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Rain Rain Go Away

Posted on March 27, 2015 by theowenscrew

We really headed to the Sunny side of the island to whale watch but we got too distracted by the awesome sun and waves that we forgot to whale watch.

We got there at 1:30pm and left just after 5:00pm and pretty much spent the entire time playing in the waves!!! The kids are getting quite brave with the waves and the two older ones are trying their hand at body surfing. The consensus is that boogie boards are the only thing that could have possibly made today better. I just hope the kids remember all these fun days. Being together is what makes these memories so great.

Categories: Family Time, Hawaii local attractions, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nice rest on the beach

Posted on March 27, 2015 by theowenscrew

With working 5 days this week we can’t afford to waste one of my days off sleeping. I took a short rest while the kids did their school work then Chad got me up and we headed to the beach. This beach has a rock jetti that protects a pool that had steps down into it and is all the perfect depth for Eve to play in being still able to touch pretty much everywhere. I was cold from being over tired so I pulled on my sweater and curled into the kids pile of clothes they had taken off. It was a perfect location for a nap and the kids had a blast just being kids and playing. They made several friends and are already asking to go back.

Categories: Fulltime, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Entertainment

Posted on March 25, 2015 by theowenscrew

Being 45 minutes out of town has had its advantages and disadvantages. The kids have really enjoyed the freedom to roam outside and use their imaginations, the birds and frogs make a continuous joyful noise, and the road out to our house can be best described as a roller coaster. Infact one of the hills is called roller coaster hill. While the commute is fun, I have to eat my way home in order to make it that far with out falling asleep, because let’s face it as all night shifters know. The windows down, music blasting, and face slapping does not really do anything. This week my schedule is kind of crazy. Two twelve hour night shifts, two eight hour night shifts, and one eight hour swing shift. The one eight hour shift that I already completed I got called to come in early. I don’t feel like it ever really pays to work over time as a traveler because so much of your paycheck is housing and incidentals that are not included in your hourly wage that it is a bit of a slap in the face to work a whole extra twelve hour shift of overtime and have your check be maybe $200 more, so as a rule I don’t do overtime as a traveler at least. I am hoping to be put on call for one of my shifts this week, that would be great.

We have been pleasantly surprised at how many activities in Hawaii are free. Food is very expensive, but you can do that part reasonably if you stick to the foods that the locals eat. Gas so far has been cheaper than the mainland. But the beaches, and parks are pretty much all free. No charge for parking, no charge for entrance to state parks, so hikes and snorkeling are free as well as just chilling in the sun.

Here are a few pictures of what the kids have been doing to entertain themselves! Checking out waterfalls, dancing in the rain, water fights, coloring on the cement with chalk they found, coloring brown paper bags, catching frogs, long walks, checking out lizards, swimming, finding shells, and making forts and boats out of branches they have found. Have a blessed week love the Owens family!

Categories: Hawaii local attractions, Travel Nursing, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Lava Old and New

Posted on March 21, 2015 by theowenscrew

Today we visited Lava Tree State Monument It is a park that shows a lava flow from 1790 through ha heavily forested section of the jungle near Pahoa. The lava flowed around and up tree trunks then the heat from the lava burned the tree leaving castings. Trees that have since grown back up in that area have very shallow root systems because of the thick layer of lava rocks so close to the surface of the soil. A big wind, the kind that can happen frequently on this side of the island is all it takes to blow these trees down. A few have been left how hey landed and show just how shallow the root systems are. It was cool to see and the constant chorus of birds singing was the best kind of white noise in the world.

The night before I had a patient who had been evacuated from her home in November or December for the most recent lava flow so she had told me where to look. Just up the volcano from Pahoa at the transfer station you can see the December flow.

Fences to protect people who think it might be a good idea to climb on the not completely cooled lava….sometimes I am amazed at what has to be done to protect people from themselves. This being maybe 10 miles from our house we headed home for dinner. After dinner it started raining. I said that the kids should go out and play in the rain half kidding. Eve came in dripping wet minutes later asking if I wanted to play with her. I hadn’t even realized she had snuck outside. I didn’t get in on the dancing in the rain, but I did go outside to get pictures.

When the rain stopped it turned into a watertight with a hose and watering can. Then we watched Diners Drive-Ins and Dives and went to bed.

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Panaewa zoo

Posted on March 19, 2015 by theowenscrew

Today when Sarah came home from work to sleep she asked where we were going today. I got the hint that she wanted us out of the house so I loaded up the kids and took them to the zoo. We had seen it every time we drive from Hilo. Turns out that it is free. The kids absolutely loved it.

The kids favorite part of it was seeing the giant anteater.

The could hardly wait to tell mom about it and are already begging to take her back with us.

It made for a really fun day.

~Chad

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Birthdays

Posted on March 18, 2015 by theowenscrew

The kids got invited to a birthday party today. It was one of their new friends from church. It turned out to be a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. I even got a chance to hang my new hammock.

All the kids at the party had a lot of fun hanging and swinging in it. It was definitely the highlight of the party.

~Chad

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Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park

Posted on March 17, 2015 by theowenscrew

This national park is a short drive from our house and seemed like a good way to start off our school week and celebrate our anniversary as I work tomorrow on the actual day. We got a late start because we had to fuss with the instant hot water heater because the pilot light will not stay lit. No success was had with that so we quickly took our cold showers, dressed, ate breakfast, and then spent an hour or so trying to download pictures off of my phone to clear up memory for the new ones that would be put on there today. The kids got their school work done for the day before we left the house. We weren’t stressing about time. We wanted to be there until dark to see the glow of the lava in the distant crater that is invisible during daylight so later was actually better. The sign at the entrance warned that the air quality was poor today. We checked out the first visitors center, bought our patches and had a last minute pit stop before heading out on our first hike, the sulfer basin trail.

We then hiked a segment of the crater rim trail and checked out the lava house before heading back to the car for our Musubi lunch.

We tried a few other different not marketed in the main land products with lunch as well today. All were a hit.

We learned a lot about the Hawaiian goddess Pele of the volcano. There is a picture of her in our house that I thought was a little bazaar now I know what it is.

We then drove the scenic 40 mile drive where the lava had been flowing into the ocean.

Being a farther distance and a larger roped off path the kids were able to climb in the rocks more and that made for some good fun. We saw 6-7 whale spouts a few of those breeched the surface of the water as we watched. I just love whale watching and could do that alone all day. We then did another section of the rim trial.

The Thirston Lava tubes which were quite sad when compared to Ape Caves in Washington, but still they were fun to walk through.

Our last hike was two miles down and across a crater that besides vents is not currently oozing its lava and must be safe enough to walk out on or they wouldn’t let us right?

This hike took us a while as the kids were getting tired.

Chad and I took turns carrying Eve back up to the top. As the darkness settled in on us the bright orange glow of the lava was visible.

We didn’t stay until it was completely dark. It was starting to rain and the kids were tired and cold. We may come back again though if we get a clear night just to watch the glow in the clear night sky.

Categories: Hawaii local attractions, Homeschool, National Park, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Musubi

Posted on March 16, 2015 by theowenscrew

You can’t truly have the hawaiian experience with out mixing in some of their traditional foods. Rice has been on our menu pretty much daily since it is so reasonable in comparison to other foods but also we have been eating a lot of the local produce such as lychee, guava (they taste like sour strawberries to me. I love them. The hard seeds do get stuck in your teeth a bit and you can eat the whole thing it does not need to be peeled or seeded), mango, pineapple, and a lot of coconuts that we have found. The girls at work have shared an awesome tapioca dish with me that I now need to try to find the recipe for but first Musubi. Musubi is easy to make, easy to store, easy to eat on the go; it is a must have for every hawaiian sack lunch. It is made with sticky rice, spam of course, soy sauce, brown sugar, and nori (sea weed).

The spam slices are approximately 1/4″ thick 9-10 slices out of each can of spam. We only made one can in case you were worried. The rice was started and the frying pan warmed up. A little soy sauce and brown sugar to season each slice of spam and into the pan it went.

The nori had perforated lines in it to indicate where to separate the strips however it didn’t just tear on the line or even fold on the line so we turned to scissors which worked great.

We lined all the containers with plastic wrap to make it easy to lift out. The plastic wrap was temperamental and hard to work with. After round one we discovered the spam can to be the best Musubi making vessel.

Chad cut the bottom of the can off so all we had to do is pack the can then push it through and wrap it afterwords. Now that we have all that assembly line down they are looking pretty good.

All wrapped and ready for lunch on the volcano.

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Went for close to home

Posted on March 16, 2015 by theowenscrew

We had intended to attend Hilo Church of the Nazarene, but we discovered Kirtistown Assembly of God only 5 miles from our home. So instead of a 45 minute commute it is just a hop, skip, and a jump away. On Facebook it stated that they host a soup kitchen and food pantry which we were hoping would be opportunities for us to give back to the community. It is a small church, with two services at 8:00am and 10:00am. There was a group of kids from a Christian school in Oahu there this morning that did a couple of thought provoking skits. A quick lunch at the house then on to coconut island for a baptism service. Coconut island was awesome and a neat discovery!

Then some quick grocery shopping so we can make Musubi tonight. We need some more hawaiian food to try.

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Ahalani Warm Spring

Posted on March 14, 2015 by theowenscrew

Yesterday we finished up our first work week, and my first five day work week since new grad orientation at Salem Hospital almost eleven years ago. To celebrate (and to attempt to use some of our smaller chunks of time to see closer sites) we had decided that we would take the kids to Pohoiki Warm Pool after work.

Work went well although I think I will write an additional post to sum up my work week. Chad and the kids picked me up from the hospital at 3:30 and in scrubs and all we headed towards the warm pool. Chad headed in I the general direction, but some how our guidebook with the names and maps got left at home so we winged it and punched in hot springs in the GPS. The location that came up looked on the map to be in the same general location as the one I was thinking so it wasn’t until much later that I noticed in the guidebook that we had infact visited a separate warm pool very close to the first called Ahalanui Warm Springs. (That just means we have another place to check out later) the drive was very green and always interesting as most of the plants are new to us. We drove past a papaya grove or was it guava. A sign said papaya but that was down the road a bit and could have been for a different grove. The fruit on the trees looked like it could be either as they are all clustered up and there is no way to know, being new to the crop, where it is in it’s gestation. We made one wrong turn before we turned to the GPS and ended up on a dirt road (there are lots of those).

We were close, we turned around and found that we were on the right road just had turned the wrong direction. The weather was cool for here and a bit breezy. Shorts and a tee shirt were fine but the thought of getting wet would give you shivers. Less so since we knew the water was warm.

The kids found more coconuts a young man was picking them all up and breaking into them for a refreshing drink; he left three for the kids to collect. He asked us if we wanted him to break them open for us. We politely declined stating that we would take them home and break into them later.

There were port-a-potties but no good place to change so we made our own changing room for the kids. What else is a trunk really for?

The pool here is fed both by a spring that is volcanically heated and by the surf that comes in via a controlled channel. The guidebook claims that the water temperature varies from 91-95 degrees which is warm but definitely not body or hot tub temperature.

The initial warmth was followed by a realization that it was cooler that the YMCA therapy pools and we were going to have to keep moving a bit to stay warm. We all stayed together for a little while. We discovered that at no part was it too deep Caleb couldn’t touch and the kids started spreading out a bit. Chad, Eve, and I talked for quite a while with a lady visiting from Northern California she and her two year old son were quite conversive and you all know Eve by now. Everyone is her new best friend. We stayed until nearly dark when amorous couples started showing up. Yep, that’s our cue to leave. We all just about froze getting out. The showers were not cold, but cool and we all heald our breath in anticipation. The cold was short lived. As soon as we were dry and in our normal clothes it was all better. 70 degrees is warm unless you are wet with a healthy breeze going. The locals here have warned us that it has been unseasonally cool and rainy this past week. All the same for our snorkeling debu today (Saturday) we are going I the sunny warm side of the island.