Even more pics

More from May...


Jack is moving up in the world - he is officially a preschool graduate! Here he's looking festive with his good buddy Ryan Encarnacion at Kailua Baptist.

Should also note that Jack wrapped up his first year of T-Ball in May - if you are interested click on the Flikr photostream link on the right panel on this page - lots of pics there. Good fun.


Owen celebrated Jack's graduation by rummaging through the cubbies looking for lost change and melted candies. Owen will be a Kailua Baptist preschooler next year... prepare for carnage.


A few days after graduation we headed up to the North Shore for a beautiful day at Leftovers - and nearly tripped over this honu. Lots of snorkeling and surfing this day - will post a movie or two later (Kristen, Christy and Tricia all went surfing too!)


Not sure when this was taken (G-ma Karen's camera seems to mysteriously reset the date/time stamp to match the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics) - but this was another nice day at Kailua beach...


This was taken back in March - but wanted to share - Miss Olivia's 8th birthday (that's 5+3)...

Catching up with May pics

Sorry we haven't been posting regularly - it hasn't been for a lack of material - just not enough time in the day (which is generally a good thing). Best news is that Kristen finished up chemo in late May! She started in Jan - so 5 months of chemo later she's moving on the next stage of treatment!

Here are pics of some of the fun from last month...


The excellent 2-story Komae Treehouse - kids dig it.


Olivia's May Day performance at Enchanted Lake Elem.


Yes it's Ladies' Nite...


Family day at the Honolulu Zoo.

Mother's Day Lunch - Mexico Lindo

After spending hours in the woods with a bunch of kids what could sound better than a Li-Hing Margarita?

Needless to say - things got a little rowdy when the food was served - here's Jack (looking oddly Bon Jovi-ish) wearing beans and guacamole:

...and Olivia (as far as I know she is NOT drinking a margarita):


HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

Mother's Day Hike

We took an awesome hike with the kids to celebrate Mother's Day - Nu'uanu Pali - Judd Trail...
Here's Kristen and the kids in a bamboo forest:

Heavenly view through the Norfolk pines:

Owen taking a break (look at those cute hiking boots!):

And the whole crew under a Banyan tree:

We almost had as much fun as the mosquitoes!

Click below to see more pics from the Judd Trail Hike:

www.flickr.com allboogied's Judd Trail photoset

Beach Day at Castles

Here's a quick movie of Mr. O'en surfing inside Castles (Kailua) on Saturday (thanks to videographer extraordinaire Doog):


And some great close-ups of the boys... Owen:

Cam:

and Jack:

All the flowers on the trail were in bloom - and we know we can't pass up a good flower photo-op:

Hau Tree Lanai

This was taken a few weekends ago - but Tudi treated Kristen and I to a lovely evening out at the Hau Tree Lanai restaurant in Waikiki while Christy watched the kids. All we can say is THANK YOU!

Never too young to surf

The crew had a big day at Kailua beach over the weekend - including a good breaking-in of our new 8' foam decked surfboard (purchased at Costco for a mere $100). We pushed Jack and then Owen into a handful of waves. To our general amazement both of them managed to stand up and ride a few all the way to the beach (about 20' in this case). Owen proved to be a pretty brave little dude - and a goofy foot! Gotta love surfing before you can utter a comprehensible sentence.

T-Ball Glamour Shots

Jack T-ball mania - coming soon to a major league park near you...

Honu, Swingsets, and Punk Rock

Last weekend we took a drive to the North Shore to catch some late-season surf. The surf was a bit of a mess but we did see this huge green sea turtle.

Of course this picture was taken with the zoom on - we'd never get this close to a vicious man-eating honu.

The last couple weekends were definitely focused on backyard play sets - first was Randy's awesome tree house (need pics) and then the Lems and the Bortons upgraded their dilapidated swingsets for something a little more impressive:

It needs to be noted that, to the general disbelief of the male contingent on Palawiki street, the entire swingset upgrade project - from conception to purchase to installation - was accomplished by the ladies. They even managed to "fix" some obvious "mistakes" in the lumber provided by the factory :). It all came together nicely. Impressive indeed.

Needless to say, all the outdoor playing produced some filthy kids - and whenever filth is removed - punk shines out...

Hey gang

Haven't been on here in a while and thought I'd pop in and say hi. I heard from a huge group of my high school friends on Sat. at Leigh's party. They made my day. I couldn't stop smiling all night.
Things are going well. Dave's parents Dave and Susan (Paw Paw and Tudi) are here and we are all having fun. We went for a couple of hikes last week at Lanikai.


Two weekends ago, Olivia had her 8th (Holy Moly) birthday party with seven of her girlfriends at the dollar movie and then out for icecream afterwards. They had a blast.





Jack is doing t-ball right four times a week and not too sure if he likes it yet. We'll see. It is dag-on cute to watch.

My chemo is going great. It is beating up my white blood cell counts but I feel great (except for the mouth sores, yikes!)

Dave is helping build a tree house down at the Komae's (our neighbors) for their nearly six year old twins. Our crew of kids is gonna love it. Pics of that coming soon.

Oh, and we hatched two of the most beautiful butterflies this week from catepillars from the Felix's Crown Flower tree.

Pillow Battle

Jack and Owen demonstrate the finer points of full-body pillow fighting for their cousin Hugh

T-Ball Mania

Jack is a first year T-baller - and today we had the "opening day ceremony" for Kailua T-Ball. If we thought that AYSO (soccer) was a big deal - apparently we had no idea. Anyway - Jack is on the Yankees - so I have to root for the Yankees for the first time in my life - which wasn't as difficult as I had feared - though I did have a feeling that all the other teams hated us more than they hated any of the other teams. Now if we could somehow get Olivia to play basketball for the Blue Devils and Owen to play football for the Fighting Irish I'd have all my favorite teams covered.


Seriously - we have a great coach, players, team mom, parents, and coaching staff (yes - there are multiple coaches - and I am somehow nominally cleared to participate in some capacity - I think I'm an assistant talent scout or backup right field coach). Back to the point - opening day ceremony was good times - Jack is on a great team and the potluck was unreal. They did a team base-running relay which I filmed; as serendipity would have it I kept filming as one of the Yankee assistant coaches (the very nice Coach Kyle) ran following Jack. He took a spill heading for home - which I captured on video and now broadcast shamelessly on YouTube - you'd think I was a Red Sox fan or something - geez.

What's been going on

It's been a while since I've been on here. Here's a little update....Last week's mammogram and ultrasound results showed that a couple of the tumors are 50% smaller than they were when I started chemo. And they couldn't even find the cancer in my lymph nodes with the ultrasound. AWESOME! I started my new cocktail of drugs this week. I'm getting Taxol (chemo) and Herceptin (an antibody that blocks the cancer cells from growing and helps shrink the tumors). I go once a week now for 12 weeks. Its been two days since I got my treatment and I feel great. I'm taking a bunch of supplements that I found out about through a pharmacist from Kaiser. So far, so good.

I am enjoying feeling good and am trying to do the mommy running around stuff more these days. I wonder if these round of chemos will progressively run me down like the others , but for now I am doing well. 

My mom is still here and helping out so much. Jack is getting ear tubes put in tomorrow and his adenoids removed also. Hopefully this will help with his hearing. He thinks I'm "bobbed" not "bald". His mispronunciations are pretty cute.

Ku'ilima surf pics from Saturday 3/8/08

The winds have been very cooperative lately and we were able to score some uncharacteristically beautiful surf at a great out-of-the-way spot over the weekend...

www.flickr.com allboogied's Ku'ilima surfing photoset

I Will Be Well

We finally figured out how to "share" the book we made for Valentine's day. Thanks again to everyone that contributed pictures and comments - Kristen loves it! Click on the link below to get to a PDF preview of the book. The preview isn't the best resolution (images in the real book are gorgeous) - and you can only see the first 15 (of 40) pages - but you can get the idea.

I WillBeWell

love and encouragement

By from your friends...

Book Preview

Earrings!

Livy got her ears pierced last weekend with this brave bunch. No obvious signs of Gangrene as far as we can tell...

Stand Up Paddle Surfing Pics

Christy Borton "rented" (ahem) some stand-up paddle boards for the boys to try out last weekend. Christy of course put all the boys to shame with how quickly she picked it up :) Doug - per your request - here are some of the good pics from last weekend (click to see the whole set)...

www.flickr.com allboogied's Stand Up Paddle photoset

Saturday afternoon at the beach

Just a beautiful day at Kailua beach - light winds and blue skies. Some of the neighborhood crew gathered at our favorite "secret" spot...
kristen and owen

jack boy

liv
And here is a Flickr "badge" that links to some other pics taken earlier this AM on the North Shore. (Flickr is a very cool site for sharing photos - definitely worth checking out)...

www.flickr.com allboogied's Kuilima Tide Pool photoset