The Hawaii Blog

As you know, we're leaving for Hawaii on Wednesday! We'll be keeping a travel blog about our trip. Click here to see it! We hope you enjoy our Notes fromWaikiki!

Birthday Day Trip: Lawrence, KS

Sunday was Jeremy's birthday, and we celebrated with an impromptu trip to Lawrence, KS. We had been told that Lawrence was very similar to Fort Collins, so we took the 3 hour drive to find out. It was the first long trip in Cathy's new car, so we were excited about that as well.

Kirk and Jeremy, just before we backed out of the garage. WOO!

It was supposed to be sunny and nice. Instead we had wind and fog. Go figure.

The drive went pretty fast. We took the toll road, and there was not much traffic. We passed through Emporia, Topeka, and a whole lot of nothing. It was kind of like driving through Wyoming, except with more wind.

By the time we made it to Lawrence, we were *starving,* so we stopped at the first restaurant that looked good- The Longhorn Steakhouse.

Life totally called for steak at that moment.

Everything looked so good, it took awhile to decide. We were forced to order a delicious appetizer so we did not starve to death before we ordered our real meals.

The decor was...interesting...but we liked that the heads of all the animals had hats!
When you're that hungry, everything seems to take forever. To kill time, we took pictures.
Even one of Cathy. Notice the classy antler motif of the restaurant.
But the food was really, really good. Really good. We'll have to go back!

After lunch we headed downtown, which really did remind us of Fort Collin's old town. Lawrence is also a smoke free town, which is something we all miss about Fort Collins. There were lots of neat little shops to explore. We did not even hit up half of them and we were there for a couple of hours. Cathy even bought something at a cute European food shop: this little bag that rolls up!

It is tiny.
But it unfolds into a good sized tote bag!

It starts out really small, and fits into Cathy's purse with no problems. It will be really nice for sporadic library trips and for the weekly Aldi's shopping trip. Aldi's is a ultra low budget grocery store that is very low frills- so low frills that they don't even provide bags. Of course, Cathy always forgets to take a bag, so it will be nice to always have a reusable on hand.

The European food store also had the neatest chocolates. Each piece was like a little work of art. It was so neat that we took pictures! Observe:


We did not buy anything, but we looked at them for quite awhile. Maybe next time.

We also stopped by the local university to have a look.

It was a neat looking campus.
And bigger than we expected.

We drove the three hours back to enjoy Jeremy's birthday cookie.

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Guess What Annie Likes?

Crazy Bathroom Lady

The bathroom at my workplace is very small. The women's room only has two stalls. If anybody is washing her hands and you open the door, you'll take out her butt if you're not careful. I nearly did that today. The woman moved to allow me admittance, and proceeded to put on her very complicated coat.

There are like, four women at my workplace, and I had never seen this one before. We chatted about the weather for a bit, and then she said the strangest thing:

Crazy Bathroom Lady: "I like to put my coat on and get ready to leave in the other bathroom, but men keep coming in, so I'm using this one instead."

Me: "Men keep coming in? To which bathroom?"

Crazy Bathroom Lady: "To the one right beside this one."

Me: "You mean the Men's room?"

Crazy Bathroom Lady: *crazy stare*

The Pimp of Relativistic Cosmology and Statistical Mechanics. (No, it's not Kirk. Yet.)

To further contribute to our rock star life reputation, Kirk spent the past few nights playing with five sets of double nine dominoes.
Behold the result: Einstein, our friendly father of relativity and E=mc²- immortalized in dominoes, as every scientist dreams.

Want to make your our own? Okay!

We also recommend the following documentaries:

• Einstein's Wife
• NOVA: Einstein's Big Idea
• Einstein's Equation of Life and Death

And book:

E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation By David Bodanis

The Royal Puppy At Play

Christmas Day Part I

This is the teapot that Cathy got at the White Elephant Exchange at the Morh's. Actually, techincally it's Kirk's teapot, as Cathy made him "win" it for her after she was out of turns. She loves it.

Another shot of the teapot. The thing to the left fits in and you can put loose tea leaves in for brewing. We've already tried it with the English Breakfast tea that Dustin sent to Cathy for Christmas- yum!

Vanessa wanted to meet Annie, who actually obliged without being *too* grumpy about it.
Vanessa in her Christmas dress, before we opened the presents.
Our tree, with most the presents under it. We can't put the gifts under it until just before we open it, because of curious animals.

Sarah likes her gift. She carried it around all morning. She really wanted to take it outside so she could bury it, and was kind of cranky that she was not allowed to do it.
Despite the unimpressed face, Vanessa really seemed to like the Phonics bus.
It took *forever* to get out of the package.

Linda and her favorite gift this year- the Elephant lamp.

We're off to the Mohr's for Christmas dinner- more to come later!