Mahoney Madness: Madre & Aunt Barbara's Visit

... Before we get back to our Hawaiian Adventures, I just wanted to take a minute to say Woohoo!!! Happy 50th Blog post!!! :D

That is all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog...

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Sun June 30th

Not just on Sunday did we play cards, we played them almost every night. But since we didn't do much on this day, besides Madre and I going to church, I thought this was a good place to throw in some card pictures.

Here's Barbara with her infamous ability to draw a million cards while playing UNO.

Aside from UNO, we played a lot of 9's, Spite and Malice, one game of Life, and a weird game of You've Got to be Kidding. lol The You've Got to be Kidding is like Would You Rather, and it's a card game that I got for my birthday this year. It had gross questions like, "Would you rather eat the first dead fish you find walking on the beach... OR eat a live 3-inch long frog?"

Here are one of 9 score sheets we used for our many many card games lol

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Mon July 1st

Monday morning we very excitedly headed out to Waikiki. We were really looking forward to our Atlantis Submarine ride when we encountered some really crappy traffic (not anything new here on Oahu, that's for sure). Well, to make a long story short, we were rear-ended, twice. The car hit us one time, then another car hit them causing them to hit us a second time. Thankfully we were ok, but it definitely was a huge hassle that caused us to miss our appointment.

Thankfully the Atlantis people got us on the next available submarine!

On the ferry traveling out to meet up with the sub!

Here it is! All aboard!

A reef shark!

One of four Japanese-designed man-made reefs.

Lots of fish swimming along one of the man-made reefs.

The biggest fish in this picture is a Hawaiian Sergeant.

Here's another man-made reef. The little strippy fish on the top right corner are Pennantfish.

A crashed plane

That big fish is a Blue Trevally

We're at our lowest depth of 110 feet! The lowest commercial vehicles are allowed to go is 150 feet, but we're keeping it in the safe range at 110 feet.

A ship wreck, I believe this is the U.S. Navy vessel, the YO-257. We also saw a sunken Korean fishing vessel, the St. Pedro.

This is a mixture of Bluefin Trevally, Hawaiian Dascyllus, Pennantfish, Hawaiian Sergeant, and Mackerel Scad. We also saw a Spiny Puffer fish, but I didn't get a picture of it :(

I spy with my little eye...

Sea Turtles!!!

I'm so blue!

The bubbles as we are surfacing

This is the view from the cockpit

Can you believe they wanted $40 for this picture?!? I mean, it's a great picture, but no way! So when the lady was distracted by someone asking a question, I just snapped a picture of the picture. ... I don't feel bad either!

After our submarine ride, we headed to Foster Botanical Gardens.

Miss Scarlet, with the wrench, in the Conservatory!

This plant looks like a deflated balloon

Barbara and Madre standing next to the tree so you can get an idea of how big this thing was!!!

This reminded me of my Grandma. She had things like this in her yard.

Another huge tree

This tree is called a Cannonball Tree. Appropriately named, I think.

Petrified wood

We're now at the Punchbowl Memorial. As you know, I've posted two other blogs with pics from Punchbowl. So, I limited it to just a few more.

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Tues July 2nd

Today we headed up to Waianea, on the west side of the island.

Beautiful day to go kayaking and snorkeling!

This is Sue, she was one of our guides.

Sue diving down to find us cool things to look at

I'm holding a sea urchin that Sue pulled up from the water to show us.

Madre holding a spiny sea urchin

Lots of sea urchins and coral!

A really pretty sea shell

The beautiful view to the front/right

And the beautiful view to the left

And the beautiful view behind us

Barbara snorkeling

Madre snorkeling

Me snorkeling!

lol Selfie! I am LOVING this underwater camera!

(this one was rented from the West Oahu SUP shop)

Tevika, our other guide, is on the paddle board, Madre and I are in the yellow kayak, and Barbara and Angel (another girl from the shop that came along) are in the red kayak. Sue is taking this picture for us.

This was on our way back. For the most part, Barbara and Tevika were paddling together while Angel was on the paddle board. But it was Angel's first time and she got pretty tired with the mile and a half that we traveled. I was tired just watching her!

Madre, Tevika, Barbara, myself, and Sue

HAHAHAHA Check out those CRAZY curls! This is my post-snorkeling look.

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Wed July 3rd

Barbara bought a disposable underwater camera and so I took some fun pictures while we were exploring the tidal pools. Here's a maroon sea cucumber!

Pretty coral

A school of fish that swam along with me!

This spotted fish was really pretty!

Pretty purple sea urchins!

FUNNY STORY: So while I was snorkeling and taking a million pictures, Barbara was hanging out on the beach. This fellow and his friends were sitting next to her. Apparently he needed to use the facilities, so he walk over to a bush and peed. On his way back, he said to Barbara, "Oh! I hope I didn't embarrass you!" To which she replies, "Nah, I have boys, it'd take much more than that to phase me. At least you were turned towards the bush!" He laughs, she laughs, and thus because a beautiful, though short lived, relationship.

I finally come out of the water to find him striking up a lively conversation with her. Madre and I go off to rinse off our feet and come back to these two sharing in their life adventures! All the places around the world that they've been too. Honestly, I believe he was quite smitten. Knowing that I was going to blog about our trip, I could NOT pass up the opportunity to document Barbara's "summer love".

On our car ride to the North Shore, we couldn't help but tease Barbara about her new-found love. She jokingly said, "You know, I knew it wouldn't work between us. He's a free spirit that just isn't looking to settle down yet. You know, if you love them you have to let them go." We were are in tears from laughing so hard!

UPDATE: Rob and I were out last friday with some of his shipmates. Look who we ran into...

Louis!!!

(I had to ask his name since we didn't ask last time)

When we first met on the beach, I had told him about Rob, he was very excited to meet him. LOL What a small island, huh? When Rob and I were leaving, Louis told me to tell my Aunt, "Hello" ;) Ah, young love.

Ok, back on track. After the tide pools, we went a little farther north.

We stopped, briefly, at the Macadamia Nut Farm

Oooooh look at all this yumminess :D

Giovanni's Shrimp Shack!

Madre and I shared some Garlic Shrimp Scampi and a Garlic Hot Dog. DELISH!

We also shared a VERY tasty BBQ Corn on the Cobb. Thankfully the funnel cake place was closed or we would of over done it!

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Thurs July 4th

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!

Look at this cute patriotic pup!

Rob had duty, so it was just the three of us. We had a chill day. BBQ'd some hot dogs, had homemade Macaroni Salad, watermelon, chips, olives, and pickles.

After we ate, Trisha came over and the four of us went to see The Lone Ranger! We loved it! Madre said, "I don't know why the reviews were so low, I loved it!" I replied, "Of course you did! It was a western, with cowboys and Johnny Depp! Your favorite things!" lol

After the movie, we came home to enjoy a delicious dessert of patriotic Cherry Cup-pies, and homemade Strawberry Ice Cream with Hot Fudge :D

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Fri July 5th

Madre, Barbara, Puppins, and I made the crazy steep drive to Pu'u 'Ualaka Wayside. First we stopped at the lookout point, then we went hiking.

Far right, looking west towards Pearl City and Pearl Harbor

Waikiki, straight south of us

Diamond Head, as we look east

Looking as far east as we can

Puppins, the adventurer!

We figured this was probably someone's property line a long time ago. Here are the corridor of trees looking north

And here's looking south

The seed pods from the trees made it look like there were worms all over the ground!

We found a Hobbit hole! Perfect size for Barbara!

Madre had to bend her knees to fit

(These are pictures below from Madre, Puppins, and my hike further up the 'Ualaka Trail on Mon. But I decided to just put them all together.)

Mozart wanted to adventure. He didn't want to stop for pictures.

I see ocean!

This has to be the worst map ever created. I like to pride myself on my quality navigational skills, Madre as well. And we could NOT figure this thing out. Not to mention the milage scale was WAY off. It drove me bananas that I could not figure it out. ARG! Still frustrates me. lol

The road out.

After Rob got off of work on Friday, and he had some time to rest, the four of us went to my favorite restaurant on the island, Haleiwa Joe's! Here's Barbara enjoying yet another Pina Colada!

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Sat July 6th