Year: 2009

Friday we woke up to a beautiful Sunrise at Anini, Andy went on a hike with Randy while I babysat Tristan at Nadya’s filmset, the Hawaiian Village while his mom Kicka took photos at the set. Leilani and Tristan played well and wild together, and again I was amazed how she fits in on Kauai. Kicka took photos of the pair, I hope I’ll get some of them and post them here later…

While I was reading this to Leilani, she reminded me “Tristan smacked me on the head with a stick…”

Anyway – here is Andy’s hike above Honopu Valley:

Randy on the narrow ridge

Open Ceiling Cave (rare view)

‘Awa’awapuhi Valley (even rarer view)

Meanwhile, after a few hours at the set, Leilani and I went to Papaya’s for lunch. We went to our old house and she napped (as almost every day on Kauai) and then went back to the set and played with Tristan for a couple more hours.

We drove on to Saltpond, where I impressed a few locals (and myself) by setting up the tent in high winds. Our neighbors (who kept us well fed with apple bananas and Costco muffins) claimed that a few guys had tried to set up camp just a few minutes before I did and given up… Leilani helped very well, by sitting on various corners of the tent – my self-moving tent rock (and the other rocks I used were about her weight…). I used all the stakes we owned (usually for 2 tents) and arranged all our possessions in the tent so it would not fly off, we had our dinner (soup and fruit), worried a little about Andy as the sun was setting, and drove off to art night. Soon after we got hold of him on the cellphone and reunited:

Leilani took photos and played with Randy, we listened to Hawaiian music, Andy ate fish burritos, and we looked at art and had a good time.

We bought more stakes and the next morning Andy built the shade tent too, but obviously needs to learn how to set the self-timer…

Morning beachwalk

Later we drove to the Prince Kuhio festival in Poipu…

… and had a great lunch of shrimp and gelato (which made me very tired…)

Later we went back to Saltpond for a quick swim and change of clothes, and then to Hanapepe where we met our friends at the Makana concert: Aditi and Jaya

The orchid show:

The winds were so strong that we had to take down the shade tent, and Andy worried about the other tent… When it was dark, Andy and Leilani went to the bathroom and a rain started – when something came into the tent. It was too dark to see, but somehow I knew it was a cat and the cat somehow knew I was a nice person, so I felt around for it and it started purring… it stayed for the night (out of the rain) and we gave it a can of salmon for breakfast.

There was a beautiful sunrise again

The day stayed rainy – which means lots of rainbows…

Adam had given Leilani and audiobook of Lilo and Stitch, (did *not* make the parents happy at all) and Leilani absolutely loved it. She knows that Sandy has a lot of Disney movies and got to watch it a few days later (made the parents even unhappier), too. Hanapepe is where the movie is set:

Funny, I am reading this post half a year later, we are not friends anymore with either of them… wonder if that was the subconscious reason…

We went to glass beach and picked up a lot of beachglass:

Leilani built a glasscastle instead of a sandcastle for a change, she even made the door and window by herself:

Andy imitated Leilani’s feet pictures:

And we drove on towards Wailua, rainbow over Haupu

That’s a zoom into a rainbow in case you are wondering

Rainbow over Wailua beach

We went to visit Randy for Dinner.

Oh Kauai… we loved our vacation so much. I didn’t want to leave ever again, but the time went by way too fast. While we were there we made plans to move back, faster than the originally planned 18 months, but it doesn’t seem that realistic anymore. I still hope…

We had a rental car that Leilani – in the good Hawaiian custom of naming everything – called “Moonlight-Edelstein” (Edelstein is German for gemstone), it was kind of fitting for a greyish car – just the color most gemstones have in the moonlight.

We arrived, bought a few essentials (like a juicer, a rice cooker, and a cooler) and potluck food and went to Lydgate. The weather was not quite as expected, but still warmer than in California.

Leilani loves the chickens. She stalked them with the camera and I stalked her, because they went on the road:

Jaya came to the potluck, and the girls loved playing together, as if they’d never been apart.

We slept at our beloved old house, and found the former office quite spacious and nice as a base station. Kirk had cleaned the bathroom really nicely, but the plumbing took a while to figure out. We just hope that the warm weather will make all the advanced systems unnecessary and the solar water heater will work as great as it did for us in the last 3 years. The sunrises are better from the lanai upstairs, but still…

Leilani thought it was really funny too have a hatfoot, and insisted to have her picture taken. She also wanted to be photographed hugging an orange traffic cone, but I’ll spare you that photo.

We went to a kid’s dance event at Kukui Grove, if I get to it I’ll also post a video of Leilani dancing. We met a lot of friends there and decided to have a picnic lunch at Lydgate.

Friends

More Friends

Later we went on to Anini where we camped the next 2 nights

The first of the many beautiful rainbows we saw on this vacation:

We got up early, and saw the fishermen bringing in their catch. I’m not posting the highres because maybe I might be able to sell this photo…

Last weekend we visited Ella and her parents. The girls really liked each other, and played nicely, and the adults had a good time. Later we went to the park.

My great-grandma, who I called Nonna (italian for grandma) left a “Stammbuch” to my mom. This is a book, that friends and relatives wrote in, drew pictures and glued stickers. My mom emailed me a few photos, and since Nonna is Leilani’s great-great-grandma, it needs to go on the blog :-)

I don’t mean to get on people’s nerves with all the Leilani photos, but I think it is so interesting to look at the world from a completely different perspective.
Her masks and lobsterfaces

She took a whole series of photos in the hallway, unfortunately the light was bad, and the camera did not focus correctly for most.

Did not focus correctly here either, but the hand holding the flower shows what she intended to take the picture of. As I said – I don’t mean to get on people’s nerves, but in a few years I’ll think this photo is pretty interesting (or not :)

When we bought these flowers Leilani had promised to help plant them, but then she had more important things to do… but she still loves them

I have no idea how she got it to look so red, but that is the stairway to our “basement” (laundry room and exit to the yard)

Strange Perspective

Has nothing to do with Leilani’s art, just wanted to end the post with a photo everyone can enjoy.