Pics of the week

Relaxing after work

Bandit escaped from Moose for a brief moment.

"Did you say kitty cat?"

This could possibly be the funniest video ever!

This weekend.....

we perfected how to look cute

we played with a new toy given by mandy and martin...thanks! they have not stopped playing with it.

we played ball

we did some laundry

and took lots of naps

ahhhh....the puppy's asleep :)


heath was also very very excited to buy some new toys for the yard. he is such a good lawn boy!

Toilet Paper vs. Moose

You cannot turn your back for a minute here with Moose. He is so incredibly different than Bruce! Oh and Jane these are for you ;)

Bandit and Moose

We slept most of the day Wednesday since we were the only ones who couldn't sleep on the 8 hour plane ride home.

You can imagine how excited we were to see our puppies. We pulled up and Ray seemed concerned, but was smirking. Seems that Moose likes to eat toads. He never got sick, but if you come over you may need to bring a gas mask :(

Thanks Ray and Gail for keeping our dogs for us. We appreciate it!

Here are some pictures from Gail and Ray's and from our time at home.

Moose posing and looking a little bloated from eating toads!

While in Alvarado, Gail put the dogs in the same kennel a lot of the time. We tried it and it worked pretty well. Bandit stayed on his pillow and Moose was hot (our air conditioner broke while we were in Hawaii....) and stayed on the plastic.

The dogs moved into the office over the weekend.

Last Day

Today we went on a different catamaran snorkel trip. It wasn’t really one that we were planning on, but a local guy that waited on us at lunch told us about it, so we decided to give it a try. We were very glad we did.

This was the boat we went out on. The place that the Body Glove cruise took us was a little deeper than the Fair Winds’ snorkeling spot, the crew was also not nearly as personable. The crew on the Fair Winds(the other snorkeling cruise we took) was phenomenal. We enjoyed this little trip also…there was a spot where I(Heath) could freedive down about 20 – 25 feet, almost to the bottom, and look into the sun and see all the hundreds of fish in this little reef at once. It was so much fun.

A picture of the sun setting on our last day here.
Hilary and I ate dinner at the most amazing place. It is called Jameson’s By the sea. http://www.jamesonshawaii.com/ The food was AWESOME. Hilary had Mahi-Mahi and I had Opakapaka, really similar to red snapper. So at least the “last supper” (on the big island, anyway) was delicious. We were at dinner right by the Sheraton, so we decided to stop by for a bit. We had heard that they turn the lights on and attract manta rays. We stood with about 30 other people and watched them come up to the rocks. They feed by turning circles. It was really amazing to watch them. We took some pictures but they did not turn out very well. This was a lot of fun though, you could see the manta rays very well in the water and you could tell they were HUGE. These guys get up to 20 feet from one wingtip to the other when they are full grown. After watching the manta rays for as long as Hilary would tolerate, we headed back to the condo for the evening. This is an attempt to take a picture on the lanai....our last picture, how sad. It didn't go all that well and turned out really dark. Our last few hours on the big island, we ate lunch at a little place we had gone once before, but we really liked it, L&L Drive Inn. http://www.hawaiianbarbecue.com/ this is Hawaii’s version of bbq. The most popular thing they serve is probably chicken catsu. It is just lightly breaded chicken cutlets that are cut into strips and served with this sauce that tastes like a mix of sweet and sour sauce and bbq sauce. I had the shrimp…it was really good. After much deliberation we decided to head to the airport in Kona. We would fly from Kona to Honolulu and then on to DFW. When we arrived at the airport in Kona, I think we saw the saddest thing that anyone ever sees on any of the Hawaiian islands….
Our ride home.

Vacation Day 6

We didn't have any trips/excursions/anything planned for today so Hilary and I went to the painted church. It is actually called St. Benedict’s Catholic Church. It is a quaint little church in the countryside near South Kona. It was absolutely gorgeous, both the church and everything that surrounded it. The picture above is one that we took immediately when we got out of the jeep. This little church is surrounded by vegetation like the stuff you can see here. It looks like a jungle everywhere around the place. The inside of the church is painted with many different AMAZING murals. The church was built in 1899 by Father John Velghe. He had no professional training and painted the murals on the wood used to make the church using regular house paints. A lot of the Hawaiians that inhabited the island at that time could not read, so he used pictures to help get his message across.
The front of the church was painted to make it appear to be a HUGE cathedral. Almost all of the structure you see in the picture above is created by the paint, not by the architecture.
There are 6 different murals depicting significant biblical events. The only pictures I took of them would not do them justice. This page has much better pictures of these 6 murals and also includes an explanation of each of them.
As we walked outside, Hilary and I were completely blown away by how beautiful EVERYTHING was. In the picture seen above, it is hard to make out, but from the front steps of the church’s entry you can see the Pacific Ocean beach. It is several thousand feet down, though. There is a cemetery to one side, neatly tucked away from your view as you exit the church. I believe a number of folks who have served at the church are buried on the grounds.
The flowers and vegetation were continuously AMAZING all over the entire property. I think this is a variety of Hibiscus, as we’ve said in earlier posts, the beautiful Hibiscus flowers are EVERYWHERE.
This yellow flower was also very pretty.
The flowers from this plant were also beautiful, but the plant itself looked painful.
There were birds of paradise flowering EVERYWHERE…probably one of my favorite flowers that grow naturally on the big island.

This place was so amazing.

One last pic, Hilary was going nuts trying to get a good picture of this flower/plant. It was much prettier “in person”. The next thing we did was definitely on my list, not necessarily on Hilary’s list of “must-do’s”. We went to the city of refuge or “Puuhonua O Honaunau”. This was a significant historical spot for the early Hawaiians.
Pictured above is a half scale replica of one of the original temples in the city of refuge.

This guy and a lot of his “friends” all stood watch around this ancient Hawaiian city.
These “god figures” were supposed to bring different types of luck, fortune, etc. to the folks that visited Puuhonua O Honaunau. This link tells the story of the city of refuge for my fellow nerds that would like to know.
Hilary took this picture of me smiling while driving us in the jeep, I was smiling because I had just found the spot where we would be dining for lunch.
This contraption had several spits that all held whole chickens over a fire. I think the wood was the Hawaiian version of mesquite. There was a motor attached to the spits and they all turned continuously, somehow contributing to the tastiness of the birds. This was one of the best friends I(Heath) made in Hawaii, although we only exchanged about 10 words. Our most important exchange involved our greenbacks and his chicken and rice. This was the BEST meal we had in Hawaii, “bang for the buck” wise. It was $10 and Hilary and I shared a chicken and an order of rice. It was DELICIOUS.
After our fantastic lunch, we headed back to the condo to change and get our snorkeling gear. We rented some snorkeling gear from a little shop in front of our condo. We became almost obsessed with finding snorkeling spots. Neither of us knew Hawaii had such awesome fish. We went to two pretty cool beaches north of Kona. The guy we rented the snorkel gear from told us to look for fish near the rocks. This was probably some of the best advice anyone gave us while we were there. The first beach we went out pretty far and Hilary got freaked out a couple of times. It’s amazing how fast the current can move you out to sea. While we were at this beach we saw TONS of fish and a couple of turtles feeding on the rocks above our heads. They couldn't have been more than 10 feet from us. We saw all of the fish you see pictures of here.

Above is a threadfin butterfly fish.

Above is a wrasse, they clean off the other fish.

Although Hilary swears these are called Sunshine fish (just kidding...that is just what she calls them), they are yellow tangs.

Above is a teardrop butterfly fish.

Above - this funny looking fella is a triggerfish. This one is called a picasso triggerfish, but the state fish of Hawaii is a reef triggerfish. His Hawaiian name is much more entertaining - Humuhumunukunukuapua'a

This guy was like 3 feet long and about as big around as a coke can, he could change color. ABOVE - This is a trumpetfish.

And this guy eats coral, you could hear him chomping on it under the water. He then turns the coral into white sand…what a guy. So all the beaches in Hawaii are really mounds and mounds of parrotfish poop.

Hilary was totally obsessed with the snorkeling. I(Heath) really did enjoy it, but if the sun was out she wanted to be in the water and snorkeling, I wasn’t quite that hellbent on it. The snorkeling was unbelievably beautiful at almost every spot we tried out. If we counted it all up, I am pretty sure we snorkeled more than 20 hours while we were here.

Strangely enough, as we trekked out to find the best underwater scenery the big island had to offer, we encountered this fella. This is, obvious to some folks maybe not to others, a wild turkey. He was hanging out in the parking lot of one of the places we stopped to snorkel.
Another Hibiscus that Hilary or I absolutely had to take a picture of.

This was a really unique plant that Hilary had me stop the car for. I have no idea what the heck it is, but it is VERY unique.

Speaking of unique…the big island is into some heavy experimentation for controlling speed in their residential neighborhoods. Pictured above is the fairly uncommon “SPEED TABLE”. Hilary and I thought this was so funny I think we may have turned around to get a picture of the sign.

After a full day of snorkeling and otherwise exploring, Hilary and I went to a GREAT place for dinner. The place is called Merriman’s. It was actually in Waimea, not Kona. Hilary and I had some amazing shrimp. We also had a filet, the beef came from a herd at a ranch here on the big island, Kahua ranch. Also, we had some wok-charred ahi…Hilary didn’t care much for this, but I am pretty sure it was swimming in the Pacific Ocean no more than 24 hours before. The menu said something about the fishermen coming in to the docks and bringing in the fish that would be served the next day at the restaurant.