Ken’s friend at Manoa gave him the idea of collecting $5 from people before Thanksgiving, then taking advantage of the sales to buy as many turkeys as possible to donate to the Salvation Army, or whoever is cooking and serving free Thanksgiving dinner to the community. For us, it’s the Salvation Army. So goal 1 was community service. Goal 2 was to get our kids together behind this project to do a good turn and socialize outside of school. For our first annual attempt, Ken just emailed our ohana list (the families that camp together) and I emailed some of my colleagues. We ended up giving 40 turkeys this year (almost more than the Salvation Army could handle – but we’ll figure that out next year).

The kids in front of the pantry

I found this and thought of grandma – a reason to never be a vegetarian. Check my blog post on her at http://rubberslippercontessa.blogspot.com

Ken as the Fruit of the Loom green grape, Pono and me as vampires in hiding (from our book club theme).

Ahi was a caveman, but sorry I don’t have a pic of that.

Here’s one with his friends at their hang out spot.

808 ID is offering 2 shirt colors for the holidays: chestnut t with sand ink and white t with charlie brown ink (earth tones).

Limited supplies – on sale in November.

Design – Kāwili- it’s a blend or mixture – the top of the design includes traditional patterns like the ʻihe, hāloa and lauhala. The designs then blend together with the modern styles to create symbols that are used in tattoos today.

I gots me my own paddleboard for my birthday, even if it’s on the Tokunaga installment plan. Schizophrenic as it is we now have four boards of different size and make. Mine is a purty yellow 11 foot Papa He’e Nalu brand. We just unwrapped this, but tomorrow we have to go put the pads on, the handle and the scag. Thanks Ken!

Step 1: Start with a plain old frosted cupcake. If it’s got sprinkles, even    better.

1. Step 2: Peel off the cupcake paper and pull off the top of the cupcake.

Step 3: Flip the bottom onto the top and eat it like a sandwich.

Extreme cupcake eating courtesy of Sandra Lee of Semi-Homemade fame.

Pono’s in middle school now – and in my advisory. There’s no escape.

Senior year – first day of school – and rockin the 80’s bandanna, oh my!

Hot dog

Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda

Ken is a Food Network watching, me food hunter and gatherer kind of guy, so when we go traveling, I am usually in charge of finding accomodations (making house) and he is in charge of searching for food places. When he is quietly on the computer days before we leave, then I know he is plotting our food travels.

With that in mind, after getting into LAX at 9 pm, we headed out to La Brea (about 30 minutes away) and Ken stood in line for one hour for our hot dogs from Pink’s Famous Hot Dog stand. I kid you not, at 10 pm on a Tuesday night in LA, the line was still one hour long. There are so many choices that it’s rather overwhelming. We decided, in true foodie wannabe fashion, that we would try a different hot dog for every person present. We tried the chili cheese nacho dog; mushroom and swiss cheese dog; pastrami and saurkraut dog; and the Today Show dog which is a double hot dog with chili, onions and guacamole. It was an experience to stand in line, order and watch the guys make the hot dogs. It was even cool to avoid the well dressed guy that was actually trying to panhandle. Was it a great hot dog? No, not especially, but it doesn’t matter. The next time they talk about historic food landmarks on the Food Channel, we can say, “hey we went there – Pink’s.”

My domestic goddess project is totally stalled because I am in need of a name for a project. I think the name is everything. Nothing moves on until I have a name because I need to start another blog, which means that I need a name. The name will then decide on the project. Hereʻs what I came up with so far: The Obsessed with Alan Wong Project, Moody Mama, Daily Dinner Project, Slouching toward Chaos, Skinny Cow Diaries, The Rubber Slippah Contessa.

I tried to get ideas from the alltop mom blogs, but I just got more confused. Some of these moms are obviously moms with small children. I have no small children in the house. I do not have diaper stories, make your own baby food stories (although I did make my own baby food – not for the good of my baby but because the buggah ate so much I was too pake to buy food), or toddler advice. My advice to these young mothers are: observe your toddler carefully – all those irritating traits that exasperate you now will come back to horrify you when they are teenagers, only now you’ll be old and TIRED. You know that feeling when your baby is just born – the weird medicine head feeling from not sleeping well? That’s the same feeling you’ll have in their teen years, just that it lasts longer in their teen years and their antics are not so cute. Guard your car keys, bolt your windows, hide your money, know how to access their myspace, be paranoid and obsessive, and stalk effectively.

One title on alltop looked promising (Slouching Past 40), but this is a 41 year old mother with an 11 and 7 year old. Yes my youngest is 11 and yes, I’m 41, but I have a 21 year old and a 17 year old. I am very near to getting rid of another child as he finishes his senior year, so I want a mommy project, even though I don’t really qualify as a mommy. Is that a conflict?