Brian's 55th B-day

Wed would have been Brian's 55th birthday. It was raining hard last night - so we celebrated today. Coors Lights all around. Chris is keeping the yard looking magical. Aloha Brian.

Violet's Restaurant

Men's restroom - not solid.

Violet's Restaurant

Oriental breakfast... Solid

For kids about to ROCK

The timeless quality and precision of Chinese knock-off guitar
craftsmanship is about to be unleashed on the Lemonds children (once the wood glue dries). Rock on!!!

Owenspeak

Wittard = Lizard

Erdinger (insert angelic choir here)

Thanks Ron! This is as good as it gets.

Lava (Wava) the newest member of the Borton family

Pretty black cocker spaniel puppy - We had the honor of celebrating the "first poo" on the play room floor. Special stuff.

Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout

Thanks to Roy for the delicious hand-carried oatmeal stout and the excellent innaugural ping pong tourney.

we're back...

Surfed this am with roy - we caught some fun lefts at sleepy hollows before the wind came up. K and the kids went to Tricia's to help with the garage sale. They did pretty well - finally sold the old play table that I built for the kids (was actually a little sad to see that go) and some other stuff. We finally got the computer running again and now have enough hard drive space to store either the entire library of congress or a week's worth of pics and high def wide screen digital video from our vacation...

iBlog

This is pretty cool - With blogger you can register your iPhone and send txt messages that are posted on the blog. Dangerous.

Awesome surf link

this is awesome - I'm weeping as I post this.

Some surf video snips from this season

YOUTUBE

May Day 2009

Hydroponic Pak Choi

We had the pleasure of harvesting our first hydroponically-grown Pak Choi (Green Dwarf) over the weekend. We planted this one back in the beginning of March - so it was about 2 months from seed to harvest. It was grown in a 1.75g plastic container fitted with a forestry tube. The seed was planted in a combination of rockwool and peat moss. Here is a pic of our little growing table (as you can see, we're doing lots of "experiments" in easy, low-cost home hydroponics - it looks like you need at least a gallon container - though we are trying recycled 1/2 gallon milk containers too):



And here is Jack holding our first harvest - which we ate on Sunday night (yum)...



Looks like we'll be getting our first cucumbers in the next couple weeks - so that will be fun...

Brian Felix - Obituary, Sunday 26 April 2009

BRIAN KEITH FELIX Age 54, of Kailua, died April 17, 2009. Born in Honolulu and raised in Kailua. He was a Damien High School graduate, class of '72. He worked for Paradise Beverages for over 30 years, and was their Operations Manager. He attained the level of Black Belt and was a member of the Advanced Kempo Karate System in Aiea. He is survived by his wife, Criselda; daughters, Kirstin and Haley; father, Alexander; sister, Denise (Buck) Degener; brothers, Kevin (Nellie) of Kona, Jeffrey (Nancy) of Texas, and Troy Felix of Virginia. Brian lived life to its fullest. He was a loving and devoted husband, father, son, brother, nephew, uncle and cousin. He loved family and loved his friends like his very own. He will be remembered for his renditions of "Born to be Wild" and "Great Balls of Fire". Besides his family and friends, his passion was his weekly yard work along with a few Coors Lights. He will be deeply missed by the many lives and yards he touched. Visitation is at 9:30am on Saturday, May 2 at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Kailua; mass at 12:00N.Private burial. Please no flowers. Updated on 04/29/2009.

Honolulu Advertiser Obituary Link

Lost a friend

Sad day today - last night we lost a good friend and neighbor. Brian Felix passed away in his sleep last night. Looks like a heart attack but they aren't sure. He was too young. We are all in shock - and our hearts go out to his family and friends.

Weekend Pics

Jacks' first season playing Junior Pinto basketball was awesome - Doug and I were the coaches and we had a blast. Unfortunately neither the players nor the coaches ever quite mastered the Princeton offense and we lost in the first round of the KBA playoffs (16-18) - ending a very fun season - RAPTORS ON THREE... ONE... TWO... THREE!...


Liv had some girlfriends (MVBF, OMG) over and they got all dressed up - cute.


Here's the status of our hydro cukes after one week - so far so good


Multi-sport threat Owen in the fort.


A very pretty orchid that recently bloomed in the back yard...


And a pretty good shot of the usually elusive "wild" guinea pigs Opal and Cinnamon (how these things haven't become cat food is beyond me).


Jack of the jungle


Jack's buddy Nicholas came over for a play date... good fun.

We're all doing well - life is good! Very excited about Sam and Geoff's new addition to the LEMCLAN coming this Friday!

Hydro Cukes

We were looking for something fun to do with the kids and we found an article about growing cucumbers in a non-circulating hydroponic system (read: growing cucumbers in a trash can filled with water and fertilizer). After struggling to locate some of the materials we found Miu at DPL Hawaii (808-935-8785, dplhawaii at aol dot com) who had what we needed.
We'll see if they grow...

THE VISIT!

We just dropped Grandma Karen off at the airport tonight - so we finally have some time to start posting some pics and memories from an awesome holiday visit from Kristen's family. In addition to g-ma Karen, we had her brother Shannon, his wife Becky, and 11 year-old Simon out for Christmas.

The first really full day of excitement started out with a trip downtown to pay our respects to King Kamehameha:

And see some Christmas decorations:





Followed by a visit to Da Kine Bail Bonds (more pics of this later :)

A stop by the Dole plantation...

And capped off by a honu sighting and a stunning sunset at Lani's on the North Shore:







The night unfortunately ended with the untimely demise of the faithful 1999 Subaru Forester (RIP):

MUCH more to come...

UH-Cinci game pics from 6 Dec

(trying to catch up on the blog...)

Tim Brown totally hooked Randy, Marc Lammers, and me up with tics and field passes for the UH/Cinci football game on 6 Dec. It was a blast - and those players are freaking HUGE! All was going well until the 4th quarter when we had to witness one of the most painful Hawaii sports collapses in recent memory - but we had a great time nonetheless. Many thanks to Tim! NAPA ROCKS!!!



If you've ever wondered - this is what field turf looks like REALLY REALLY close up. Basically a mix of rubber pellets and shredded green plastic. Underfoot it feels pretty good - a little bouncy - but I wouldn't want to leap in the air and land on it.



If you've ever wondered - this is what THE RAINBOW DANCERS look like REALLY REALLY close up. Marc Lammers getting the scoop.



I got to meet Nick Rolovich - which was totally cool. Rolo (along with Colt Brennan and Timmy Chang) is a bonafide Hawaii QB legend. Look him up on wikipedia - he had arguably the greatest 3 or 4 game stretch of any QB in NCAA history.



View from the endzone - we watched most of the first half from the field. Great experience. Thanks again Tim.