Yesterday there was a private school fair at the Japanese cultural center here in Honolulu. V took the kids by to pick up some info about high schools in the area. However, also having F would be a handful so I took F on an outing yesterday.
Let me back up...I'm not sure what I have and have not posted yet with all that has happened this year. When we were living in Kapolei we desperately needed a second vehicle (for a family of six) not least of which because our van kept breaking down and stranding us on the side of the highway--and because we are new here we did not know anyone we could call to help us out. We wanted to ship our car from Georgia because it had low mileage and had been taken care of while we were in Germany. (It seems strange but it is actually cheaper, in a wide range of circumstances, to ship a car here than to buy one.)
Grandma was driving the car once in a while to keep it in working order and just before shipping it, and days before leaving on a flight here to visit, she was rear-ended behind a car turning left and pushed into the car in front of her. She went to the hospital but thankfully was relatively okay, with bruises and nothing more serious, considering all that had happened. Even though she was hurting, she was not going to miss seeing her grand-kids and hopped on a plane soon after to carry through with her planned visit. However, our car was totaled.
So, she shipped her car instead... Once it was on its way, the new housing opportunity came up in Honolulu (in "town" as they say here in Hawai'i) and within a month we had moved. We didn't really need the car anymore but there was no turning back and it arrived a few weeks later. We only had space for parking one vehicle at our new apartment, even though they promised two before we agreed to move in; so, this led to a situation where we have to park the car on the street and keep moving it every few days (and it occasionally gets towed by the city as I've mentioned in an earlier post).
Anyway, we now have a second vehicle and I might as well use it. I've been trying to do more with the kids one-on-one on the weekends. (I don't know if I mentioned but earlier in the year I took T on a hike and we saw a whale out in the ocean. It came up out of the water and crashed on its side just like in a travel brochure advertisement.) V dropped us off and I gassed it up, checked the oil and water levels and put some air in the tires. As we drove away F waved toward V and said loudly, "bye, see you soon."
So, instead of having F (who is two years old) run around and distacting V, I took her in the car up to the North Shore. I like it up there. It is quieter and less crowded and I haven't been up there in months. We walked along the beach--just past Mokuleia beach park where a large number of people were kitesurfing--and collected sea shells. She had three she wouldn't let go of but the others she let me put in my pocket to carry.
Partway down the beach I saw what I first thought was a large piece of driftwood covered in sand. Then as we got a bit closer I saw that is was a large sea turtle up on the beach. I have seen them occasionally out in the water but this was the first one I had seen up on the beach--and it looked huge! We did not get very close. It is illegal to harass sea turtles; they have their own set of very protective laws. It was probably a green sea turtle, "honu" in Hawaiian. There are endangered but are the most common in the waters around the island. Here is an online image, also from here in Hawai'i (this is not my own picture but is available on wikimedia commons).
It seemed to be moving oddly to one side (I know that sounds strange, a sea turtle on land should be moving oddly, but something didn't seem right about it). So I reported it to HWF along with the coordinates; they sometimes help turtles that are tangled in nets or in trouble.
I picked F up and pointed the turtle out to her but each time she was looking toward it it did not move and she did not seem to recognize it. I did not want to push this too much. A few weeks earlier the Bishop Museum had a dinosaur exhibit. V and I took all four of the kids. The dinosaurs were animated and moving around. A large one near the entrance would swing its neck over and look at you as you came in. There was also a T. rex with huge teeth, some megafauna mammals, etc. M was holding F's hand and tried to pull her closer to look at them, but F wanted nothing to do with them. She wasn't completely out-of-control upset but she was very worried and it was clear her anxiety level had gone through the roof. She hid her face toward me and wanted me to pick her up; when I did I noticed her hands were shaking. She motioned for us to move away from them. As I moved away we ended up near some stairs going up to a second floor. She slid down and pulled me to follow her up the stairs. She dashed up them and laid down on the floor, completely flattened out and out of sight of the dinosaurs. I thought this showed good instincts; she basically climbed a "tree" and made herself invisible; getting above the dinosaurs by going up the stairs. She lay there for a moment then slowly moved closer to the edge on her belly to look down and keep an eye on them. We were stuck there for a while, V came by looking for us and we were able to eventually pick F up and carry her back down and outside without her getting too upset. While we were waiting outside she realized T and M were still inside and pulled me back toward the door with her to get (rescue) them. She even steeled herself to go back inside, just inside the entrance, but did not want to go past the dinosaurs in the front to look for T and M in the rooms behind. Finally they came out and we regrouped while F climbed up some branches on a tree nearby and T got her back down. --anyway, I did not want to worry her about a very large reptile on the beach so soon after the dinosaur run in.
What she was interested in at the beach was the waves. She did not want to go into the water but she kept pointing and talking about fish. I picked her up and we scanned the water for a while.
On the way back she put her three special shells in a pocket on her car seat. Then she took them out one by one and I heard her counting them; "one, two, three sea shells."
