My mom, Audrey, and Bill just visited us on Maui for two weeks and we had a wonderful time together. It is a very restful and rejuvenating time when they are here. They are in good health and still love traveling. My dad, Bob, and Jane are also in good health in Ohio and enjoy car travel. I expect I will visit in the spring.

We are fortunate to have Neil’s mom, Jean, and her husband Morley living in the house right next to us. They enjoy the Maui climate and we can share sunsets together.

We were able to visit both of Neil’s daughters this past year. We visited Ari in Tucson in February where she was working on her nursing degree and she and her friend Eric showed us around the area. Ari completed her degree in August and is now an RN. After a difficult job search in a competitive market (they all want someone with at least a year of experience) she took a job at a hospital in Santa Maria, California in the telemetry department. After one year there she hopes to transfer into labor and delivery which is where she really wants to be. I previously posted photos of our visit with Mailea and Greg in June.

We look forward to sharing the holidays with our local family and friends, feasting and celebrating. And we will think of all of you in your own celebrations and sharing the joy of this time of year.

On the website, click on any photo in the gallery to view them larger and with commentary. Use the arrow keys to move through the rest of the gallery. Photos by Neil.

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At the beginning of the month, Neil asked “How would you like an aquarium for your birthday?” I was leery but a few hours later he found a fully operational 55 gallon fresh water aquarium from someone moving to the mainland and by the end of that same day it is was sitting on the lanai! It is perched up so we can see both the aquarium as well as the ocean from our computer desks. We sit outside on the couch each morning with our tea and watch the fish enjoy their breakfast. The real gift is that he does all the maintenance! (That’s no small thing since it sits outside and gets a few hours of direct sunshine each day.) Neil posted some videos of the fish at different times of the day on youtube. New Aquarium 05 – Evening Feeding is link to one of them and you can view any of the others from there.

Tuesday, we drove up country to Ulupalakua for the winery tour, wine tasting, and picnic lunch. My great nephew, Quentin, turned 11 that day, so on the way home we visited him at his after-school boys and girls club to have him open his presents. Neil and I sat with him outside with the present pile from the grand and great-grandparents plus his dad and ours. Soon there was a whole group gathered around him to watch him and wish him happy birthday. He was loving being the center of attention as well as getting all the gifts. He had a cake Saturday night at his birthday sleepover and was getting another cake birthday night with mom and Grandma Marjorie, so I just brought some birthday cookies thinking he could share with some friends. I had to break them in half so make enough to go around for the whole group!

Since I don’t really need things, Neil has spent the month pampering me with delicious dinners and special chores. On my birthday, he beautifully detailed the inside and out of our convertible. He said he did it on my actual day because that was the only way he could make sure I didn’t come out to help   It really shines! Well speaking of things, we have gotten a few new technology items this month that are taking time to learn. We needed a new camera in time for birthday photos and got a new Sony Cyber-shot to replace our old broken one. Plus our phone contract was up, so now we both have new phones to learn. And my real treat was getting a new Android tablet. It arrived the day before my birthday and I only had it on twice. I can now spend the rest of my birthday month playing with it.

My birthday morning, Neil put a candle in my scone and we had our tea on the lanai with the fishes. We drove south for the day visiting several beaches and just enjoying our Maui home. We shared another picnic on Makena Beach and played in the sand. For dinner we went to one of our favorites, Monsoon India, and enjoyed the sunset as well as the food. Oh, and the day wasn’t complete until we made a stop at Ono Gelato for birthday ice cream!

Thank you for all your love and wishes. What a special birthday!

Sophie, his sister, is now living in Oregon with her dad and came to Maui for a month visit this summer. Mother Vajra and brother Quentin were so excited about her being here with them for a month. They Skype with her a few times a week but not that same as having her here. Sophie turned 8 years old July 19 right after she arrived and they had a big party for her. Neil and I were able to attend to enjoy pizza and archery and watch the kids loving the pool. I also enjoyed spending every Friday with Quentin and Sophie while she was here. Even got to see the Smurf movie

Every year, the elementary schools in Hawaii celebrate May Day with a Hawaiian pageant and production including dances from all the classes. Quentin’s being in the 5^th grade and the highest grade in the school performed with his class for the finale dance. He did a great job. He also had a graduation banquet and dance the last day of school! Parents got to come at the beginning to take photos but then left to allow the kids to have their party time supervised by the teachers. Quentin reported to me that he is a great dancer and had a good time!

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I found another great tip if you use Google Reader: Mixing Google Reader and Live Bookmarks. This page describes how you can set up a Live Bookmark to point at your Google Reader feed list without having to login to Google. The article points out the plus is a quick look at what’s new in your Reader; the negative is it doesn’t mark the items as read in Google Reader as you read because you aren’t logged. I have just read a good review of NewsBlur so I am going to take a look at it as a reader alternative.

We enjoy the vibrant green of our back garden under the spreading branches of our favorite mango tree. It is filled with golden torch heliconia, ferns, blue ginger, and indian head ginger bushes. Farther back are two lilikoi (passion fruit) plants with vines creating a canopy where they can reach more sun. Fortunately it’s a low maintenance garden requiring occasional weeding and raking out the fallen mango leaves!

I am proud that the red ginger flowers have done so well out the kitchen window. And in addition to the flowers, we enjoy watching the numerous gekos and anole lizards sunning themselves and racing after insects. I can’t believe how the heliconia have taken off. Not only have they grown tall and colorful, they have spread to dominate the back half of the garden and continue to try to spread out into the small path. Every few weeks I need to dig out the starts in the path and work to find a place to replant them in the contained border.  Plus I cut out the stocks that have finished with their blooms and are starting to turn brown. The purple flower Mexican Petunia plants are also in continual flower. They open new blossoms every morning and the wind blows them off every afternoon.

We have a ficus tree that has grown so huge and spread its branches so wide you would think it wants to be the Lahaina banyan tree. And we are love having so many coconuts and palm trees on the property. But we have to be careful about where we park as sometimes the coconuts have grown pretty large and can do some real damage to a car or a head!

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Half the tree is picked from our driveway and requires the longest extension of the picking pole. The tree is now so tall that even with the extension, some are out of reach and we have to let gravity do the work (they drop when ripe.) The other half of the tree can be picked from the roof allowing some hand picking but even up there the longest extension is not always enough. Neil is diligent every morning going up to the roof to pick the mangoes that are ready. (Sometimes I go up and help!) If he waits too long, the wind picks up and brings them down producing bruised and smashed mangoes. Neil has developed quite the technique, as you can imagine, for identifying the mangoes ready to be picked, positioning them in the basket just so and then upward pressure to let them “release” from the tree and into the basket. He has also discovered another day or two with just a little afternoon sun on the picked mangoes brings out a little more of the natural sweetness in their flavor. Oh yum!

Each morning the perfect mangoes come down for our enjoyment or for sharing. Before sharing, however, I had to fill our freezer with baggies of frozen mangoes for my winter smoothies (maybe 50 pounds or so!). Ah yes, we have yet another finely tuned system for “processing” mangoes. We can wash, cut, scoop, juice, bag, and stack about 4 dozen mangoes in about 45 minutes. I did leave just a little room for a few other frozen items!

Fortunately, the fruit of the mango tree ripens at different intervals allowing us months of fresh mango savoring. Sadly the season is almost at an end. Neil thinks maybe another week of picking as the tree finishes this year’s cycle. Summer season is usually mid-May to mid-September. Depending on the whims of the trees, we sometimes get a winter season of fresh mangoes for a few months.

We continue to enjoy our island home and all the beauty and abundance that it gives up.

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The following day was spent in Seattle exploring the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and Carl S. English, Jr., Botanical Garden, followed by lunch at Pho Than, for Vietnamese soup with Chessa, a friend of Mailea’s. Luckily, we didn’t stay full for long because we had a fantastic salmon dinner with our friends Helene and Timothy that night.

Setting out for Oregon, we stopped several times off of I90 in Washington searching out waterfalls. We took a gentle but lush forested hike along the creek to Denny Falls. It was a lovely cloudy drippy interlude from dry car travel. We also had a car picnic while parked at an old growth forest with heavy drippy mist coming down all around us; typical Washington weather. Any longer and we would have put down roots and become part of the forest ourselves. We drove through the town of Roslyn, Washington, made famous as the location where much of the TV show Northern Exposure was filmed (Yes, Northern Exposure was supposed to be about an Alaskan community.) The camel painting is still on the side of Roslyn Café.

Greg and Trinity, aka Lucy the dog, had the house all ready for us. Oliver and Lela, the cats, tolerate our presence after smelling everything we brought in the house. Lela took full advantage of the extra laps to sit in and soaked up lots of loving attention. We feasted each night of our visit with Mailea; particularly memorable were the excellent salmon sushi, the incredible brined roast turkey from the Neil/Greg chef team, blueberry pie and cobbler made from fresh pints of berries, and Neil’s fresh rhubarb sauce.

Our previous visit in February was just too cold outside for us to explore much beyond La Grande. This time we set off to see some of the wonders of Oregon Mailea and Greg have been treasuring. They love to mountain bike and we went with them to one of their favorite spots where we hiked a bit while they rode. On Saturday, we drove to Wallowa Lake via the town of Joseph. The area is so picturesque that it has become a little resort alpine village in the middle of Oregon. After our lakeside lunch, Greg, Mailea, and Trinity took off for a walk to Lower Adams Creek falls while Neil and I took the gondola ride to the top of Mount Howard. (We had to split up because in their foolishness, the gondola people do not allow people who happen to be in dog bodies to ride in their cars. In solidarity, Neil stuck his head out the window pretty much the whole way up and down. No barking or slobbering, though. He mostly just used his opposable thumbs to operate the camera.) At the top, we walked over the still snow covered trails to the rocky overlook to take in the view of Eagle Cap Wilderness area and its rugged peaks.

Back in the La Grande vicinity, yet another afternoon of exploration took us to the top of Mount Emily which overlooks La Grande and the surrounding valley. Sadly, our trip was finally coming to an end on July Fourth when Mailea and Greg drove us to Pasco Airport to pick up a one-way rental car to drive back to Seattle. We returned for one last evening with Helene, Timothy, Shane, and Talia before our early morning flight to Maui. Thus ended a wonderful event filled three weeks of family, friends, sights, feasting, and laughter.

Photos and commentary by Neil. 

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In Seattle, we stayed with our friends Helene, Timothy, Shane, and Talia. Hard to believe with all the photos taken, we didn’t get a family photo of them but I have one from a few years ago when they visited us in Hawaii. Shane and Talia were great tour guides for our shopping expedition plus took us on a great hike in Carkeek Park. They also introduced us to a delicious Indian restaurant in Ballard.

We had a lovely visit and excellent dinner with our friends Barbara and William. They have recently added onto their house and we were able to see Mount Rainier from their balcony on the clear Seattle evening.

Mailea came up from Oregon to drive us back. We planned several days touring Washington together before reaching La Grande, Oregon. While still on Maui, Neil had researched hot springs and waterfalls in Washington and printed lots of maps, directions, and descriptions. Helene and Timothy hosted us for several more nights and provided us excellent local knowledge as we headed out for day trips. One trip was to Scenic Hot Springs near Stevens Pass in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We highly recommend it a as a medium strenuous hike and wonderful soaking spot. We also recommend you carefully read the directions (sent after you pay your reservation fee) that indicate the hike actually starts from the option two parking spot. We hiked several extra miles before figuring out our error. It made for a long day and we were very happy for the soak by the time we arrived at the pools.

Photos and commentary by Neil.

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We departed Skagway Thursday evening sailing through the Lynn Canal and the Chatham Strait surrounded by a gorgeous sunset reflecting off the clouds and granite mountain peaks. We had two days at open sea as we headed back toward Seattle and this was the first time I felt the slightest roll of the ship. We got in one more formal night along with a Captain’s cocktail reception (as we were traveling with the Captain’s Gold Circle frequent cruiser members Audrey and Bill.) The culinary demonstration Friday included a tour of just one of the many shiny stainless steel kitchens. Probably one of the most memorable tastes we had aboard was an aperitif: lime sherbet infused with strawberry and thyme! An incredibly tantalizing experience with the tart, then sweet, and just the hint of thyme revealed at the end. I am still trying to reproduce it in my Vitamix!

 As we traveled into the Juan de Fuca Strait between Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula, we saw a variety of marine life from orcas to humpback whale pods. Victoria, Canada, was our stop in a “foreign port” and sadly we only had a few evening hours here.  We watched the docking process with the evening light and Neil spotted an eagle that sat perched right on top of the huge parking lot lights. And by moving to the far end of the observation deck, Neil was able to frame it against the green copper dome of the Capital Building.

Somehow, during our two days at sea, the camera received a major dent. We still can’t figure out when but the camera now vibrates every time the lens cover is open. (Neil has since taken the camera apart, removing one by one the tiny printed circuit boards and lens assembly, and repaired the dented casing but once back together, it still vibrates. We are looking into replacement cameras.) Even on the gorilla tripod, the vibration shows through on the night exposures. We decided to include a few of the blurry night shots of Victoria because it was so pretty with all the lights haloing the buildings and harbor.