Hilo! Grandma*Grandpa*Farm*Volcanoes*BJ Penn

After my brother's reception Mark and I got to take my grandparents back to their home on the Big Island. This time we were in Hilo! It was an interesting trip through the airport! My grandparents were both in wheelchairs all through the airport. I had never had to take anyone through with a wheelchair. We checked their 1 bag and went to wait at the gate. Mark and I originally were going to go on a flight before theirs because their flight was full when we booked ours, and wait for them to get to the Hilo airport. While we were waiting though, the said that our flight had seats open for anyone who wanted to go on an earlier flight. Fantastic right?? Wrong. Grandpa's bag didn't make it onto the earlier flight, so we had to wait at the airport until the other flight came in! What's the point. Anyway. We got our car and went on our merry way. Mark was very nervous driving us all in the rental.
Here's Mark next to a portion of the farm. Grandma and Grandpa are in their 80s and they're still farming, just not as much as they used to.

They live so remotely that they don't have a plumbing system and so they have to live off of rain water. Every time I flushed the toilet I felt like I was using a weeks worth of their supply! This huge wooden tank is what hold their water.

This is their little house. I think my Grandpa built it himself too. So old, but sturdy. Just like them I think.

The road to their house. It's the same in the other direction. How you know to turn I have no idea. Good thing we weren't by ourselves getting there.

They live near Kileaua, the only active volcano in Hawaii. At the National Park they have these steam vents. This is steam coming from the lava underground! When you looked around everything was steaming. It was slightly eerie, but so cool.


This next picture is the caldera. It's still smoking! Crazy to think that it the volcano actually erupted we would've been the first to die.
They also had a lava tube that you could walk through. A lava tube is created when the lava runs though an area and melts the rock down and creates a tube. The lava either stops, or finds another path, leaving a tunnel where it used to run. This is an extinct tube.

Mark in the tube.

We drove down the whole area all the way from the top of the volcano down to the water. Mark thought that he would be able to see actual lava. Me being practical knew that they wouldn't let people into that dangerous of a situation, so Mark was slightly unhappy that he didn't get to see anything.

When we got home Grandma had a huge lunch planned. Now we feel bad that we only stayed 1 night with them. Next time we'll stay longer. Promise Grandma!
One of the last things we did before getting on another plane back to Oahu was look for BJ Penn's training center. Mark was all excited to go and find it, but when we finally got there he didn't want to go in! Probably embarrassed, but it's ok, it was still cool to find it.

Now back to Oahu! So much traveling!

What the Car in the Ocean?

Our flight got into Oahu late at night.

While we were driving along the very windy road home you won't believe what happened! Here's the backdrop. It's 10 at night, a we're following a very windy road that follows very closely along the Pacific ocean. There are 2 cards ahead of us. The road is S shaped and the first car in the line does not follow the S, but goes completely straight and falls head first off a 4 foot ledge and into the ocean. The truck in front of us doesn't stop! It just kept going!!

I wasn't watching what was going on, but I saw the headlights go down and flip around. My brother Simon stops the car and pushes my other brother Solomon out of the car yelling GO! Solomon didn't see it either, he just thought that it was an old car in the ocean so he was confused, but Simon pushed him out and he understood. While Simon called 911 Solomon jumped over the edge and ran to the car. Luckily it was low tide, so the car wasn't under water. The car at this time was tittering on it's side, the drivers side. Solomon tried to get into the car through the drivers side window, and then I see the feet. There was a set of feet poking out of the window onto the sand.

Solomon couldn't get the door open. At this point 3 other cars and stopped and ran to help. Solomon jumped onto the top of the car (the passengers side) and tried pulling open the door. It was locked. He yelled at the guy to unlock the door. He did after about 20 seconds. Solomon yanks open the door and smoke comes pouring out. What comes out of the smoke? Hands holding up a little girl that looked around 2 years old!!! Are you serious?! And she's bleeding from her head!

(While all this is going on, Mark and I are standing on the road and I'm shaking like crazy with shock) When I see the little girl I go over to the ledge and open my arms to receive her, but by then Solomon helped her dad out of the car and she was yelling at the top of her lungs for him! They both get out of the ocean and climb up the ledge and the little girl is put on the trunk of someones car and we wait for the paramedics.

The cops and ambulance come 5 minutes later. The dad and daughter get whisked away to the hospital about 30 minutes later. The mother was working just across the street and he was going to pick her up. He kept saying that he fell asleep at the wheel, but one of the other guys that helped him said that he wreaked of alcohol. Right when the ambulance was starting to leave the mother comes out to see them. She talks to them for a minute and leaves. My brothers give their statements and we're on our way home again. On the news there was a 5 second mention on if, but that's it. It seemed like something way more worthy of 5 seconds that's for sure.

I forgot all about this until now. In the pictures you can't really see the water, but know that the water is there.

Reception and Beach!

So the main reason that we went to Hawaii this time was for Jared's wedding.

Mckenna wearing the traditional haku at the reception

Dad and Mckayla

Mark finally bonded with Mckayla!

But we also got to have time to ourselves! Mark and I only got to go to the beach to tan once. Every other day the tide and waves were crazy! While I wanted to lay down and tan, mark wanted to build a sand castle.

I made Erin into a mermaid. The cutest mermaid with the smallest fins!

The photographer!

Hawaiian Getaway

Mark and I spent 2 days in Utah after our California Christmas before we set off for Hawaii for another 10 days! I know, we have a tough life and I bet you wouldn't want to wear our shoes. Oh well! We're just lucky that we had saved enough PTO to take the trips!


We went to Hawaii for my brother Jared's wedding. Since the Laie Temple is closed, we had to go to the Big Island for the wedding. The hotel we stayed at was great! There was an outdoor restaurant that stood on pillars only and had water running all underneath it. It was very very nice!

It was amazing, there were turtles everywhere!

While we were there the surf was really big, so we weren't allowed to go in the water (I tried and got yelled at by guests and staff, it was really irritating, but I'm trying to forget that dark mark on our stay and remember just just wonderful aspects).

The wedding was at the Kona Temple. On our way to the temple I realize that I didn't have my temple recommend! What?! So it took half an hour until I was actually able to get in. At least I made it on time and we got to be there. whew!

My family with my new sister!

While Jared and Lisa were taking their pictures, we got to play with my nieces. My niece Mckenna is so afraid of Mark, it's ridiculous. For one brief glimmer, Mckenna and Mark actually had a moment of mutual friendship. And the best part is we got it on film!

"I want to see the horses" - Mckenna
"You can't go by yourself, someone has to take you." - Dad
"Who?" - Mckenna
"Uncle Mark!" - Everyone

Smiles!

Duck Duck Goose - over and over and over!

When everyone else left to go back to Oahu to get the reception ready, Mark and I were still in Kona! We had to check out of the hotel, and we had half a day still left before out flight. What to do?! Mark found a Hawaiian temple online and wanted to drive to it. Since I grew up in Hawaii I didn't think much of it, but Mark thought it was going to be some huge Pyramid... I have no idea why he thought that. Anyway, it was a good hours drive all the way up the island, through Hawaiian lava rock dessert and no good radio stations. When we finally got Mark was confused. Is this really it? Where's the temple? It was hilarious! Of course I had to take a picture of him with his Hawaiian temple.

Yup, that's wall of stone is the temple.

They had a little visitors center and one of the interactive things there was this stone. This stone that Mark is lifting would have been just one of the thousands of stones that make up the temple. They made a huge human chain from the water (where the stones were) to the temple and passed this huge stones until the temple was complete. I could only lift the small stone.

On to Oahu!

Family Photos!

Like I said in my last post, I was going to show our family photos! It's interesting to see the difference between Mark's family and mine. Mark's family actually wants to do these kinds of things, but mine doesn't really. Mark's family friend is a photographer and took these pictures. She brought her young son along who wasn't very happy to be there. Usually I have no problem smiling for pictures, but for me smiling is difficult when there's an unhappy child there and fussing every 5 minutes. Oh well, it was fun and the pictures are cute.

The Family

The Girls!

The Guys

This one's my favorite

The Siblings

Sometimes it's fun to be a Shinoda and this day was one of those days!

Christmas in California!

So it's recently come to our attention that we haven't kept up our blog, not that it really matters since no one really reads our blog, but for the 2 or 3 people that read it, here you go!

REWIND! yes it's March, but so much has happened since we last posted that we have to go back in time.

December 2009:
For Christmas and New Year we took off 10 days and went to California to spend the holidays with Mark's family. Tiffany's brother Solomon got to come down with us and spend Christmas with us. It was great! It was Tiffany's first Christmas away from home (!) something we didn't realize until we were there. Mark's family was so cute they got a lighted palm tree as their Christmas tree and decorating it fully with Hawaiian decorations--fish, Hawaiian words (Aloha, Mahalo), and even finished it off with a sand pail full of sand straight from Pipeline! Erin goes to school at BYU-Hawaii and brought it back with her. It was a great surprise! Tiffany and Solomon both rolled their eyes slightly at the fake "Hawaiian" style, but loved and appreciated it.

Cute fish ornaments!

Lighted palm tree

Sand from Pipeline

Christmas Eve we had the Cannon family over and their parents, and Mark's parents got together and hid rolled up $10 bills in one of their Christmas trees. All the kids lined up and had 10 seconds to find one of the $10 bills. I find mine easily, but Mark couldn't. Of all people Mark couldn't find the money!! Surprise surprise to everyone in the room!

The best part of Christmas morning was Mark's dad coming out into the living room dressed up in a full on red outfit from top to bottom. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen and took tons of pictures. Apparently he does this every Christmas morning. Maybe I'll get used to this in the future, but until then I'm going to take pictures every time!


Mark got a bunch of Japanese handkerchiefs in his stocking and his dad decided that it was a bandana and put it on his head. I started laughing so hard because he looked like a Japanese house wife or Aunt Jemima's Japanese sister. Loved it!


For Mark's mom's Christmas present we all chipped in for family pictures. My next blog will show off those pictures. The last thing that we got to do before we left warm, sunny California was go to Mark's cousin Blaire's basketball game. We only got to stay til half time (sad!) because we had a flight to catch, but it was fun!

Erin and I made signs!

Oh California how we love to visit.

Just A Little Funny

So after Mark and I found out that the estimate to fix our car would be $2,384 I was really bumbed out. 1) because we can't afford that, 2) our car isn't even worth that much. I got back into work and was on the verge of having an emotional break down when I got this email from a coworker. There were a ton of these little pictures, but this one made me laugh so hard I knew that I had to share it with the world (or at least the few people who actually read this blog).


Even now I'm still laughing.