Halloween in Hawaii

Halloween in Laie, and especially on Moana Street, is always a highlight of the year. For the whole month of October, the Polynesian Cultural Center hosts the wildly popular Haunted Lagoon. People come from all over the island and pay $25 each to wait in line for about two hours, then go on the 45-minute canoe ride. In the meantime, those of us who live in Laie get to hear the sounds of the Haunted Lagoon all month. On Halloween night, kids from all over the area descend on Moana Street. This year, we gave out candy to more than 1,000 Trick or Treaters. We bought enough candy for 780, then ran out with about an hour left. Fortunately, some friends of ours who used to live on Moana Street had a huge bag left over and came to our rescue so that we could keep handing out candy, and so that Lennie could keep playing the organ (see below). We should get the Guinness Book of World Records over here. I'll bet we get more Trick or Treaters on Moana St. than anywhere in the world.

This is our pumpkin for the year. A tree in a haunted forest.

We finally did it. Ever since we bought our digital piano with an organ setting, Lennie thought it would be cool to take the piano/organ out to the garage, where he could play scary music for the Trick or Treaters. One problem was that he didn't have very much scary music. Fortunately, Heather bought him a song book entitled, "Halloween Spooktacular", filled with "37 Gravest Hits". She also bought a shortened and edited version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the famous Dracula song. For 2 1/2 hours, Lennie joyfully played such pieces as Bach's Toccata and Fugue, Theme from Dracula, The Fog, Funeral March by Chopin, Funeral March of a Marionette by Gounod (the Alfred Hitchcock theme song), The Mummy, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, Tales from the Crypt, This is Halloween, Tubular Bells from the Exorcist, and the Twilight Zone theme music. They were all fun, but the Toccata and Fugue was definitely the signature piece.

What is this, you ask? This is Lennie and his organ behind a sheer sheet. We tried to give it a mysterious look, but the sheet probably wasn't quite sheer enough. We'll have to perfect Dracula's Lair next year.

Gandia, Spain- family reunion!!!

Surprisingly, the beach there was very nice. And we thought there could be no good beach outside of Hawaii! We had two good afternoons at the beach, the second day with just Noah. We had such fun with him!
















Noah's beloved blanket, turned into do-rag- compliments of Daddy! This is outside of the Lladro factory where we bought a rather large statue of the Christus, but we did manage to get it home safe and sound.















As Paul remarked, "Sean had more clothes on than anyone else at the beach". That's not saying too much, since many of the women were topless!











Robyn and Paul fixed a Spanish feast for us our first night there. The best food we had in Spain!















One of our many playground breaks. Actually, this was at a park where we had a picnic/barbeque with a family Paul knew from his mission. They were such a wonderful family and we all enjoyed our time that night.

Spain- Ola!!!

My personal favorite touristy thing in Barcelona was Goudi's Sacrada Familia. The Cathedral was surprisingly beautiful inside and is almost finished! It is designed to look like a forest inside. the outside has many detailed images such as the nativity, healings, etc.











We tried to enter the Madrid temple, but it was closed for cleaning, so we just saw the outside and the MTC. We even took a picture of Brian's picture when he was there! The grounds are very peaceful.





















This is part of the scaffolded exterior of the Sagrada Familia.


















Beautiful garden in front of the Royal Palace in Madrid.

The Huff's Summer Extravaganza

We definitely had a summer to remember! The bad thing is that we did so many things and went so many places, that I am already forgetting! I thought I would post a few highlights of each location so I'll start with Boston. Lennie had to attend a seminar at Harvard Business School, his Alma Mater, so we happily began our trip there (after our short layover in Denver where we got to have a nice, short visit with Heather, Doug and Caitlin). It was great to stay with his college roomie, Kerry Hopkins, and to see our first apartment, etc. It was a great way to begin our trip- going back in time to basically "where it really all began for the Huffs".

The Old Gray Mare Graduates!!

Yup, it finally happened. I finished my Master's degree on Saturday. No more waking up at 4 am to work on assignments or read articles! I now have a master's degree from the American College of Education in Chicago. Since I would rather be in Europe than Chicago the end of June, I just threw on Lennie's graduation robe and we had a quiet celebration. We were so busy that we didn't have time to properly celebrate. Vacation is coming up, so that will work just fine. I"m glad I did it, but also glad it's behind me now.

Deja Vu!

What a way to celebrate Mother's Day!! Does this remind you of anything? This is what it looked like at about 1:00 p.m. this afternoon. We spent our afternoon digging ditches, hauling sandbags and doing everything we could to keep water from our house. Fortunately, the rain lightened up in the middle of the afternoon, so hopefully we won't get flooded again.
We have some ladies staying with us this week who sing in a Sweet Adelines Barbershop Show Chorus. When they saw this scene they said, "Let's get a boat and sail on Lake Huff!" Of course, they didn't realize that scenes like this make us paranoid.