Christmas in Hawaii 2023 (dedicated to “Mommy and the Troops”)

I wouldn’t call spending Christmas in Honolulu a tradition for us, exactly, but it is certainly lovely when the calendar for the 4 of us align and make it possible. And so it was thisyear, when we spent 11 glorious days in paradise, enjoying the sun, ocean, and surf.

The theme for this year’s stay in Hawaii was that all good things were dedicated to “Mommy and the troops.” (Don’t ask because I don’t have a good explanation.)

It was amusing when the hotel staff continually apologized for the poor weather we had to suffer through. (And by “suffer through,” I mean cloudy days with occasional rain and in the low 70s. Terrible for December. :)) Although I am forced to admit that there was one morning when the rain was coming down pretty hard. Three of us were already in the water surfing, so getting wet was a somewhat irrelevant issue.

Highlights included surfing lessons (always!), walks around Diamondhead, family time, and great food. The island aloha vibe is real and welcoming. And the Pacific Ocean (especially when it’s warm) makes all other oceans look inferior.

Jim and Jade tied for Mario Party champion, but every championship won by any member of the family was dedicated to me and the troops. Such an honor!

This is a short post because anything I can say about the loveliness of Hawaii I have already said in previous posts. So I will leave you with an assortment of photos of Christmas and of Christmas in Hawaii.

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!! Belated best wishes for the New Year!!

surfing on Christmas morning
Waikiki
Christmas Eve brunch

Rainbows and Shave Ice (plus Lawyers, Guns & Money!)

We returned earlier this month from a fabulous vacation in Hawaii! Highlights include:

— Visits from all of our children: Jade could only stay for a week but managed to spend a dinner explaining her research in combinatorics (which was summarized by us mere mortals as “counting triangles”). Yinan stayed for 2 weeks, and Jim was happy to have his tennis partner back. Marcus is working remotely for the summer so stayed the entire time with us.

— Visits from family and friends: we had visitors for much of the time we were there—some repeat and some first-time. We introduced them not only to the glories of Honolulu but also to Scattergories (a family favorite) and Exploding Kittens (a new family favorite). We did learn through Exploding Kittens who can and cannot be trusted, so beware!

— Surfing! No trip to Honolulu could be complete without surfing lessons. Marcus and I surfed three times a week while others surfed or didn’t surf in accordance to their preferences. The waves were lovely, and even when it’s not an optimal day for waves, there’s something about being on a surfboard in the ocean that is especially magical. The addiction continues!

— Food! And, of course, no trip to Honolulu is complete without a commentary on food. (I’ll be updating the Honolulu travel tome soon to include these new discoveries.) We returned to old favorites—The Pig & the Lady (nouvelle Vietnamese), Doraku (sushi), Sushi-sho (omakase), Uncle Clay’s (shave ice), and Goma Tei (ramen)—and discovered new favorites—Umi (seafood), Senia (nouvelle American), Scratch (Hawaiian), Honolulu Noodle (Taiwanese beef noodle soup), and Koko Head Cafe (Hawaiian brunch). We will definitely be back to all of them! Because, as the Samoans say, “Eat til you’re dizzy.”

— Beautiful scenery: and, of course, let’s not forget the reason people love Hawaii, which is the beautiful ocean and mountain views. It is a state with indescribable beauty and a true spirit of aloha. While the state’s soul and resilience will be tested in the aftermath of the tragic fire on Maui, we have no doubts that it will emerge more beautiful and stronger than before.

And, of course, our trips often have a theme song. This time it is Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” I’ll leave it to you determine if there is a particular reason for the choice of song.

courtesy of Ty Gurney surfing school and 83 East video

Holiday 2022

While many people think of the holiday season as consisting of snow and hot chocolate and other winter festivities, we much prefer sun and ocean and warmth for the holidays. And so off we went to Hawaii for Christmas!
Honolulu never disappoints. (Nor does the Halekulani where we were staying.). We enjoyed warmth and ocean views.

Diamondhead
pool time!

And beautiful sunrises.

sunrise

And equally beautiful sunsets.

sunset

Marcus and I took surfing lessons (and I graduated to an 11’ hardtop at his insistence). (Jade would have joined us, but, you know, a broken leg is a bit of an impediment…)

getting ready to surf!

We even went to see “Hamilton,” which was playing at the Blaisdell Center. It, too, never disappoints!

Don’t throw away your shot!

Oh, and a session on how to make a pahi kauna, a traditional Hawaiian war dagger.

shaping the dagger
a pahi kauna (Hawaiian war dagger)

And, as always, there was delicious food—a wonderful dinner at tbd…, a Christmas dinner at Roy’s, and a lavish Christmas Eve brunch at Orchid’s.

Christmas Eve brunch at Orchid’s

New Year’s Eve was a casual dinner cooked at home with some close friends (family, really).

New Year’s Eve menu

But we’re getting old so we celebrated New Year’s Eve on London time and allowed the kids to scatter to their own celebrations.

We hope you had a wonderful holiday season!! Here’s to a fabulous 2023!!

Happy New Year!

A September Birthday Celebration

One of the advantages of the quarter system in college is that school doesn’t start until late September, which means that when you have a child with a September birthday, it is possible to go somewhere—say, hypothetically, Disneyworld—with that child to celebrate before school starts.

This year, it was a special birthday as we celebrated in Disneyworld for the weekend. Marcus turned 21 this year (although I am in denial about that), and we celebrated his first legal drink (note the very carefully worded description). Jade flew out from Atlanta to join in the festivities, and it was really wonderful to have the family together for such a fun occasion.

Disneyworld was magical, as usual. It was Marcus’s first time on the newest ride, Guardians of the Galaxy, and he enjoyed the three times he rode it (we had 3 different songs, too, which rocked). A lightsaber was added to his (already extensive) collection as an additional birthday gift. (Or, as his sister says in opposition, we continue to contribute to the arming of her brother.) We ate at the Brown Derby (in Hollywood Studios) for his birthday dinner. And to give the birthday boy credit, he didn’t think it was at all lame to celebrate his 21st birthday with his parents.

sipping tea in front of the Mad Hatter Party ride (aka the teacups)
his first legal drink!
the Tower of Terror ride
Happy birthday!!

Summer 2022

The summer was a whirlwind, and I have not enough space to bore everyone with our activities. Highlights include the following:

A joint birthday celebration at the Inn at Little Washington

May Liang & Jim Lintott Birthday Party Shot on 20220522 in Washington, VA Photographer Laurence L. Levin www.LLLevin.com

Jade’s master’s degree (in theoretical computer science) graduation ceremony at Stanford. She is now at Georgia Tech getting her PhD in combinatorics (or theoretical computer science for those of us who don’t understand what combinatorics is).

Jim’s mom’s 90th birthday celebration in Chehalis, Washington. (Shhh, her age is a secret, as she doesn’t want people to think she’s old.) 🙂 There were over 100 people who attended, including family and friends from all over. It was a tremendously festive occasion.

Jim and I rented a house and spent 3 weeks in Hawaii. I am not sure how to start since I have run out of words to describe Hawaii (“earthly paradise” does not seem to do the place justice). The only cloud was that Jade was unable to join us (curse graduate school and its class schedule!). However, Marcus and Yinan were both able to join us for a week. It worked out well as Jim and Yinan played tennis while Marcus and I took surfing lessons.
We also had some guests join us for various weeks. I think (hope!) that a good time was had by all.
Highlights (in addition to the company of our guests) include:

Beautiful sunrises and sunsets

A visit to the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor

A visit to the Punchbowl (aka National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific)

Scenic vistas at Pali Lookout

Delicious meals, including at tbd…, The Pig and the Lady, and Piggy Smalls

and, of course, surfing lessons. Marcus (and Jade) are quite good–I have finished lesson #9 and am a work in progress… 🙂 (the video is from lesson #5)

Hawaii is definitely our zen place. We miss it already!

Spring Break 2022

Our last spring break together as a family was in March (yes, this entry is a bit late). We really have no grounds for complaint, however. For several years, the college spring break for Jade coincided with the high school spring break for Marcus, and so we eked out a couple more years of spring break together than most families manage and feel fortunate for being able to do so.
A very wise friend of ours once told me that the way to get your children to continue to vacation with you once they leave the house is to choose interesting/fun places to go and pay for all of it. And so I bring you spring break 2022 in Los Angeles!
The kids started their spring break in San Diego visiting my parents (and eating). We then met up with the kids in Disneyland (Jade’s first trip to the mother ship!), where we stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel and spent 2 really fun days at the parks, riding rides (and eating). We then moved to Los Angeles itself (well, really, Marina Del Rey, for those familiar with SoCal) and did touristy things (and ate). We had a tour of the La Brea Tar Pits (very cool, with lots of bones and active tar pits still), a tour of the Getty Villa (it’s the classical antiquities part of the Getty—I will never look at Commodus in quite the same way again (in a good way!)), toured through the Getty Museum, and had an after hours viewing of the Griffith Observatory where we saw the Orion Nebula and an Orion star cluster, among many other things, and helped shut down the telescope for the evening. The common theme of all of the tours, for which we are immensely grateful, was the dedication and love of all the personnel we met for what they were doing professionally. Everyone was so excited about their work and loved sharing their knowledge with us. It was a good reminder to the kids that loving what you do is so important to leading a fulfilling life.
Memorable meals include Din Tai Fung (love, love those soup dumplings), Pink’s (an LA institution justifiably famous for its hot dogs), Spagos (a Wolfgang Puck restaurant that is still going strong after 30+ years), and Meizhou Dong Po (a transplant from China).
It was a fantabulously fun week with the four of us—maybe even more so because we know that opportunities like this, with all four of us together, will become scarcer as the years go on. I can’t complain—we’ve had more spring breaks together than we had expected and so each extra one is just a bonus. And this one was fun!

Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland
Cars Land at Disneyland
view from the Griffith Observatory

University of Kansas Basketball

We have extremely good friends (family, really) who are huge KU basketball fans and invited us to go see a game with them the first weekend of March. (To my K-State peeps: you know that I will always bleed purple and white, but the dodo bird in primary colors does have its moments, especially when it comes to college basketball. Not to mention that Kansans need to stick together.) Having grown up going to Kansas State basketball games at Ahearn Fieldhouse, seeing a game at Allen Fieldhouse brought back some really lovely memories.
It was Senior Day for the KU-UT(exas) game. (And, in an amazing coincidence, two of Jim’s cousins happen to be at the game as well.)

with Jim's cousins
with Jim’s cousins

The game itself was a grind-it-out-in-overtime-because-we-can’t-buy-a-bucket kind of game, which was both painful and exciting to watch. And the atmosphere was electric—loud, passionate, enthusiastic, and occasionally profane. It was fabulous! KU won in overtime and then we listened to some really touching and heartfelt speeches by the seniors.
We got stranded by an unexpected snowstorm in Kansas City flying back. Had we been stranded at an east coast airport, there would have been much yelling and anger towards the gate agents. But in Kansas City, while people were clearly unhappy, they did not feel the need to vent their unhappiness towards others, given that the weather was no one’s fault and out of anyone’s control. I like Midwesterners. We did eventually make it home (for those of you familiar with O’Hare, I made the E gate to C gate trek in 15 minutes!). And it was definitely worth it.
It was all the more fun, then, to watch KU make their run through the NCAA tournament and ultimately win the national championship. (And what a mind blowing game to win it all!)
Thank you, Sarah and Mark, for a wonderful weekend and an amazing experience!
And Rock Chalk Jayhawk! (At least when they’re not playing K-State…)

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!
Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

2022 Disneyworld Princess 10K

This was our 3rd Princess 10K event (last year’s event being cancelled due to some random virus). We walked this one, as Jim had had an accident on the treadmill over Thanksgiving and had not yet been cleared by his cardiologist to exercise. (For the record, walking a 10K does not count as exercise!)
While we would have liked to have run the course (well, I would have liked to have run it, but I don’t think I’m speaking for everyone), it was actually a really fun opportunity to see all of the details that Disney puts in to make a runDisney event a little more fun than a typical running event. There are photo ops with characters, there are DJs putting out heart-pumping music, and there are Disney “volunteers” cheering you along the way.
One of the most fun events to attend during the weekend is the runner’s expo. Lots of vendors (although fewer this year than in past years) selling various needed and unneeded merchandise. Since we were walking it this year, I bought a matching tutu for my running outfit. It is the princess 10K after all.
One of the best things about this year’s event is that we had some very good friends who were also down for the event. It was great fun to go to the parks with them. And because we were there for three weeks remote working (aka fleeing the DC winter), we were able to have dinner with some other friends as well. We also visited the Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach, and Tampa during our stay.
But the VERY best thing about this year’s event was that the photos of both of us are presentable!! (This has not been historically true for a variety of deliberately vague reasons.). Those who need a refresher course on this just need to search the blog for previous princess 10k entries. 🙂

we are “running!”

Graduation 2021 and Hawaii

Two joyous events, especially in a year like this one.

In mid-June, we celebrated our daughter’s graduation from Stanford (total brag: she graduated with a degree in math, with distinction, and phi beta kappa). The graduation was a limited in-person event (two fully vaccinated guests per student). Issa Rae was the graduation speaker, and she did an excellent job. In addition, we had two VERY lovely friends who opened their home for a reception after the ceremony for Jade and her friends and their families. It was a truly celebratory day, and I think everyone appreciated the moment even more than they usually would.

Graduation 2021

Our summer trip was to Honolulu a few weeks later. We rented a house and enjoyed spending time with family and friends. There was a beautiful ocean, there were many beautiful rainbows (Hawaii isn’t called the rainbow state for no reason), there was fabulous food (fancy and not fancy), and there were wonderful guests who stayed with us. It really was a perfect time to relax, eat, and have fun.

I cannot tell you how wonderful Hawaii is. I can feel my blood pressure going down after landing at the Honolulu airport. My east coast friends wonder why we don’t go to the Caribbean for sun and ocean since it’s so much closer. I’ve concluded that it’s best to smile and keep the magical island paradise of Hawaii as a west coast secret. 🙂

sunrise over Koko Head
Moon over Koko Head
Pali Lookout

Christmas 2020

In an act of foolhardiness, we decided to go to Hawaii for Christmas. This was foolhardy for several reasons: first, Hawaii has imposed some stringent covid testing requirements in order to be permitted to come; second, there were no non-stop flights to Honolulu due to the lack of flights, which added another wild card to the equation; and, third, we would have to be masked for the entire set of flights.

We decided to rent a house, feeling that it would be safer, especially for Jim’s mom, who was coming as well. It was a beautiful house in the Portlock area, right on the water, with plenty of space for everyone.

Hawaii’s testing requirements were that you have to have a negative covid test within 72 hours of your departing flight to Hawaii from an approved partner. We ended up taking 2 different tests from 2 different partners. Jim received his negative test on Thursday morning, but the rest of us didn’t receive our test results until late Thursday night (our flight to Honolulu left Friday morning). It was rather stressful. But at least we were all negative!

It was a very different trip to Honolulu than any of our others. We rarely left the house, other than to exercise or go grocery shopping. Jim and I did our traditional 7 mile walk around Diamondhead every morning at oh-dark-thirty. (Hawaii is the only place where I am a morning person, and that’s only because we don’t generally bother to change time zones.) We “rented” surfboards (and it’s in quotes because the surf shop actually just lent the surfboards to us without charge), and Marcus went out surfing every day.

Yinan and I taught everyone how to play mahjong, and we now have mahjong addicts as children. Yay for parenting!

The weather was sunny and 80 degrees every day except for the day we left. Not a bad way to spend Christmas!

view from the house

Christmas in Hawaii

Christmas star