Month: September 2010

Spring and Summer 2010

I put all unpublished clips March-September into a short movie… not that short, it’s 10 minutes.

Leilani Movie Database

Leilani, Sonja, and Grandma went to the wax museum at Fisherman’s Wharf last week (they had “free” tickets).

Sonja shielded Leilani from the worst parts, and in the end Leilani loved it, especially the movie scenes, for example Dorothy in the land of Oz. But Leilani doesn’t have all the cultural background yet, and she didn’t remember all the details because she only heard them once:

Blowing Away With the Wind – a lady dressed in fancy, big, beautiful dress that puffed over her feet, and a man with a white shirt in front of a table and trees.

Titanium – about a boat that sinks

Fire in San Bruno

Photo Credits: Brant Ward / The Chronicle

Yes, we are OK, our house is on the other side of town… we just came back from San Francisco (Bad Mommy! What about Leilani’s bed time! But that’s another post) and saw the fire on the road.
Scary though… we can smell the smoke.

Excerpt from the article on SFGate.com
(09-09) 22:03 PDT SAN BRUNO — With a thunderous roar heard for miles, a natural gas line explosion ripped through a San Bruno neighborhood shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, sending up a geyser of fire, critically burning residents and igniting a blaze that gobbled up more than a dozen houses.

The wind-whipped blaze jumped from structure to structure in the area near Skyline Boulevard and Sneath Lane, west of Interstate 280, raging unabated for almost an hour as emergency crews rushed in, residents cleared out, and ambulance sirens filled the air.

Anniversary

Andy and I have been married for 6 years!

The images link to more photos.

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/03_before_ceremony/AndySonja.jpg

Tuesday, August 31st 2004 we set up. Andy, Klaus, Ruwan and Thelan helped John to set up the reception tents at the Taro patch. Inge, Trude, Kiron and Sonja cleaned up at Kalihiwai beach.
To see more click on the image…

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/00_wedding_setup/AndyLadder-sm.jpg

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/01_party_before/kayaks.jpg

We started the celebration on Wednesday, September 1st 2004. In the morning we hiked NouNou, the “Sleeping Giant” hill nearby, and picked Ti leaves that we later made into leis for the wedding guests. In the afternoon Andy and the guys went kayaking, while Sonja and the gals had a lei making class.
In the evening we had a pizza party at our house and also the most beautiful sunset rainbow.
To see more click on the image above…

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/03_before_ceremony/Alandra_1025am.jpg

The morning of the wedding day a big rain cleared the atmosphere, cleansed
the island, and the rest of the day was beautiful, warm, sunshine, light
breeze, just perfect weather. Before the ceremony we had music and hula at
the beach.

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/04_ceremony/037_Water_Ritual.jpg

In the beginning Antion blew the conch shell, then Serge Kahili King held a deeply meaningful and moving ceremony. We had a Hawaiian water ritual and a lei exchange in addition to the exchange of rings.

After the ceremony many pictures were taken and many hugs and good wishes received. We also took a short break at the ocean.

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/05_after_ceremony/FriendsGroup4.jpg

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/02_guests/305_Seated_Group.jpg

More Photos of our guests. Click on the image…

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/06_start_reception_hula/hula_and_guests.jpg

The reception was held at the Taro Patch in Anahola. Many more posed pictures, and beautiful Hula and Hawaiian music started this part of the
celebration.

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/07_food_cake/Cake1.jpg

The reception continued with a great lunch from the Blossoming Lotus, the local vegan restaurant, cutting of the cake and Ruwan’s speech.

Finally, we planted a tree, a breadfruit tree, Ulu. The Ulu was brought to Hawaii by the Polynesians. To us it represents, among many other
things, abundance, Hawaiian culture, giving back to the earth, and also connections, within and between.

http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/08_tree_planting/144_Local_John_Overseeing.jpg
http://simplify-your-life.com/wedding/photos/09_after_wedding/kokee_fog-sm.jpg

Friday we had a picnic in Kokee, but we got fogged and rained out and luckily escaped to Polihale, where we relaxed and camped the next 2 days.
We ended the week of celebration by tossing our lei flowers into the Waimea River, a good wish attached to each of them (Thank you Lisa for the good idea).

As Leilani said “we were firing a fest” (this quote will be a lot more funny if you are fluent in German and English…, feiern in German means celebrate, and sounds a lot like English fire-n, a fest is a party or celebration)