Pineapple

Romney and I helped get Grandma's house ready to be rented. Along the side of the house was this cute baby pineapple growing in a flowerbed. I guess the downstairs renters planted it a while ago. This is for those of you who have never seen a growing pineapple.

Monkey Business

I went to Bishop Museum a while ago for a meeting with some of the staff. After the meeting, we were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the vertebrate and invertebrate collections. Here's one of the most interesting animals I saw preserved in a jar.



Here's a bit of a closer look.

Hawaii loves Spam

I must have been one of the very few mainlanders that was raised eating spam. Of course, it was just cut into slices and served as a cold side dish, which is very different than Hawaii. As for Hawaii, the spam capitol of the world, I think it started with World War II. Food was rationed and spam was easily obtained and had a long shelf life. It became a staple in the diet here. Anyway, it's usually fried and then put in stir fry or made into rice sandwiches called Spam Musubi. Well, here's another interesting concoction regarding spam. (Macadamia nuts are another staple in Hawaii. Just combining the two I guess.)

Laie Hawaii Temple Cultural Celebration

The Laie Hawaii Temple recently had major remodeling done to it. It closed for two years and is finally operational again. To celebrate it's reopening, all the youth from the islands of Oahu and Kauai created a Cultural Celebration and performed for the Prophet.

The celebration was divided into sections: early Hawaiian culture, immigration, Joseph F. Smith, temple construction, and World War II (I think there were a couple more but I don't remember them all). I wanted to share some of the more interesting and fun sections of the performance. This first clip was showing the early Hawaiian culture through dance.



This next dance was showing the importance of the immigrants brought to Hawaii to work in the fields. The Chinese were the earliest and most numerous; however, other immigrants included Filipinos and Portuguese. This group includes the kids from our Ward.



This last clip was from the section of building the temple.

Halloween Party

Romney and I went to her cousin's Halloween Party. We were originally told that no one was going to wear a costume, then the last minute they decided everyone should come in a costume. Well, we went with what we had. I wore my exercise clothes and Romney had a cat-ears band and black clothes. Anyway, it was a fun party and we're glad we didn't just sit home alone.

Halloween Toy

I know it's after Halloween now, but I had to post this. My co-worker knows how much I love zombies so he got me this little toy at the new Party City store that opened here. I took a short video of it.

Pirates of the Caribbean films in Hawaii

So Johnny Depp and his crew were here in Hawaii filming the 4th installment of Pirates of the Caribbean. They had their ship out at Kaneohe Bay during the day and all the actors would arrive around 10pm or midnight to film, taking the ship out of the bay. Romney's cousin, Jaymie, went several times to see if she could get a chance to see him, which she did. Romney and I wanted to go get some video of the pirate ship during the day but when we got there, it was super crowded. Jaymie had gotten a parking ticket for parking along the side of the road so we didn't dare do that. Instead, we just drove past and Romney filmed it from the passenger's side window. The video is short but a bit shaky so hopefully it won't get you too sick!