Joel moves in

Sunday night again. Joni's brother Joel is now our housemate. Good to have a mate again. With Rylan the boys already outnumbered the girls, now us guys have a third vote, and maybe finally enough to hold the majority. Joel just finished his training in Mississippi for the Air Force Reserve and is looks like he has been aiming high for some time. Anyway, we have been looking forward to his arrival for some time. He loves Rylan and will help us when he can. For instance, he will be picking up Rylan from school after work tomorrow. A huge help.

Joni got back from Las Vegas and reported having a great time. Rylan loved seeing his grandparents but the report is that while there he developed the bad habit of climbing on top of everything and once there throwing whatever was there before him as far as he could. Good work if you can get it. We have a few photos from the Las Vegas adventure:

Here Rylan makes a perfect toss to Grandma and he isn't even standing on something.

Out with grandpa.

First time in the snow. The only warm clothes he has are PJs so thats what he wore.

As a continuation of the Earth Day/Month theme of last week – on Saturday I went down and assisted in the Manoa Stream cleanup and armored catfish roundup. Most of the people that helped roundup catfish were from the Honolulu Aquarium Society or some such thing. Funny, because their less thoughtful brethren were probably the ones that released this fish into the stream. It was good fun and we scoped up 250 pounds of catfish. It seemed like a small dent because we only cleaned about ½ mile of stream and I’m sure we left behind plenty of small ones. Still, people reported that the numbers were well down from last year, which was the inaugural roundup. It made us feel good anyway.

During the last week I help represent the Honolulu Transit project at a Major Town Hall Meeting in Kailua. Other projects at the meeting included the new curbside recycling program – yes Honolulu is finally getting curbside recycling (Manoa gets it in November 2008) – and the other project was stormwater pollution prevention. A photograph including me was actually in the stormwater presentation because I have previously participated in the quarterly Manoa Stream cleanup, which is put on by a great group called Malama O Manoa. Anyway, not many people showed up at the town hall meeting but I did convince one guy that building double decker freeways would be more expensive and disruptive than building a transit system, so it was all worth it. One person at the event was wearing a Washington University in St. Louis shirt and reported that my alma mater has its own transit stop on the St. Louis transit and the system works great.

So later on Saturday Joni, Rylan, and I went down to the Waikiki Aquarium for their Earth Month celebration. This is the place where Joni and I were married for those that remember that – almost 4 years ago now. Unfortunately we were too late for the Earth Month events but still enjoyed the beautiful setting and nice displays. Rylan had just visited an aquarium in Las Vegas but seemed to really enjoy the Waikiki one because he could get his hands wet in the tide pool. Snapped a few photos there:

The puffer fish had some strange attraction to Rylan.

On the walk back to the car Rylan took an interest in the water fountains. He likes anything involving water and this just really pleased him. Here he claps after we turn the water on and off.

Then here is a video of Rylan playing with his new toy from Joel. Rylan has really enjoyed playing with these "doggy cars" as we call them. He has gone back to them repeatedly and pushes them and stickes them together and really plays with them rather than just fingering and throwing them. Anyway, this concrete wall in our yard has the perfect slope and they roll down nicely, which Rylan really enjoys. You may be able to see Joni in the background talking with the neighbors.


Hope you all had a great weekend too. Aloha for now...