A rare post by George

I thought I'd get in on some blogging to show a couple photos we took with our new waterproof camera: The first few come from Hanauma Bay - I've found a new appreciation for Hanauma over the last few visits. I have always enjoyed it for the very tame fish (no fishing allowed; lots of visitors) and the shallow depth on the front end makes it a great place to take folks who haven't snorkelled much and feel the need to stand up and readjust or just catch their breath.  Also, if I go in the morning I have never failed to find at least a turtle or two which is always fun.   The downside has been the visibility is a little silty and I had become a little bored seeing a lot of the same types of fish.  Anyway, the last two times I've been I went out about twice as far as I usually do from the beach and found that the water a lot more clear and deep with better coral formations as well.  My dad, Jake and I went on the Friday before Thanksgiving and I found a pretty cool Triton's trumpet snail and had a glimpsing encounter with an octopus that I just couldn't find after I tried to call my dad over.  Here's a few pic's

I found this shell pointing out of the rocks and figured it had to have something cool living in it.

After looking at if for a minute I put it down on a flat spot on the reef and eventually it started to crawl.  It had a pretty cool leopard type spotted coloring.

My dad found a turtle that was tame enough it would swim right up to us without a bit of a care as to what we were doing.  Jake is in the background of the 2nd shot.

Some schooling fish

 Also while my folk's stayed Kimi found a great deal at the Hale Koa hotel on the beach at Waikiki so we took the family down there for a night.  They were good enough to watch our kids so Kimberli could go try surf lessons which we'd been meaning to do.  Unfortunately when we got down to the beach it was as flat as I've ever seen it at Waikiki so we tried stand up paddle boarding instead.   We'll have to give it another go on the surf lessons but we thought paddling was lots of fun and had some sore thighs (from balancing) the next day.

We had a great time paddling around.  Kimi had a bit of trouble steering and at one point I was afraid she would drift out to sea.  I on the other hand fell off the thing about ten times while Kimberli paddled for an hour then got out with her hair still dry so I think she was the champ of the morning.  (She did stand up quite a bit but the only pictures I took were of her leaving me in the dust so they didn't make the cut for the blog).

Underwater Shaka from the pool at the hotel.  Aloha!