It's snowing!

Sledding in the backyard with the Wise fam. Happy boxing day!

Monday

Tiff made us a delicious crab feast tonight at her place. Good times with cousin Rudy and Laney, who brought the prettiest chocolate and fruit tart I've ever seen. Its hard to tell from this photo, but it was also one of the largest!

Sunday night

Tree with presents

Weekend visit

Gimme that leg!

Kinect Dance Central

Our First Video Post

Great sunset

More story time with Uncle Pete!

Babysitting

So far we've been watching Cole and Hunter for 20 hours by ourselves and both kids still seem to be breathing. So yay!

Here's Pete reading Goodnight Moon to Cole. This is the least snotty he (Cole) has been for a while.

Pearl amongst oysters

Just a few hors d'oeuvres around the house...

Snoqualmie Falls

A bit east of Seattle

Brunch at Salish Lodge

Great Benedict!

Blue Angels!

One flyby came so close overhead, Angie and I thought we were done for. So exciting!

Fleet week!

View from Ally's rooftop

Wise Beer

Special suds from Seattle

Lots of Orange!

Go Giants!

10 feet of Giants Baseball!

In the Palms theater to escape the baby shower upstairs.

Vampire Weekend!

At the Greek Theater in Berkeley. Reminded me of why the Greek just might be my favorite place on earth.

Friday Night Late Night Snack

Grilled cheese #2 following Band of Horses at the Greek

Snorkel Pics

For those who don't want to follow the link to the picasa album, here are a few pics from today's activity:

Hawaii: Days 3 & 4

I think I mentioned our drive yesterday, we left the resort at 9 and stopped at Akaka Falls for a short 0.5 mi hike, which was stunningly beautiful.

We then had lunch at Cafe 100 in Hilo. We both had traditional Hawaiian lunches. I had the "Hilo Boy", fried chicken, teriyaki beef, rice, and a curry soup, all of which were delicious. Stef had a fried chicken plate with rice (and about half my teriyaki beef).

After lunch we went to Hawaiian Volcano National Park. There is a pretty big crater around Kileaua that is still emitting a lot of smoke! We viewed it from a couple of angles, including along the smoking rim of the crater. We also visited the sulphur bank, which wasn't quite as pungent as either of us expected. By far, my favorite part of the day was a lava tube. These tubes provide a path for lava to flow away from the magma reservoir. We walked almost 1000 feet into one of the tubes using our headlamps! The tube was about 10-15 feet in diameter and it was pitch black. We turned off our lights for a minute and literally couldn't see our hands in front of our faces! Stef was most amazed by how fresh the air smelled.

We then attempted to see Lava flow into the sea. We walked through a mile of dried lava that flowed over a neighborhood along the coast in 1990. It was absolutely surreal, almost a moonscape, except a few people had refused to give up their land and had built new homes onto of the lava, most lacking running water and electricity. Unfortunately, we were unable to see actual flowing lava. Varying reports placed this as normal and conflictingly as a result of a July 18th flow that cut of the access road. Regardless of cause it was very disappointing, especially since we felt a little taken advantage of by those trying to promote the lava flow.

Stef handled driving back to the Kona side of the island which ended up being a bit of an ordeal, but after 12 hours on the road (3 straight hours driving), and a fair amount of rain over some of the mountain passes, Stef delivered us safely home, with just enough energy to order room service.

Today we sat on the beach, did some snorkeling, drank some beers, it's been a terrific day!

Still struggling to upload some of the images, the DSLR images are too big to email more than one at a time.

I put some the pics from yesterday's drive and today's snorkeling to a picasa web album located at: http://picasaweb.google.com/peter.r.wise/HawaiiSept10#

--Pete

Sent from my iPad

Sunset con't

Update

Aloha!

We took some great pictures of the sunset from our lanai last night, unfortunately, the wifi seems to be down in this wing of the hotel, so I can't upload them just yet.

This morning we're heading out on the road, driving to the other side of the island to look for waterfalls and lava flows.

Aloha!

--Pete

Dinner and a Nightcap

but we'll start by "rollin' in the 4.0, got the ragtop down so (our) hair can blow"

Beach Time

Breakfast of champions

Hello Hawaii!

The view from our room's balcony. Pretty sweet.

Extreme Mammals!

Congrats to Mr. and Mrs. Rudy Wen! Great wedding! (also extreme mammals now through next Sunday at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate park)

Right way to start the day!

Mud baths

Great birthday weekend in Calistoga. The mud is no joke!

Sweets

Cheesecake with berries last night at Waterbar followed by drinks at Prospect. Fun night though I have a bit of a headache today. Totally worth it.

Birthday Flowers

So pretty. Thanks Pete!

Fishy Monday

Some good fish oils to help combat the pizza grease from yesterday. A lot healthier and pretty darn tasty!

Fire, fire on the mountain!

Actually, just fog rolling over San Bruno mountain during my lunchtime run.

Date night with Date Night

> Decent flick + great company = a swell way to spend a Sunday night.
>

Step 3: fry 'em up! They turned out pretty well - but we forgot to photograph the finished product!

Cheese cheese cheese!

> Step 1 of making fried mac and cheese balls for Jeff's birthday tomorrow: lots of melted cheese!
>

SF From the Air

on our way to Seattle.