other oncologic topics, Dad completed his fourth round of chemo last week.  He took a CT scan on Friday to evaluate the tumor growth, and we got great news yesterday from Dr. Okazaki, Dad’s oncologist.  Dad’s tumors responded well to chemo, and are now shrunken down and scarred.  This means no chemo during the holidays!  He’ll still need to go in every three months for screening CT scans, but for now, no more daily trips to the outpatient treatment center, no more port-a-cath pokes and blood draws, and no more aweful nausea inducing, taste changing, appetite supressing, body weaking chemo!  Yeah!

Congratulations Jonathan! Jonathan got a new part time job as an assistant tennis pro at the Oahu Club!  He coaches the little kids and will run the family tennis night.  Yeah!

Bye bye bugs and hair lint.  Jonathan and I spent our Saturday spraying ant killer around our house and snaking our drains.  We now have a relatively bug free home and clear drains.  Thanks mom and dad for watching the puppies while we sprayed chemicals around our home.

Our green pool. Jonathan and I have been batteling our green pool for the last few months.  We’re now treating the pool with “algecide”.  The pool is now blue, but still a lille murkey.  Definitely not fit to swim yet, but hopefully we’ll get it clean sometime soon.  I’ll put up pictures later. 

Happy Friday!  Jonathan, dad and I spent the day (OK, more like Jonathan and Dad), building  a new fence.  Our old one was ugly, old, green, and fell over a month or so ago.   Unfortunately, the fence partitioned our house from our neighbors, and we caught Elton running around in the neighbors yard.  In fear of our neighbors calling animal control (very likely, since they don’t talk to us much), we decided that it was time to finally fix the fence.

Breaking down the remnants of the green monster.

Dad drilled the base board into the concrete and built a frame while mom and I cleaned up the yard.   We filled our green bin and pruned our palm trees.

Elton and Rafa waited semi-patiently inside the house.

and Jonathan and I (with extensive help from dad- thanks!) screwed in a vinyl lattice….

and painted the frame.  (Elton got a little paint on him!)