March: One Crazy Month Full of Excitement!

CRAZY MARCH

I think few months have packed as much stuff as this past month....let's see, where do we start?

C's 40th!...

Last week in Feb and first week in March caught me (again) in a trip to the mainland. I was returning on the 5th and C's B-day is on the 7th. Our big plan for her B-day was a ski trip to Tahoe, but I still wanted to do something small here.... So I started working something out with our conniving friend Leslie.

We planned a little secret dinner party for C at Cafe Pesto with a couple of good friends. We pre-arranged for Sydney to watch Hana and Emma Rose while we were out. I was going to drive C out and Leslie would park just above our house and as soon as she saw us leave she would dart into the house, drop Emma Rose and fly to the restaurant (I planned a pit stop on the way there to give her time to get there before us).

Problem was that when I got home, C was totally burned out from 2 weeks of dealing with work and the kids by herself. At one point (close to the reservation time) she asked if we "really had to go out that night"......(crap!)....So I told her I had something special planned, this kind of ruined the surprise, but not entirely....

We got there and found Leslie (of course), Jeri, Jim & Fran and Pat. We had a very nice & pleasant dinner. The "ladies" were acting up a bit (?) goofy, they decided that they could "feel" the poor waiter's bangs!....the kid didn't know if he should laugh or run out of the restaurant....

Here are the "dinner ladies".....

Jim, the orchid man, gave C for her B-day her own orchid, and she got to name it! so she named it the Charlotte Godfrey-Romo, that's right, she's got an orchid named after her!.....here is a picture of it....

And I thought I was so cool because I had gotten her a Kindle........

On her real b-day we just had a nice quiet dinner at home. Here's party girl with her b-day pie

LAKE TAHOE

We had not had a real family vacation in a long time, last one was to Honolulu for Thanksgiving 2007, so this year after our friend Matthias suggested going to Tahoe we took him up on the idea. Spring break was in mid-March so that should provide good snow conditions. We booked our time share, bought our tickets, I bought the kids some snow clothes in the mainland....everything was ready for the trip, then......

On the night previous to our departure, we hear the news about the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. First thing we did was check NOAA's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's website and sure enough a high alert was issued for Hawai'i and a Tsunami predicted to arrive at 03:00 AM. Our flight was scheduled for an 11:00 departure....... All we could do was wait and see what was going to happen.

At 09:00 the sirens started to go off, it was official now, evacuation of the lower areas in town had begun, airport was closed. To top it off, shortly after the sirens started, an earthquake rattled the Big Island!....were these omens telling us we should not go on a family vacation!?...

Next morning the tidal waves hit the islands, and luckily there was not much damage, although there was some at different locations. Kona suffered more than Hilo this time. We dropped the cats at the vet for boarding and the airport opened at 10:00....our flight was delayed one hour but still had plenty of time to make our connection.....that was a close one....

Tahoe was absolutely a blast! We got a nice condo near the slopes (5 min shuttle ride to the lifts) in the Nevada side of Heavenly.

The girls learned to snow board...

C tried it but went back to skiing after a scary fall....

We went swimming in the outdoor pool....

the outdoor jacuzzi.....

we got two big snow storms while there, the first one dumped 14" of fresh powder...

and two days later we got 18" overnight!....

Smitty and Robin came over and we hung out with them, had dinner at a nice restaurant to celebrate C's and Smitty's b-days....

The view from our table...

went skiing with them on St. Patrick's day which offered postcard skiing conditions! Fresh powder, sunny not too windy! The girls went on the slopes for half a day and Smitty and I stayed up on the mountain for the rest of the day hitting trails on both sides of the mountain, it was, as kids say these days: "Epic!".....

all in all it was a BLAST!

Kirk Banks

We didn't even get one week back at home when Syd and I had to go to Honolulu for the Kirk Banks Soccer tournament.

Syd's team (A'ali'i) did extremely well, they won all their games and did not allow a single goal...

The final was against Kona and they won 1-0. Here are the two teams that played the final.....

First time for my at Kirk Banks not coaching. These are the four girls from our team last year who were invited to play for the Gold team.....

The tournament went on from Thursday through Sunday, Syd and I were originally planning on returning on Monday, but, as if that wasn't enough for one month, that same week was the

Hawai'i State Science and Engineering Fair

so Sydney stayed in Honolulu, Charlotte flew in from Hilo with the East Hawai'i delegation of participants as a chaperon and they stayed through Thursday!

Sydney's project won Best of its category, and won a $500 award from Queen's Medical.

And got selected to participate in the Broadcom Masters, a National Science Fair Program...

Her project was How different temperatures affect meat decomposition......