Aloha!

Alicia and I may be done with graduating (for now...) But we have younger cousins that are embarking on their journey to adulthood! Enter - Kelvin Akamine.

Okay okay okay, Yes, we realize that we just got married, and just returned from our honeymoon, but family is important no matter how many miles apart we are. In our case, we have the Pacific Ocean between us and my dad's side of the family.  Alicia, my brother and I flew out to Hawai'i for our cousin's high school graduation from Le Jardin Academy on the island of O'ahu.  We arrived Thursday afternoon and all the festivities began!  We had lunch at Kakaako Kitchen, the wait was unusually long but the food was delicious as always. We stayed at my grandparents house and my brother stayed at uncles house down the road. They all live on the same property so it's pretty easy to get from one house to the next.  On Friday we kinda just tagged along with the family. Kelvin went and got his hair cut - Oh here's something interesting. So here on the mainland (California) Vietnamese are typically found in nail salons, in Hawai'i they are not only found in nail salons but in barber shops as well! ...Fo only 5 dolla mo.*
So after dropping Kelvin off at school for all the pre-graduation festivities we were on our way back to our grandparents house when all of a sudden ...**!@#BAM!@#** my coffee went flying everywhere - we got rear ended!!! Ugh, I had NEVER been in any kind of car accident until that day! We were literally stopped waiting for the light to turn green and the only reason the guy behind us stopped is because he hit us! It was quite a jolt and my adrenaline was going! ...Needless to say, the guy was a complete a$$ hole about it but the main thing was that everyone was okay.

* When my cousin Jessica was living up here last fall we took her to to see Anjelah Johnson at the Improv. So funny!! We love her.

Late that afternoon we went to Le Jardin Academy for Kelvin's graduation. It was really good! Somehow graduations always create one of those nostalgic moments for me... "As we go on, we remember, all the times we, spent to together..." Their speaker was Neil Abercrombie, who I thought was the founder of Abercrombie & Fitch but it just so happens that this Neil Abercrombie was the governor of Hawai'i. His speech was really good, although I don't remember any of it except for the part that I'm going to share right now... (i'm going to use quotes because this is verbatim) "and I remember that when I told Barack Obama that he should run for president." ...Alicia and I had a good laugh, OH!!! He's the one that told Barack Obama to run to president, gotcha. Haha.

The weekend was filled with family fun! On Saturday we went to the swap meet, beach, got in another car accident, and Hawaiian Brians. Hawaiian Brians is a billiards hang out place, lots of fun! I suck, but I like to think I'm pro status when I get like 3 balls in a row. Hahaha. Okay, seriously, another car accident??!?!?! I'm getting use to this now. We were leaving the beach and had stopped at McDonalds for some food when all of a sudden, **!@#BAM!@#**, a van pulling in to park next to us decided to nudge us aside... This dude was on something, had no auto insurance, and was just a sticky situation. We called the police department and the officer came out and filled a report... Blah blah, again, at least we were all safe!
Sunday we had a family and friends brunch at the same place where my aunt was married 14 years ago! Check out the picture below (Then and now). We ended the afternoon at Bellows Beach - where we met up with my friend Pohaikealoha and her cousin. I hadn't seen Pohai in years!!! So good reconnecting with old friends, later that night my uncle decided on an impromptu family BBQ. Alicia and I made a tropical ambrosia fruit salad! So delicious. Along with all the standard fixings, meat, chicken, rice, etc... We had such a great time! I've never had a BBQ with my family before, we're always so rush rush rush when it comes to vacation time. Go figure. Oh, I can't forget to mention when we wanted to "kick the party up a notch." my uncle had found a bottle of old wine, like from the 1960's. We thought we'd give it a go but it turned out to be rusted, acid, vinegar! Hahaha. Guess that's what happens to wine in the end. Then we had a bottle of white wine... It was probably the driest and most potent wines we had ever tasted, even my grandma was like "wow, that's strong, I feel the heat." ...Then my uncle asks for a sip and sees the bottle... "HEY!!, That's vermouth!" ....Yeah with an alcohol content of like 17% hahahahaha. Okay okay, so maybe no one took a look at the bottle but it was super funny!

Tony left Sunday night because he had to work the next morning! Crazy guy... So then we decided to go hookah some place in town but when we got there I guess there was some sort of power outage and we were literally walking around the block in the dark trying to find this place - come to find out, since all the power was out they couldn't run the computers/ cash register - no hookah for us.

On Monday my uncle took us to see the family property. It's a beautiful piece of raw undeveloped land with a great ocean view. One day, maybe we'll be able to build a house up there. Better start playing the Mega Millions lottery again.  That afternoon we climbed to the top of Diamond Head! Can you imagine, in all the time I've been to Hawai'i I've NEVER been to Diamond Head. Alicia had been during her senior class trip in high school so she was ready for the 1000's of stairs ahead, me, I had no idea what is store. We had such a great time though. The view from the top is simply breathtaking.

Monday evening we had dinner at Ruby Tuesdays and saw the Hangover 2! That movie was pretty funny. I still think the original was funnier though.  It was funny, but not funny when I realized that we were flying home on Tuesday NOT Wednesday like we had originally thought. I don't know how we got that mixed up in our minds, I think it was a combination of vacation and the holiday that got us all confused! We were all bummed that our trip had been cut short by a whole day! Oh well, at least we figured it out and work wasn't calling me the next morning wondering where I was. ...That could have been difficult to explain.

Our last day on the Island was in search of Noni tea for Alicia's mom. We don't know why that tea was so difficult to find... We must have checked at least 3 or 4 stores including Marukai! Come to find out, my mom had some Noni tea right in her kitchen.

Well, that was our Hawaiian Vacation in a nutshell. We had such great time kicking back with our family and just taking yet another break from the hustle and bustle of life. We miss them every day! But thanks to networking sites like Facebook, they're never more than a few clicks away.

Congratulations Kelvin Akamine!!

Aloha `oe, aloha `oe
E ke onaona noho i ka lipo
One fond embrace,
A ho`i a`e au
Until we meet again