My Secrets: A New Series

I really miss being Primary Chorister.

I was the Primary Chorister for the Senior Primary in our ward for just over a year.  I expected to be in for at least another year or more.  I didn't think I would miss it very much because I love Sunday School and Relief Society so much.

But I do.

I miss those sweet voices and I miss feeling the spirit with nearly every song.  I miss singing the praises to the Lord for 25 minutes.  I miss teaching the children the gospel truths through music and tucking it into their hearts.

P.S. I like my calling now just fine so don't go telling the Bishop.  Thanks!

Here We Come a Wassailing or a Rockin' Christmas List

(start at about 6 minutes)
One movie I love is Under The Greenwood Tree mostly because of the opening scenes of the "quire" caroling on Christmas Eve. Come to think of it I love Little Women too because of the scene where the girls are marching with their Christmas breakfast and singing "Here we Come a Wassailing" I love caroling and I love Christmas Carols but this year I have been wanting only rockin' music for my holiday tunes. Maybe I need high energy songs to keep up with the crafting fever there is nothign like dancing with a hot glue gun or an Exacto knife.
Here are some selections from my Rockin' Christmas list

(I don't know why Mariah Carey is on here twice I guess her Christmas songs are just better than the other versions.)

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/ We Three Kings - Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan
Cool Yule - Louis Armstrong
Christmas Baby Please Come Home- Mariah Carey
Last Christmas- Cascada
Run, Rudolph Run- Brian Setzer Orchestra (This link is good but the recording we bought on Amazon rocks HARDER)
I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - John Mellencamp
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town - The Jackson 5
All I Want for Christmas is You- Mariah Carey

Airport Island Style

Friday (June 20) we woke up early and hit Tunnels beach for some last minute snorkeling and stopped by the Queen's Bath again. Then we went back to the hotel and packed up so that we could stop at every Dirt Shirt Store on the Island looking for just the right one. We eventually found it. We drove up to the Wialua Falls overlook and then bid Kauai and our Jeep goodbye at the airport.
There was the most adorable couple playing live music in the airport as we waited for our flight. I just loved the way they sounded and they were so cute. Nicki is posing here on the woman's guitar. She was so nice she gave me a pretty lei the only trouble is that it smelled so bad. It was called a 10 cent flower lei, by the time I got to the big island I thought I would be sick from the smell.
This is a picture of the clocks in the Lihue airport. See how each is labeled a different city? The trouble is that they are all set to the same time!
We flew first class on Hawaiian Air to Honolulu then Hilo it was cheaper than coach, but it wasn't very first classy, we were just the first seats in the plane.
While we were killing time in the Honolulu airport waiting for our flight to Hilo we wandered into the now abandoned Aloha Airlines wing of the airport and like any self respecting tourists took pictures while it still existed. We weren't the only ones. The lady who took this picture was doing the same thing.

I won't discuss how the rest of my airport experiences were but I did forget a water bottle in my bag and got a sheepish rebuke from the TSA guy. It is as if he knew this was ridiculous as he threw the brand new unopened bottle into the trash. I am just glad they didn't find my smuggled lei needle!

Hawaiian tunes

When we arrived in Hawaii we found that our rental car did not have a cassette player so the adapter we had for Moose's iPod wasn't going to work. This worked out OK for us because we were then able to sample the local Hawaiian music. Even the Hawaiian channel has the same problems as most radio stations on the mainland - they play the same 20 songs over and over again. We became very familian with the "It's the way you move your body" song and the "Spread a little Aloha around the world" song. But after the first week I made Moose buy a new adapter.

Our 2 favorites were "Maui Hawaiian Sup'pa Man" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" both by IZ.

At the Luau there was a great little band. Someone requested "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and as they were playing the couple who had requested it danced. It was so sweet, no one else danced the whole night long but this couple danced for the whole song, so in love with 300 pairs of eyes fixed on them. We loved it.

Pele was Jealous

Apparently Pele was jealous of my beauty as we had rain, clouds, rain and clouds on our Volcanic excursions yesterday. Moose was unhappy with the rapid speed that our helicopter buzzed by the interesting spots, and he was stuck in the middle. I was awestruck by the majesty of it all. I still maintain that volcanology is "So fascinating." We drove to where you could allegedly see the lava flow but it was very late after a long day of exploring lava fields and they only let you get about 1/2 a mile away from the flow, and it started raining.

Above is a picture of the lava as it meets the ocean creating a plume of sulphur dioxide


Which you can see here as we saw it when we FLEW THROUGH IT!

And Nicki on some pāhoehoe lava.

After the disappointment at the lava viewing area we headed back for a supper at Uncle Billy's Restaurant in Hilo which is as interesting as it sounds. There was an adorable, yet hilarious 2 man (Stanford and Howard) ukulele and guitar band that had a wonderful way of introducing songs as if they were originally preformed by little known bands with even less well known tunes. "This is another song about Margaritas, (very long pause) written by Jimmy Bufett, (even longer pause) it's called 'Margaritaville.'" and "This is a song by a band called 'The Temptations'" as if no one in the room had been hearing Magaritaville non stop for the past week and had never heard of The Temptations. The band itself was... well the songs sounded like the songs they said they would, with a Hawaiian twist and very loose consonants.