A Very Weird Thanksgiving

Sure didn't seem like Thanksgiving this year! Weird thing number 1: I had to work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so we had our Thanksgiving on Tuesday.

I did the usual, cooked all day, and the dinner was great.

Weird thing number 2: Only three plates at the table. So, so weird! I really missed having more family to celebrate with us. I'm used to a big crowd.

My boys were anxiously awaiting the blessing so they could chow.

The cook.

Joey opted for a turkey leg. He pretty much cleaned it. He ate turkey and watergate salad (which he calls "watergreen salad") and that's it.

After dinner, the cook rested while the boys did dishes.

Weird thing number 3: It was about 77 degrees all day, sunny, warm, green and beautiful.

Language Barrier??

When I first got to Hawaii I wondered why I had a difficult time understanding some people. There are many Filipinos here and it took me a while to get used to their accent. The native Hawaiians also have their own dialect and it takes some getting-used-to also, especially for a red-neck girl like me. Here is an example. This is a copied-and-pasted, actual, unchanged in any way, ad from Craigslist (I did star out the phone number):


Nissan hardbody 1989 excab primer. project so no mo door panels,no rust truck runs cherry did oil change not too long ago..couple clicks too start um den your ready fo go.dis thing is bac tax das y da buggah ste cheap....so yup any question lemme know numba-808-***-8113

Any one else have trouble with that one??

Hungry? (Seriously This Time)

Since my last post was about some disgusting things to eat here, I decided to do a rebuttal. This post is about the beautiful foods that grow in our yard.
The first one is not food, but I couldn't resist posting a picture of a hybiscus. There are all different colors of hybiscus here, growing wild everywhere. This one grows by our patio.



At the end of October, I bought seeds for tomatoes and cucumbers and planted them in pots on our patio. It's amazing that they are growing in November, but here they are.

These berry bushes also grow wild. I don't know what they are or if they're edible. Anyone know? They sure are pretty.

Okay, on to the food. This is an avocado tree that grows in our yard. Because we live in a condo, it's first come, first served, but we have gotten quite a few avocados from it. They make the yummiest guacamole. I hate it when no one gets the avocados and they fall on the ground and the chickens eat them. There are wild chickens all over Kauai, but that's a subject for another post.

See the avocados up near the top?

In a previous post, I said there was an unidentified fruit growing in our yard. I have since found out that this is passion fruit. Joey and I picked a couple and cut them open and they smelled SO GOOD!! But they were too sour to eat and then I found out they are not ripe until they are yellow and wrinkled.

This is a banana tree in our yard. The tree puts out a big strange flower and then the little bananas start to grow at the base of the stem. Eventually the flower dies and the bananas keep growing (the bananas are right in the middle of the photo).

More bananas growing after losing the flower.

This is an orange tree. They taste SO sweet!

I have discovered that I love papayas. I bought some from the grocery store before I realized that's what was growing on this strange tree. I think it's weird how they grow from the trunk.

I love all the free food that grows in our yard!!!

Hungry?

DISCLAIMER: This blog post is not intended to be insulting to any group of people. I'm just showing my picky eating habits.

One interesting thing I've encountered since moving to Hawaii is the different foods that people here eat. Every day at work, there are strange foods on the table in the break room. The nice (and very tiny) little ladies who bring this food in always offer to share, but I usually say no. What would you say?

Today this was the fare. It's hard to tell what it is, but the gray things are little fish, complete with heads and tails. The white things are my favorite (NOT): onions. I have no idea what the red things were and I don't think I want to know.

If this doesn't suit your fancy, how about some chips? Sound good? Here are the chips that were on the table:

Hmmm... chips sound good, right? Well, you have to be sure to check out the fine print before you eat.

Have you ever heard of octopus flavored chips? No, I did not try them. They smelled even worse than Cool Ranch Doritos.

Joey's Having Fun in Hawaii

Now that we are a little more settled, we are really starting to love our new home. Right down the road from our house is this view:

The beach is down below.



If you're wondering what Joey's been doing, this is pretty much it:

Joey had to have a TB test and then wait for the results before they would let him attend school here, so here's a typical day for Joey and Mike, just killing time:

Coming out our front door:

This is again at the end of our road:

Looking down over the Wailua River:

Joey looking at Opaekaa Falls (the same Falls as in the title picture on my blog):

I accidently put this picture in twice and now I can't figure out how to take it out, so don't look at this one (hee hee).

This is Joey's school. The mountains behind the school are sooo beautiful. Today, because it has been raining a lot the last few days, we counted ten waterfalls coming down the mountains behind the school. If you look closely, you might be able to see a couple of them.

The first time Joey saw his new school and saw how beautiful it is, he said, "Wow! I feel like a snob now, going to such a pretty school!"


Joey misses his dog Hershey, but he does have new pets. Yesterday, he found a tiny frog in the swimming pool and caught it in a bucket.

It was a cute little thing, but it did not stay in the bucket and we can't find it now.

Tonight we ate guacamole made from avocados that we picked in our yard. Hawaiian avocados are much bigger than the kind we're used to, but they taste the same: YUMMY! We also have oranges and bananas growing in our yard, and lychees and some other as yet unidentified fruit.