Field trips, Stanley visits (twice), and other stuff....

Lots of things going on this week, and this weekend we will have our first visitors from the Mainland! Don & Heidi are coming to visit, they just spent a week in Honolulu and they are going to wind down with three days in laid back Hilo before they go back to Arizona. Coming to Hilo will be kind of a decompression/acclimatization stop so their return is not so harsh.. We will post pictures of their visit later.

Amongst one of the events that took place this week: Syd lost a tooth! (look closely in the picture, bottom tooth).









Meanwhile we go on to what has already happened:

St. Joseph's Field Trip to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Reef Preserve Museum.

Wednesday Syd's class went on a field trip to the NWHI museum to learn about the preserve which is the largest land set aside in the whole US as a national preserve & sanctuary.
Here we are leaving the school grounds and walking to the museum (ahh, the beauty of small towns where you can walk from one place to another, and the beauty of the Hilo weather where you can actually go for a walk in September without suffering a heat stroke).

It was a short, walk, about 8-9 blocks, and there were 11 parents "chaperoning" 22 kids, not a bad ratio, I guess many parents decided it was too good of a day to miss going out on a field trip.


Once at the museum the kids were shown a video showing some facts about the NWHI preserve, how it was formed, and what type of endemic species of birds, plants, fish and marine mammals live in the preserve.

It was a good lesson for the kids found out that many of the fish that once were a staple in the Hawaiian diet and are now rarely found in the waters of the main Hawaiian islands are still abundant in the preserve.


After the video each kid was given a sheet with a whole bunch of questions, it was kind of a scavenger hunt where they had to look for the answers among all the different displays at the museum.

They had to answer questions such as naming the only endemic palm to one of the islands in the preserve, types of fish from the NWHI preserve and that were in the tank (in the picture) at the museum.

All in all I think the kids had a really good time and learned some pretty interesting stuff about the marine preserve of the NWHI.


And of course, a group photo had to take place at the end of the visit.












But wait! after all that science, the kids earned a treat, and nothing better than Hawaiian Style Shaved Ice!









And so the first field trip at St. Joseph's ended!


Flat Stanley, and Flat Stanley Too Come to Visit from AZ!

Those who watched the movie "The Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain" will remember Tom Tup and Tom Tup Too. Well this week we had 2 visitors from AZ, Flat Stanley and Flat Stanley Too. Huh!? you say....

Turns out that Hana's cousin (Gillian) and her friend Dalen from 2nd street now go to the same school in Tucson, so they both had the same assignment about sending their Flat Stanley to a friend in a different state. Don't ask me, from what I understand Flat Stanley is a character from a book and he got flattened by a steamroller so now he travels around by envelope (and I used to think that the Brothers Grimm were creepy....)

Well, these two Flat Stanleys had a great time here in Hilo. Hana took good care of them, she took them climbing trees,

















Diving with the coral fish













To the Beach













Farmer's market













Why he even made it to class and met Hana's teacher!

And after such a full day, well, Flat Stanley had to go and get some.........















HAWAIIAN SHAVED ICE!!!!!













We really really enjoyed having Flat Stanley and Flat Stanley Too visiting!!!!

The Garden Goes On.

Week 2 at C's garden and the plants look happy and growing! We will post weekly pictures to show how they grow.












And Finally: A Word of Appreciation....

A couple of weeks ago I posted that I had been told that I had kidney stones. Well the amount of comments on the blog, emails I received, post cards and flowers were overwhelming (none).
So for all of you to whom I just didn't have the time to send a personalized thankyou note I want to tell you here through the blog, thanks for asking, the stone apparently made its way through, and I am back on the saddle. The stone in the picture is not the "actual stone" instead it is a re-enactment of when I came out of the bathroom with my stone in hand...... (same size stone though).....

Cheers y'all...