Surprises

For the past few weeks I have been working on our back yard in preparation to plant new trees and shrubs. Before (can't find a picture of what it used to look like) we had a TON of bamboo, a wanna-be papaya tree, some other tree with wicked roots, and a really big fern.  It was just way too cluttered for us and the worst part was that there were a lot of spiders and wasp flying around in the area.  So the solution was to just chop it all down. 

I gotta say ... don't EVER ... EVER, EVER, EVER plant bamboo in the ground. Leave it in the pot!! It was a serious b*tch to get the bamboo out since the roots are just so massive. I felt like I was taking out a layer of fat on the dirt since it came out in chunks. I also had to call reinforcements (Justin and Nari) to help me chop down 4 tree trunks.  But finally, all the hard work has paid off and our backyard is finally looking pretty darn good. 

My mom found a local nursery, Aloha Tropicals, out in Vista that sold Hawaiian plants. I was mainly interested in a Pua Keni Keni tree since it reminds me a lot about my grandpa. Being that my grandpa's tree has gone to crap and basically hacked down, it's no where near as beautiful as it was before. So to bring him and the memories of home/childhood closer to LA I've been searching for this tree for a long time. The owner of Aloha Tropicals was very friendly and I ended up getting quite a few plants.  I ended up getting: Pua keni keni, upside down Hibiscus, white hibiscus, Brazilian ginger, papaya, guava, mountain apple, laua'e fern, pakalana, and plumeria (pink with white edges). It came out more than expected but once they start growing and blooming it'll be sooo worth it. Just another 3-5 years hahaha

Left to right: Brazilian Ginger, guava, and white hibiscus. Believe it or not we had 3 tree stups in this corner.

 Left to Right: Pakalana (hopefully the vine covers up the wall), Laua'e fern, and Mountain Apple. Along the wall was ALL bamboo.

 Left to Right: Plumeria, Ti leaf (red and green), Papaya, Pua Keni Keni, and upside down Hibiscus. Before we had a large fern, a huge brush tree like thing, and a crappy papaya tree (ended up being rotten)

It was a lot of work to get all this going and I forgot to take a picture of how much green waste we have. It's a HUGE pile of branches and stumps that will probably take a month to get rid of. 

To thank Justin and Nari we had them come over for dinner. The surprising part was that Nari wanted to hold Toshi!! I can't believe it myself ... nor could Justin ... but this was her first new born baby that she has held. 

Like a natural. I swear ... all women look comfortable holding babies. Men on the other hand look super nervous, start sweating, heart pounding, WTF face O_O (and no, that doesn't mean, "Wow, That's Fantastic").  haha. Well that's how I felt when I held Toshi for the first time.  

Rent a family :D. Justin and Nari looked after Kekoa when Dawn and I were in the hospital. We are super thankful and so is Kekoa. He absolutely LOVES them. 

After eating like kings (wings and beer) on Friday night Dawn and I decided to hit up my favorite asian spot, Lee's Tofu, for dinner on Saturday.  I love Tofu soup and I always get it extra spicy. For some reason Saturday night's meal was extra, extra spicy. You can just see the red spices and seasoning floating on top of the soup ... YUM!! My head is always sweating at the end of the meal haha.

Today, Sunday, we had family come over to check out Toshi since they were going to eat Dim Sum at Sea Empress. They all wanted to stop by and see Toshi for the first time. It was great seeing them after ... 6 weeks?! haha. I can't believe Toshi is that old now. 

Dawn's cousin, Kevin, hooked us up with a super cool techy gadget for Toshi. Simply put, it is a camera that you can install in your car so you can see the baby on a screen vs. a tiny mirror on the head rest through your rear view mirror. It's soooo awesome and we had to hook it up today. The screen is about 2-3 inches large and it plugs into your cigarette lighter (well what used to be that). 

Here, the camera is mounted to the rear headrest and it's pretty rigid. We wrapped the mounting legs underneath the head rest so Kekoa can't knock it off or something. 

The screen is double sided taped to the the dash and now Dawn has perfect view of what Toshi is doing in the back seat.  Sooooo awesome!!! Since this product is made in Australia ... why can't we start a company to make this in the US?!?!? ;) instant money for sure. We already have design improvements as we installed the device.