Da Keiki Blog

“Ring! Ring! One moment please I have to answer the telephone.” Leilani picked up her imaginary cellphone and said Hello. Then she turned to me again “It’s Jaya!” To the telephone: “Oh no. Oh no! Okay. Bye Jaya.” She handed me the phone. “It is Jaya, the planet is broken!!! What can we do?” I finished 15 seconds worth of small talk and said good-bye to the imaginary Jaya. “What can we do?” Leilani asked again. I suggested: “Well, is it the climate or what is wrong with the planet?” Yes, it was the climate, global warming… (we were in the Sierra Club hut, and there might have been some morphogenetical field hanging around there). So we took a plane to the amazonian rain forest and talked people into stopping to cut down and burn trees, and helped them to make a living otherwise. Leilani had a lot of creative ideas, some of which were more and some that were less realistic. We continued to educate people to eat fewer cows and drink less milk to reduce the methane (that was my idea) and then then we talked about local foods and low emission cars.

I think then the audience got bored, or the climate got better, because the phone rang again. It was Raya this time “Oh no! Oh, no!” again. This time I didn’t get to talk, she said bye and hung up. Leilani turned to me. “The people are cutting down trees, they are making paper!”… so we flew there, and first thing we taught them to plant fast growing fibrous plants – flax and hemp – to make paper. And we – that was Leilani’s contribution – collected all the old paper and made new paper out of it too. That was an easier task than fixing the climate, because we got it all done, and Leilani instructed the people at the papermill to teach everyone else and to call us on the phone in case they forgot again hw to do it properly.

Ring, ring. Oh, no! This time people were picking all the flowers. We never found out what they wanted to do with the flowers, but we had huge amounts of wild flower seeds that we shared with them – to be planted in their yards. And we re-seeded the meadow, and then went back a while later to find the meadow beautiful, full of flowers and butterflies. Ella who so far had not really participated other than the flying to the different locations and being an energy plane, yelled “Butterflies – I’ll get my net” and was advised that butterflies could not be caught, and she was not allowed to bring her net. Since she did not believe Leilani I tried to put my authority in, but not very successful. Anyway, there were so many butterflies…

Ring, Ring. Oh no. Leilani turned to Ella. “The trains are broken” – trains are Ella’s greatest love. Ella forgot all about catching Leilani’s imagined butterflies. “Do you know where the trains are?” Ella sure did. We went outside and Leilani had 3 toolboxes ready. We went to fix the trains. (since the tools were imagined Leilani taught us how to say “drill drill drill” or “hammer hammer hammer” to indicate what we were doing.) After a while she brought paint and brushes: “Ella, here is blue, would you like to paint Thomas?” (I swear that this is true, Leilani freely gave up engine number One this time) “Here Sonja, you can paint Henry, and I paint James”. We painted a little while and then Ella noticed they had to be polished. We polished the trains, and the phone rang again.

Climbing the ladder to reach the top of the train

Painting the train

Train Tai Chi

“Oh, Hi uncle Serge! … “Yes”… “Yes” … “We are fixing everything.” Excited jumping. “Oh the volcano! … Yes” she turned to me and yelled: “Let’s go and see the volcano erupting! Talk to Uncle Serge!” and handed me the receiver. Although I had some profound questions for Serge I bit my tongue and just said “Hi, yes we are fixing climate and stuff… bye” and off we flew, to the Big Island, and we saw the beautiful eruptions, narrated by Leilani, and interrupted by Ella, who had another broken Volcano. Leilani flew a very small plane (she still remembers that Oma and Mommy and Daddy took turns a long time ago in a small plane to fly to see the molten Lava, and she didn’t get to go)

Leilani commented on the lava flowing all the way to the ocean. Which is pretty far from Pu’u O’O. The interruptions got louder, so we flew after the energy-plane Ella and visited the broken volcano, but we got bored soon, and so Leilani’s phone rang again

“Oh, no!” she turned to me. “They are killing all the fish” So we took a boat and went out onto the ocean- to be exact to the middle of the ocean – and talked to the people on the fishing boat. I unfortunately mentioned a turtle that had drowned in the nets, and regretted that a lot (especially at dinner time when Leilani refused to eat fish).

We tried to talk the fisherman into living on land and become farmers, but failed. So we went to the people and convinced them to eat more soy and less fish. I think we still need to work a little more on that.

After that we fixed a space station and visited Saturn and Neptune in a space ship, where we met Stitch and went to Kauai, but I already broke my record for my longest post ever, so I’ll stop…

Last Wednesday I drove down to San Jose to visit our new friends Komi, Seyon and Hewan (sorry about the spelling, will be fixed as soon as I know the correct one…)

Bubbles!!!!

Wild kids running off the apple juice energy

More photos by Sonja, captions by Andy:

By the time we finished packing and left the house on Friday, it was late. So we didn’t make it to the campground until 8:45 pm! It was full with the reservation system, but fortunately, the campground host found a cancellation. And the next day too, so we didn’t even have to move the tent.

It was barely light, and Leilani was sleeping in the car already, so I set up the tent with a flashlight. It’s a walk-in campground, so I had to make several trips to the car to get everything.

The next day, Saturday, was beautiful, so we headed to Mt Tam to hike the Steep Ravine and Dipsea trails up from Hwy 1. That side still gets lots of moisture, so there were still flowers in many places. Leilani was really good at hiking and did a lot of uphill, including a big set of stairs out of the ravine. It helps that Nemo is a long story, and as long as she hikes, we tell the story, and vice versa.

But there was sunshine on the trail too, and we weren’t the only ones out enjoying it. This is a yellow bellied racer, according to this cool website for identifying snakes:

I didn’t even get to set a bad example and cross this tree bridge, Leilani and Sonja did it together without me.

After climbing out of the forest, we were on a nice ridge with views of the ocean:

We cut the hike short because I mentioned going to the beach, and Leilani immediately wanted to do that, and we didn’t want it to get too cold. So we drove down to Stinson Beach and fed Leilani fish and chips then went to the beach. Right across the street was a small playground, so we spent time there too. We walked up and down the beach, and since it was the end of the day, we found lots of lost sand toys. I guess we forgot to take pictures…

Sunday was father’s day, and Leilani gave me a great scrapbook that she made with all her own photos and artwork. It is really cool, especially since Leilani made really nicely decorated pages all by herself–even the one with dinosaurs. We also fooled around at the campground before we packed it all up:

Then we did a short hike around the sleeping turtle hill nearby. It’s a very pretty area, right next to the bay. The orange color in the flat marshy areas is some sort of parasite weed that seems to feed on the salt-tolerant plants.

It was harder to make Leilani walk on the second day, but here’s one part where she did walk:

After the short hike, we went to the China Camp itself, a fishing village where Chinese immigrants caught and processed shrimp to export back to China in the 1890’s-1930’s. The little shacks reminded me of Kaua’i style cottages. We had a picnic there and Leilani played on the beach again. We left mid-afternoon to beat the traffic home.

That was a good idea because we got home quickly, put away the camping equipment, and still had time for another hike! I got to pick, so we went to Junipero Serra County Park, the one right in San Bruno. We hiked to the top of the hill and back down to the San Bruno City park that it connects to. Leilani was still full of energy so I ran around the playground (literally) with her for almost 30 minutes.

Leilani honors her Hawaiian roots. She’d like to learn to hula.

With Ella

Cherry Earrings!!!!

Leilani’s yoga teacher let’s them meditate with animals on their heads. I should try that too for a change…

Leilani drew a picture of Andy. She also made him a scrapbook for father’s day, I’ll have to take pictures of it some other day.

Ray visited, and got his website done too: Coaching Services

(Photos by Sonja, captions by Andy)

On June 13th, we had a Summer Party for Leilani. The private purpose was to make up for the lack of birthday party for her in December, just after we moved and before she knew the children at school.

But it was also meant as a way to have an end-of-the-school-year celebration with her friends from the old school, the ones who graduated and the ones she wouldn’t see because we already knew she was changing schools. Leilani picked the theme of Lilo and Stitch, which we conveniently turned into a general Hawaiian theme for the decorations. The location was the Coyote Point Museum, where else?

Unfortunately, Lilo and Stitch is an “old” Disney movie that doesn’t have a princess, so Sonja had to order the out-of-stock decorations at e-Bay. She also made some decorations herself as seen on the Leilani and Stitch post. All in all, Sonja spent a lot of time getting ready, with Leilani only helping a bit when shopping for decorations.

Anyways, there was the usual chips and pizza to eat, but lots of vegetables and fruit too.

The plastic leis were not very popular with the kids, none of them wore theirs for more than a minute. But the fancy cocktail straws were the biggest hit:

Leilani picked her favorite cake: Black Forest from Sheng Kee bakery. Chocolate ice cream, too! Not to mention the cupcakes and chocolate cookies that other Moms brought.

The loot bags were a big hit, here the kids are playing with the bubbles. The weather was great, so the kids ended up playing outside a lot, instead of running through the museum (later they did watch the animal presentation, which gave the parents time to clean up).

Leilani and Seyon had a great time bopping the balloons around:

Sonja got to wear her Hawaiian dress, too:

Leilani always gives kisses along with hugs, but Seyon seems to get more kisses:

Aye Captain, I’m giving it all she’s got, she can’t take any more dilithium crystals or she’ll fall apart (the parents got to see the Star Trek movie recently, in a real theatre, without Leilani).

Cupcakes should be controlled substances:

After the party was over, Seyon stayed to play with Leilani all afternoon, to their shared delight. They started by running all through the museum:

Visiting the animals:

And then we went to the San Bruno park together, where they ran around some more:

And back at home, they opened a few presents that Leilani received:

It was a wonderful day for Leilani, and fortunately she had enough activity to burn off all the sweets.